Tag: poetry

I am passionate about the role of reading and the redemption of material life it carries with it. This is a blog on Ocean Vuong (2025) ‘The Emperor of Gladness’

June 12, 2025

‘The linoleum, too, … is blue. So blue you’ll have the feeling  of being swept away because you are, into a current of corridors intentionally too narrow to turn around in’.[1] Queer writers have so long challenged the false universals of heteronormative stability, and perhaps privileged the discourse of sexual interaction as a panacea  for … More I am passionate about the role of reading and the redemption of material life it carries with it. This is a blog on Ocean Vuong (2025) ‘The Emperor of Gladness’

It would be: ‘He tried to notice the underlying things!’ Is this a case in point?: This blog looks at a discovered copy of the 75th anniversary issue of ‘Granta’ from 1964 [Volume 68, No 1233].

June 1, 2025

It would be: ‘He tried to notice the underlying things!’ Is this a case in point: This blog looks at a discovered copy of the 75th anniversary issue of ‘Granta’ from 1964 [Volume 68, No 1233]. In it a poet speaks of another much earlier poet: ‘Going, he carefully left his words behind’. My husband … More It would be: ‘He tried to notice the underlying things!’ Is this a case in point?: This blog looks at a discovered copy of the 75th anniversary issue of ‘Granta’ from 1964 [Volume 68, No 1233].

Why does Simon Armitage dwell on dwelling? A blog on Simon Armitage (2025) ‘Dwell’ London, Faber & Faber.

May 9, 2025

Why does Simon Armitage dwell on dwelling? A blog on Simon Armitage (2025) [with illustrations by Beth Munro} Dwell London, Faber & Faber. The new poems by Simon Armitage that were published yesterday are inextricably linked to  the Lost Gardens of Heligan, ‘Europe’s largest garden restoration project’, in Cornwall. They will also be ‘manifested physically … More Why does Simon Armitage dwell on dwelling? A blog on Simon Armitage (2025) ‘Dwell’ London, Faber & Faber.

I decided never to rely on my very first impressions of what is likable or not. Why I persevered then with Rupert Everett’s short stories in ‘The American No’. This blog is mainly on his Oscar for A Last Season.

April 14, 2025

I decided never to rely on my very first impressions of what is likable or not. Why I persevered then with Rupert Everett’s (2025) short stories in The American No London, Abacus Books. This blog is mainly on his Oscar for A Last Season The American No is a new set of short stories by … More I decided never to rely on my very first impressions of what is likable or not. Why I persevered then with Rupert Everett’s short stories in ‘The American No’. This blog is mainly on his Oscar for A Last Season.

‘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’.

Let’s be Dante!

March 29, 2025

I could be Dante because, as yet, I have read only extracts of what is considered by some the greatest poem of the modern world. Moreover, I have been preparing to read it for so long that the task of cataloguing these volumes is raising my cultural guilt to new and higher levels than ever. … More Let’s be Dante!

‘When I were five, I wore a plastic sword’: my child hero then, not Hugh MacDiarmid’s hero in his ‘Hymn to Lenin’ [but confused with Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ in my childish brain].

March 19, 2025

When I were five, I wore a plastic swordTo make my fantasy of Shakie’s ‘DickThe Turd’, heroic tho’ a villain, boredOf bowing to lesser kings, cringing sick-With-fancies sycophants to restrainingRealities. To change the sad bad worldEven then was my aim: rid of feigningWe would, I’d ensure it, red flag unfurledMake level those peaks of  false … More ‘When I were five, I wore a plastic sword’: my child hero then, not Hugh MacDiarmid’s hero in his ‘Hymn to Lenin’ [but confused with Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ in my childish brain].

The queer confidence of a shy man: George Mackay Brown (GMB) and his late novel ‘Vinland’, where “boys love to range freely in the country of their imagination, and there they are captains and jarls”.

March 16, 2025

What is it to be confident? Usually mythologies are based around what ‘confidence’ should mean. The Viking sea captains and jarls of the Orkneyninga Saga are a strong subject for a literature in which boys dream of the men they might become but adolescence was a fraught and painful thing for George Mackay Brown (GMB), … More The queer confidence of a shy man: George Mackay Brown (GMB) and his late novel ‘Vinland’, where “boys love to range freely in the country of their imagination, and there they are captains and jarls”.

‘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.