‘In Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky insisted that “too great a lucidity is a disease, a true, full-fledged disease,” that the artist’s heightened consciousness forced him to recognize unbearable truths, hidden from ordinary mortals.’ ‘Friedrich Nietzsche – who confessed that Dostoyevsky was “the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn” – alsoContinue reading “Robert Lowell in Love, by Jeffrey Meyers”
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Validation!
My poem ‘Cuckoo’s Heart’ was highly commended in the MK Lit Fest 2025 writing competition. I think of all the things I do and am, poetry is the thing I need validation for least, simply because it gives me a high like nothing else. But it does feel bloody nice!
2. Travelling in style
Week 2 of the book ’52 – a year of poetry writing prompts’ from Nine Arches Press. Commute Lasso the time like gravitysnap future into memorya blur like current through a wirelasso the time like gravity I’m braced; a body drawn through spacea hare in tortoise carapacelasso the time like gravitysnap future into memory.
The muse appeared
Love passed, the muse appeared, the weather of mind got clarity newfound; now free, I once more weave together emotion, thought and magic sound. —Aleksandr Pushkin
How
am I only just discovering, for the very first time, this extraordinary poem by W. D. Snodgrass? Such joy upon discovering things still worth discovering. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42790/after-experience-taught-me-
1. Everything is going to be amazing
I have bought the book, ’52 – Write a Poem a Week. Start Now. Keep Going’, a Nine Arches Press book. This first poem has taken two weeks rather than one. I’ve decided to be ok with that. I am determined to work each prompt. The resulting poem for prompt one is not exactly asContinue reading “1. Everything is going to be amazing”
Every Third Thought – On Life, Death, and the End Game, by Robert McCrum
‘Turn a page, and you find a new distraction, or another version of reality. Is this not the search for a fuller kind of experience? Art, which helps us focis on our quality of life, might also inspire a richer understanding of our mortal existence.’ ‘There’s nothing straightforward in the relationship a thoughtful person hasContinue reading “Every Third Thought – On Life, Death, and the End Game, by Robert McCrum”
What the hell was that?
Not so much ‘we stand with Ukraine’ anymore if that performance by Lisa Nandy on GMB is anything to go by, speaking of the USA like the codependent partner we are, most do everything we can to maintain the special alliance. What? The US has crapped all over the so-called special alliance. I stand withContinue reading “What the hell was that?”
All Fours, by Miranda July
‘”What you see is what you get” these women said about themselves. For me lying created just the right amount of problems and what you saw was just one of my four or five faces – each real, each with different needs.’ ‘You had to withstand a profound sense of wrongness if you ever wantedContinue reading “All Fours, by Miranda July”
Darke Matter, by Rick Gekoski
“When you understand that all things are the same, you are on the road to wisdom, and nothing is more fruitless and sour than that.” “‘We suffer from loss, and are facing it. And we have, in our inchoate way, a yearning to understand what cannot be understood, to accept what is unacceptable, and toContinue reading “Darke Matter, by Rick Gekoski”
