Tag: poetry

As I read Jem Calder’s celebrated novel ‘I Want You to Be Happy’, Ella Fitzgerald’s best-known lyric sung through as if it has lived with me forever. This is really a blog on that novel.

July 28, 2026

As I read Jem Calder’s celebrated novel ‘I Want You to Be Happy’, Ella Fitzgerald’s best-known lyric sung through as if it has lived with me forever. This is really a blog on that novel. To be honest, I was reading Jem Calder’s novel because is aid I would because he is appearing at the Edinburgh … More As I read Jem Calder’s celebrated novel ‘I Want You to Be Happy’, Ella Fitzgerald’s best-known lyric sung through as if it has lived with me forever. This is really a blog on that novel.

I think I will choose as ‘a quote that perfectly describes my life’ Robert Browning’s ‘Feeling for foot-hold through a blank profound, …’

July 27, 2026

Since nothing is certain, we aren’t likely, any of us to get hold of truth and keep hold of it. The sands shift and what looks a solid foothold in the mountainside crumbles when asked to bear the weight of a person already in doubt of it, falling more from lack of any faith that … More I think I will choose as ‘a quote that perfectly describes my life’ Robert Browning’s ‘Feeling for foot-hold through a blank profound, …’

How about dining with Polyphemus, the Cyclops – the Euripides version

July 17, 2026

Going to see The Odyssey today to see how Odysseus fared when he visited the dining room of Polyphemus, the Cyclops. Here is Euripides’ take on it, in the words of Odysseus [ΟΔΥΣΣΕΥΣ], speaking to the Chorus on one of the few extant ‘Satyr’ plays – which played together with a fare of a tragic … More How about dining with Polyphemus, the Cyclops – the Euripides version

The best advice is to be aware of and distrust the impulse, or the advice of others, that you be always in control of what you say and do, for it too often means that you surrender yourself to the controlling ideologies of the status quo, which is, often as not, embodied by that which demands your self-control. I think I learned this from Adam Nicolson’s characterisation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his ‘The Making of Poetry’ (2019)

June 22, 2026

The best advice is to be aware of and distrust the impulse, or the advice of others, that you be always in control of what you say and do, for it too often means that you surrender yourself to the controlling ideologies of the status quo, which is, often as not, embodied by that which … More The best advice is to be aware of and distrust the impulse, or the advice of others, that you be always in control of what you say and do, for it too often means that you surrender yourself to the controlling ideologies of the status quo, which is, often as not, embodied by that which demands your self-control. I think I learned this from Adam Nicolson’s characterisation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his ‘The Making of Poetry’ (2019)

‘crush, and snap its pale / Wrist’: Thought and image disturbed by thought. More on Kane Benjamin Crookes’ poems

May 18, 2026

‘crush, and snap its pale / Wrist’: Thought and image disturbed by thought. More on Kane Benjamin Crookes’ poems A little while ago I wrote naively about Kane Benjamin Crookes first volume Blooming Us (see the blog at this link). Promising then to return to it and his next volume at the time, I will … More ‘crush, and snap its pale / Wrist’: Thought and image disturbed by thought. More on Kane Benjamin Crookes’ poems

I know what ‘gives pleasure’ can never be simple. Let’s consider how we react to the effect of words working together to evoke vision, sound, sensation and tangled meanings.

May 13, 2026

I met a poet in my favourite left bookshop yesterday, The People’s Bookshop in Durham City, and bought his book, Blooming Us. I was searching for more books by Bryher and he knew, as might be expected in someone intensely interested in the poetic movement called Imagism, of Bryher’s sometime lover, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). I … More I know what ‘gives pleasure’ can never be simple. Let’s consider how we react to the effect of words working together to evoke vision, sound, sensation and tangled meanings.

‘boustrophedon, one of the loveliest words in the English language, …’. If only the aims of life were not so ‘chopped up’, end-stopped and linear, we might realise that ‘in our minds’ are ‘only sinuous furrows of thought’. This blog reflects on Yann Martel’s novel, ‘Son of Nobody’.

May 1, 2026

‘boustrophedon, one of the loveliest words in the English language, …’. If only the aims of life were not so ‘chopped up’, end-stopped and linear, we might realise that ‘in our minds’ are ‘only sinuous furrows of thought’. [1] This blog reflects on Yann Martel’s novel, ‘Son of Nobody’. Of course, writing is about giving … More ‘boustrophedon, one of the loveliest words in the English language, …’. If only the aims of life were not so ‘chopped up’, end-stopped and linear, we might realise that ‘in our minds’ are ‘only sinuous furrows of thought’. This blog reflects on Yann Martel’s novel, ‘Son of Nobody’.

‘The world was all before them, where to choose?’ or ‘The earth is all before me … I cannot miss my way’. Looking for direction: how to use a quotation about using a quotation for guidance, and the perils of the freedom to choose!

April 22, 2026

In the seventeenth century educated persons kept commonplace books where things they heard or read could be stored for use or as a momento of the use they had already served, and might, if remembered in this way, serve again. Sometimes they consisted of practical guides to a task, like a recipe, although it was … More ‘The world was all before them, where to choose?’ or ‘The earth is all before me … I cannot miss my way’. Looking for direction: how to use a quotation about using a quotation for guidance, and the perils of the freedom to choose!

Cashing in on ‘Thy sweet love remembered’:Some preliminary thoughts on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 before some historical reflection on its use in queer literary culture in the twentieth century

April 19, 2026

Sonnet 29 is used to provide the title, and is quoted in full as its message, by a non-binary character in prison named by inmates as ‘Mona’ (after Mona Lisa), of John Herbert’s Fortune and Men’s Eyes, an important if not a very good queer play, and in 1971 a minor film, no longer easily … More Cashing in on ‘Thy sweet love remembered’:Some preliminary thoughts on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 before some historical reflection on its use in queer literary culture in the twentieth century

Domestication or anthropomorphism: do people ‘make the worst pets’? Some thoughts derived from Thomas Gray’s ‘Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’.

April 6, 2026

Domestication or anthropomorphism: do people ‘make the worst pets’? Some thoughts derived from Thomas Gray’s ‘Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’. Do you know the poem I refer to in my title? It is by Thomas Gray (he of the infamous Elegy in a Country Churchyard), … More Domestication or anthropomorphism: do people ‘make the worst pets’? Some thoughts derived from Thomas Gray’s ‘Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’.

At five, I still wanted to know that I would grow up, period. And not come to a full stop.

March 28, 2026

Whilst we like to think children have no conception of death, the evidence seems to be that from the age of 5 upwards, children begin to develop an idea of death as and end, of worldly life at least, though their views of this still contain elements of magical thinking as to cause of death … More At five, I still wanted to know that I would grow up, period. And not come to a full stop.