The idea of winning the lottery – or winning the pools as was the norm when when I was a child and before the advent of a state lottery in the UK – may have appealed once as an means of evoking impossible resolutions to real problems – real or relative poverty, economic insecurity and … More Why offer me a dream of doing what might be better never done.
The eve of this New Year, again, dangerFlows fluid, booze’s fast flux in venousVain channels, popping in the throat and thenThe flood follows. Scars of dependent bloodFrom ‘kiddies’ too, fallen near that flawed tree.Hogmanay wishes for that newer thingBound, as they know, to be nothing newer Than subsequent pain, just that bit older Than is … More 2025. What’s New about it? What we might think tomorrow when the booze abaits into split head, hopefully only your own?
If there were no time there would still be someSometimes, wherein we would find time containedIn some special relationship with us:Cocooned in comfort where there’s no splendour. It does not surprise me that when I think of time I type some plangent iambic pentameters like those I typed above with echoes of the moment in … More “If there were no time there would still be some / Sometimes, …. / :Cocooned in comfort where there’s no splendour”.
Let’s wait for a moment on a peak in Darién Province in Panama in South America. Why are we waiting? We got to Darién Province, not through its history of colonisation, though it is a fairly interesting story, having seen off the ill-fated Scottish mercantile project of subsuminf it to Scottish rule in the eighteenth … More A ‘wild surmise’ whilst ‘Silent, upon a peak in Darien’.
They were dancing to the music of timein those days, gliding through the moleskin hours,or so it seemed to us. Our vocal chordsbroken now, each song we sing lacks the air that my love struggles to take. Raking backthe sound that coughs all night: the rasping hackthat like Lear’s hand smells of mortality.The air that … More ‘It was like everything you thought you knew could be rewritten. / like learning that time can sing and that it’s old and young, …’. (Brice in Ali Smith’s ‘Gliff’) What song might time sing?
The entry in Merriam-Webster for ‘wear’ even for just its use as a transitive verb shows that ‘to wear’ is polysemic: Here is the relevant list: transitive verb 1 : to bear or have on the person (wore a coat); 2: a : to use habitually for clothing, adornment, or assistance (wears a size 10) or (wear glasses) b: to … More ‘To Wear’ is a polysemic verb
What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can? … to sleep, / To Sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub! Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1, lines 72 – 73). [1] Iris Murdoch had long before written her wonderful novel based on the model of Hamlet, The Black Prince, … More … to sleep, / To Sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub! (‘Hamlet’, Act 3, Scene 1, lines 72 – 73) – and a prompt question!
Thoughts Before my Seventieth Birthday on Thursday 24th October 2024: An Acrostic: ‘Does Steven Fear Being Seventy‘ Do larks ascending raise up such volumeOf song as the rich racket in his heartEach time Steven’s shaken with sonic boomSome tolling bells of time, seem to shock-start;Surprised, that such a sage and serious Timorous soul has reached an … More Thoughts Before my Seventieth Birthday on Thursday 24th October 2024: An Acrostic: ‘Does Steven Fear Being Seventy‘
In Danez’s Smith’s latest collection, Bluff, one way of reading the course of history lies in the poem made from footnotes within a longer poem, rondo:‘freedom was a door into a bigger cage & when they couldn’t shackle the necks anymore, their metal met the mind, they chained time, chained the money, chained the dreams … More And, as for our destination; ‘there ‘is a place’ but that’s ‘my own / somewhere far from your knowing’. This is a blog concerning Danez Smith (2024) ‘Bluff’.
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.
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: 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’.
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