Immigration. Immigrants. Emigrants. Refugees. Travelers across borders. Changing countries by choice or by necessity of survival. Moving from one state of awareness to another. Learning. Growth. Transformation. Going deeper. Looking more closely. The threshold of consciousness. To grow and change. Or not. We have that choice. Here the poet speaks from the other side of the frontier, the border, the…
Relativity There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night. Einstein developed his theory of general relativity between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915. The final form of general relativity was published in 1916. This…
Some authors are blessed with illustrators who enhance their work with the distinction of their own. So it was in 1919 with Richard Aldington. When Images of War was first published it was with a cover design and eleven colored woodcut illustrations by Paul Nash. They are matched with poems and depict scenes from the western front – trenches, bombardment, ruins, barbed wire,…
Forgetfulness The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little…
Before the Charge The night is still and the air is keen, Tense with menace the time crawls by, In front is the town and its homes are seen, Blurred in outline against the sky. The dead leaves float in the sighing air, The darkness moves like a curtain drawn, A veil which the morning sun will tear From the…
The Day That Summer Died From all around the mourners came The day that Summer died, From hill and valley, field and wood And lane and mountainside. They did not come in funeral black But every mourner chose Gorgeous colours or soft shades Of russet, yellow, rose. Horse chestnut, oak and sycamore Wore robes of gold and red; The rowan…
Here then, as promised is the indulgence of blackberry poems. (For any very young readers confused by Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackberry please know that the Blackberry was a communication device from the early C21st introduced sometime after the era of cocoa tins connected with string.) So many blackberry poems. It’s almost as if all the poets had…
If we had some bacon we could have bacon and eggs but we’ve got no eggs. That First World War catch phrase came to mind as I was contemplating an idle wish to make blackberry and apple crumble. I imagine a Bruce Bairnsfather cartoon with Old Bill and Alf or Bert grousing about the food while the whizz bangs fly…
Farm work is one of the best jobs for getting to know people as they really are. The First Job and the Sweetest Sylvia Plath’s first job was on a farm in the summer of 1950. I am grateful to the inestimable Maria Popova (Brain Pickings) for these extracts from her journal and from an article in which…
Paul Nash’s fascination with aerial bombardment led him to an ecstatic vision of “the sky blossoming with floating flowers”. This, and William Blake’s poem “Ah Sunflower”, inspired his late paintings, in which an airborne sunflower glides over imagined landscapes. Nash was seriously ill with asthma (he died of heart failure in 1946) and his growing sense of mortality is reflected…
Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge… At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. – Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Declaration of Independence, on eve of independence, August 15 1947. In celebration of the 70th anniversary of Indian…
“I was so rushed I had not time to go into the details,” – Cyril Ratcliffe. The political leaders of the independence movement in British India were unable to agree on a united post-colonial future. The result was a plan for a territorial division. The task was huge and fraught with difficulties. The consequences were traumatic. August 15th marks the…
The land army fights in the fields. It is in the fields of Britain that the most critical battle of the present war may well be fought and won. – Lady Denman, the Director of the Women’s Land Army, WW2 Who Won the War? It wasn’t the WRENS who won the war Whatever the WRENS may say It was the…
August 1914 What in our lives is burnt In the fire of this? The heart’s dear granary? The much we shall miss? Three lives hath one life – Iron, honey, gold. The gold, the honey gone – Left is the hard and cold. Iron are our lives Molten right through our youth. A burnt space through ripe fields A fair…
MCMXIV Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark; And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And dark-clothed children at play…