This is an intriguingly worded question: “What book could you read over and over again?” It’s worth noting that no-one wants to ask about the book you do ‘read over and over again’, just about one of which you could do so and presumably do not do so. In the end it is a question … More The meaning of ‘reading’!
What’s something most people don’t understand? Lots and lots of energy are expended on meanings and how they touch upon lives, or even bludgeon some peoples lives into submission, like the words that are taken to infer not only a meaning but also a social status, and these are legion. Queer was once such a … More To know someone or something is an illusion of the moment, to ‘understand’ is to accept that you must live in or amongst every facet of their very life or ‘spirit’.
If you could have something named after you, what would it be? I, the Stevie in question, was just about to start the process of registering my patent in this belief system when I realised yet again there is nothing new under the sun, and the best things have been said many times. The words … More Stevieism: a belief that though truth is a complicated thing, the duty to be open to it is ‘peremptory and absolute’.
What Tommy Orange actually writes about his character Orvil Red Feather in his 2018 novel There There is: ‘… he stands, weak in the knees, a fake, a copy, a boy playing dress up… It is important that he dress like an Indian, dance like an Indian, even if it is an act, even if … More ‘… he stands, weak in the knees, a fake, a copy, a boy playing dress up… To be or not to be (what you would be or feel to be) depends on it’. The Pretendian in Tommy Orange’s ‘There There’.
I have no standing in any community I suppose. I am the worst for it. What is it that prompts people to write poetry or to call themselves poets? Is that fervour for community improvement? Simon Armitage’s latest poetry ‘project’ in community politics is published in his 2024 volume Blossomise. I began to be concerned … More Can poets improve community? The example of Simon Armitage in ‘Blossomise’ is what NOT to do.
As a preacher of sermons, one almost thinks that John Donne was as alive to the need to generate memorable phrases that would outlive knowledge of his work as to teach the religious lessons of human and spiritual concern. Written in 1624, possibly in response to an illness that nearly killed him, the devotional piece … More ‘No-one is an island, entire to itself’, as John Donne might have preached, had he wished to touch the diversity of people.
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it? Cut it into my heart, where there unseen A pictured heart, dagger-blooded resides. A little more to the right takes the life, Rather than declaring it worthless now Of the too brief abode he took of it. On my skin, tattoos like dragons hurled … More A fantasy verse about tattoos and taxidermy.
Let’s reshape this question, for ‘goals’ are not sacrosanct nor good in themselves but only in their ultimate purpose. and saying ‘no’ may be a defiance of what is good, true, and in the interests of higher principles than self-interest. Today, the self-help and self-care (in truth better named the self-interest) industry will be out … More As people in privileged positions respond to this question, the Israeli government is saying ‘NO’ to action against child starvation in North Gaza. Blunt tools aren’t good tools.
What is your favorite type of weather? Breeze blowing fresh olive leaves of dry mind. Whilst sun gilds blowsy daffodils, yellow to the core of artful sickness, but now lifting it above naming of colour; tonal chiaroscuro making mental shade, soothing, and brightness healing, softly down green to shoots and roots well embedded in hoar … More This spring day today in our Crook Garden
What do you wish you could do more every day? We all have our own crosses to bear – obviously I am pathetically trying here to make clever reference to the wonderful cover of the hardcover edition of Steven Berkoff’s book, I Am Hamlet. However, it is true that I often feel like Hamlet myself, … More I wish that I were more cued to ‘fight’ injustice (or act decisively at least). This a blog that reflects on seeing Jack Thorne’s play, streamed by the National Theatre, ‘The Motive and the Cue’ last night.
A variation on a prompt: New notes sounded in revisiting ‘The Mining Art Gallery’ and ‘The Spanish Gallery’: With thoughts on why influential teaching is not always good teaching. _______________________________________________________________ The 17th March was a very wet and rather depressing day in Bishop Auckland but walk Daisy we must and, given that she will walk … More New notes sounded in revisiting ‘The Mining Art Gallery’ and ‘The Spanish Gallery’: With thoughts on why influential teaching is not always good teaching.
If Judaeo-Christian thought gave us an obsession it is that of claiming a false integrity: the view that we are beings that can be summed up in one word – a thing that defines us. It has, in ways that monotheistic cultures must, made us prone to idealise the ONE. In truth this idealisation is … More One word? Why? Cannot ‘one’ say: ‘My name is Legion’.
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