Tag: poetry

thing 49 and a quarter: ‘for the poet, what behaviour is meet?’: shades of blue

A tree falling in a forest. A book launched during a pandemic. Does either of them make any sound?

As far as I can tell, if answer there be to this question, it’s “yes and no”. There is the basic excitation of the surrounding medium/particles which, if there are receptors, would be translated into sound. But in the absence of receptors, there is no such translation. Ergo, yes and no. Aaargh. I remember now how much philosophy has always really pissed me off. I just don’t have the right kind of brain or temperament for it. As Frank or Pat Butcher might (more…)

thing 46: ‘this, too, was myself’: reading from a book with my name on the cover

At moments of crisis Bertie Wooster often tells Jeeves that he could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up the soul and cause the old knotted and combined locks to do the fretful porpentine thing (or some Woosterish version of that). For Bertie, the problem might involve an accidental engagement with some droopy girl who thinks that raindrops are God’s tears at our unkindness; or (more…)

thing 45: ‘outside falls away’: Gladstone’s Library

I now have a new way to classify the people in my life: those who, informed I was going to Gladstone’s Library for the weekend, glazed over with a sort of envious lust for books, silence and retreat; and those who looked at me with a sort of uncomprehending, slightly pitying wonderment. Admittedly, the most bewildered of the latter group had just told me she was off to Barbados for a week, so I can see that a library in mizzly north-west Wales might seem lesser by comparison. But my goodness, it was marvellous.*

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oyez, oyez, oyez!

This isn’t a thing, but feels like a culmination of an awful lot of things.

It’s a quick post to unveil my new website, which is dedicated to poetry. The new site has come about because an actual press is going to be publishing two actual pamphlets of my poems, one of which will have an actual ISBN number (more…)