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The park where my children used to play; My eldest’s school;My youngest’s nursery;The bustling barsAnd sculptures by the sea: All closed. All closed,Abandoned,Cordoned off;As if unloved, un-longed-for, undreamed-ofThrough dark enduring days:All lies. Lies which daily rule our lives;Lies, damned lies and statistics:50% of this group die while70% of that survive,But then againWho lives? Who lives in isolation?Who... Continue Reading →
How can I go onLike thisI sometimes wonderHow can I go onAt allWhen my body Throws me curveballsAnd nobodyCan be asked to understandThe demons that existInside of meThough only temporarilyThey torment me So I lose myselfFor whole days at a timeAnd one day's damageCan’t be easily undoneIn fourteenWhen it begins againWhen seemingly it wins againAgain again so... Continue Reading →
Forget Paris, forget Venice, forget Rome... For me, the most romantic city in the world is Liverpool. Dreams of long-departed emigrants hang in the dockside air; ever expectant; awaiting transportation to the New World. I can almost hear their chatter on the docks. Maybe it's from the many visits to the Maritime Museum as a... Continue Reading →
In today's entry, I take a look at another poem by Seamus Heaney, 'The Blackbird of Glanmore,' and the extended metaphor of the 'house of life' presented therein. It's something I've been thinking about a lot during this strange period of quarantine, with a little time and stillness to reflect upon my life and re-evaluate... Continue Reading →
Do you remember that night, the night we talked? It was a fine and starlit night. Somewhere backstage, a salamander sounded the depths of the night, his mating call a sonar probe, rebounding and marking out the limits of our world. We didn't need a territory greater than this, delineated by his echoing mating call:... Continue Reading →
6 days in, I realise I'm a quarantine rookie. From the moment I wake up, everything is getting on my nerves. Try as I might, I can't seem to get a moment's peace, I can't get on with my work, I don't get my son through all his schoolwork, and I end up being mean... Continue Reading →
Poem of the Day: Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798 By William Wordsworth. I've chosen this poem because to me it describes most perfectly the experience of meditation, of switching off the mind and making contact with the Divine. The... Continue Reading →
Poem of the day: La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats, 1819. Perhaps my favourite opening lines of any poem: O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms Alone and paley loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake And no birds sing. The metre, that final line - it's pure music. And the last two... Continue Reading →
Experiments in Fiction 