Tag: change

If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

August 17, 2025

The best known quatrain of Persian Poetry, in stolid Victorian translation is that from what The Poetry Foundation calls the ‘Rubáiyát, his collection of hundreds of quatrains (or rubais), was first translated from Farsi into English in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald’, attributed to Omar Khayyam. There are versions on versions of the quatrains translated, not least by Fitzgerald . … More If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

What act suffices as an ‘act of kindness’? Or is that the wrong question? This is a blog that is partially about Simon Armitage’s ‘Give’, first published in a collection in ‘Dead Sea Poems’ (1995).

July 24, 2025

From a film made to support schools teaching the poem Give by the BBC. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/articles/znd7t39 I happened upon a word on a wallThat said just ‘Give’: Give what? I thought, I giveEnough in taxes, in support of those Who claim to suffer more than me. Who knows?If someone could write on walls can’t they … More What act suffices as an ‘act of kindness’? Or is that the wrong question? This is a blog that is partially about Simon Armitage’s ‘Give’, first published in a collection in ‘Dead Sea Poems’ (1995).