Tag: poem

‘The School Play’: Growing up Queer amid so many manly performances. The poet James Merrill on the perils of a “small part”, “but an important one”, when: ‘What was not important to the self / At nine or ten’.

April 6, 2025

As I sort my library, I come across writers I have long meant to read. Such a one is the poet James Merrill, who I came across in relation to reading novels of his period some years ago. I know nothing really of Merrill.  I read through the selection I have in the Everyman Library … More ‘The School Play’: Growing up Queer amid so many manly performances. The poet James Merrill on the perils of a “small part”, “but an important one”, when: ‘What was not important to the self / At nine or ten’.

‘The poetic phrase is constantly thinking, is forever rebuilt and remade on the shifting sands of language’. Rethinking new poetry, including Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s ‘Strange Beach’ again, and now  Yomi Sode’s ‘Manorism’ [2025].

March 14, 2025

In an earlier blog post (see it at this link if you wish) about Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s Strange Beach, I ended it with a promise, or is it a threat, that: ‘I want to return to them. Maybe I will, for I have more to say of the brilliant things in Andrew McMillan’s book blurb on … More ‘The poetic phrase is constantly thinking, is forever rebuilt and remade on the shifting sands of language’. Rethinking new poetry, including Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s ‘Strange Beach’ again, and now  Yomi Sode’s ‘Manorism’ [2025].

Today I found a poem.

March 10, 2025

Before you turn off completely in fear that the poem I found was actually found inside me and written out in my usual sadly mechanical verse style, I need to say that this poem, typed (clearly on a typewriter) and on flimsy looking but actually quite tough semi-transparent parchment paper (or at least this is … More Today I found a poem.

‘I eat his friends’  /                applause’: a poem on ‘a compliment’, perhaps: Oluwayseun Olayiwola’s ‘There is Nothing Like That Black Voice’

March 9, 2025

The poet is visiting Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh on 11th March 7 p.m. I have enjoyed very much reading the debut volume of poetry by a new queer Black poet, Oluwayseun Olayiwola, called Strange Beach. For this blog, perhaps the first of two, I will concentrate on one poem because it centres on a compliment … More ‘I eat his friends’  /                applause’: a poem on ‘a compliment’, perhaps: Oluwayseun Olayiwola’s ‘There is Nothing Like That Black Voice’

Lapse and the Upward Spiral of Change, sometimes!

February 24, 2025

The model of behavioural change promoted by Prochaska and DiClemente to describe the usual process of escaping addiction provides the best model of how success occurs and is more durable in nature. It applies to any human behavioural task and suggests that only when serial occurrences of apparent failure in the task occur (failures which … More Lapse and the Upward Spiral of Change, sometimes!

Being ‘other than the things I touch’

February 20, 2025

The ‘intentional fallacy’ was proposed by Wimsatt and Beardsley in 1954 in The Verbal Icon. It suggested that no work of art, especially a literary one, should be read with an assumption that the author’s ‘intention’ with regard to the poem’s meaning or function as discourse should or indeed can be made. Yet scholarship remained … More Being ‘other than the things I touch’

“They say retirement’s a time for leisure / But not necessarily for pleasure”.

January 22, 2025

They say retirement’s a time for leisureBut not necessarily for pleasure. The little iambic couplet I composed, with obligatory soft and feminine rhymes (don’t blame me though for the sexist nomenclature of the discourse of poetic technique where double rhymes are named both feminine and weak), for this sad blog is meant to look at … More “They say retirement’s a time for leisure / But not necessarily for pleasure”.

The living deadness of the static ‘I’ infects our pride in self.

October 14, 2024

Joseph Addison Anyone who attempts this question will soon get caught in a trap, for the first word of their answer will be their downfall: ‘I am most proud of …….’, they start and then describe a quality of their personality or appearance in the world, or perhaps some past action undertaken that they feel … More The living deadness of the static ‘I’ infects our pride in self.

Forward Poetry Prize fills the stage with meaning, truth, beauty and not a little fun.

October 11, 2024

The Forward Poetry Prize is probably the most prodigious of prizes for a working poet and I have followed the short list for best collection with joy , mounting interest and some intense feeling generated by superb works of which I could not predict the winner (see my blog at this link) for I enjoyed … More Forward Poetry Prize fills the stage with meaning, truth, beauty and not a little fun.

‘how dare I love you here in the evidence of evil’: some thoughts about ‘Sioux Falls’ in Danez Smith (2024) ‘Bluff’.

October 7, 2024

‘how dare I love you here in the evidence of evil’: some thoughts about Sioux Falls in Danez Smith (2024: page 81) Bluff London, Chatto & Windus. This blog is a preliminary in a mini-project to prepare myself to hear Danez Smith reading from Bluff at the London Literary Festival at The Southbank Centre at 3.15 … More ‘how dare I love you here in the evidence of evil’: some thoughts about ‘Sioux Falls’ in Danez Smith (2024) ‘Bluff’.

‘They flee from me that sometime did me seek’ : Abandonment is a colossally mistaken feeling.

October 6, 2024

Sometimes, it seems that all away do runSometimes, it seems that all away do runand I alone from them do stalk, feeling colossal in my rightness, though aloneperhaps forever – turning in my mindbeing abandoned as gifts held aloftto send me elsewhere – to another sphereof dominion, some place in which I’llstill reign, again held … More ‘They flee from me that sometime did me seek’ : Abandonment is a colossally mistaken feeling.