Category: Writing
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Don’t Tread Softly (Though You Tread on My Dreams)
It’s always a strange time in the run up to a book being published. Mostly, there’s a sense of excitement. But there’s also a degree of nervousness. Will people ‘get it’? Will people think it’s any good? I was thinking about this the other day, and was reminded of Yeats’ poem The Cloths of Heaven:…
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Life, Writing and Being Useless
(soundtrack to this post: ‘Wasting My Young Years‘ by London Grammar) Posts here have been a little thin on the ground, mostly due to the fact that I’ve been work very hard on the manuscript for a novel – more news of which I hope one day to be able to share, but I’ll shut…
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Stillness Is Coming | National Poetry Day
My dear friend Nic died a year ago on Monday. Missed so much. This, on National Poetry Day, for him. Stillness A year in has not stopped our yearning, this anno domini we know dominates; still, stillness is coming. Your stilling broke levees of such Orlean, Orwellian turbulence rising angry Leviathan against this awful…
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Revolutionaries or Decorators? | Art, Brutality and Transformation
Been meaning to post something on this for a few weeks: on holiday this summer I read (recommended by an Italian friend) Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Possibility of an Island. He’s a very good but pretty bleak writer, with a very disturbing vision of humanity. The TLS describe the book as ‘a charging bull in…
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Poem for Maggie
Dear Maggie if people cared less about your passing or felt less willing to pay for your parade this too was what you did to us. And if people turn backs or appear a little harsh and cruel then remember, iron lady this caring less this selfishness was you. So let the pomp begin and…