Kester Brewin

I had a dream last night. In full vivid colours. Groups of hipsters were walking in woods, by rivers. I wondered where they were, and how they got there, and was shown that this was their Sunday retreat, a place in the countryside, within reach of London, where there was walking, and birdsong. I went [...]

An interesting aside on Radio 4 this morning: the social etiquette of maintaining a minute’s silence in the workplace today suggests that most people consider it frowned upon to talk during it, but many still send emails and check social networks. We are becoming less attentive. We’re finding it easy to forget. The web distracts [...]

Been thinking a lot about the ash cloud that continues to disrupt air-travel the world over. Perhaps it is a good time to reflect and reconsider our relationship to this under-lyingly chaotic earth. Ash in our Mouths Sintered earth, burned and pure is thrown up as if the earth’s guts have sickened, had enough, and [...]

I absolutely love this advent poem by Katherine Venn. She’s currently doing a Masters in poetry at the University of East Anglia, and keeping a blog of the experience over at Minute Particulars. Brother Hare Born with your clothes on, trembling in your scrape, wide eyes open, soft, as new things are, warm; alone, pressed [...]

Post-Partum Amniotics spilt, and semiotics rupture; there are no words, just raw screams and suckles. Child of God, child of man – no difference: new life is unmoored emotion, a wide sea of tears and sick, and just one desire: to feed, gather in, be mother-close. But God won’t stay. Controlled crying; separation an immediate [...]

Caesarean Sections The bitter old man stands at the gates of the earth waiting, watching, guarding the only entrance and exit to this citadel planet. The babies file in and the dead file out and he watches them, grimly keeping count. He watches, he waits he shivers to shake tired cold from old limbs, for [...]

Remembrance Day Poem With our scalpels and injections, We shall not grow old, as those that are left behind grow old With our prozac and uppers, our sweetened memories and revisionist histories Age shall not weary us, nor the years of war condemn At the going down of the sun and in the morning We [...]