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On the day of the explosionShadows pointed towards the pithead.In the sun the slagheap slept.Down the lane came men in pitbootsCoughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,Shouldering off the freshened silence.One chased… Read More »Larkin The Explosion: surely a correspondence to Premonitions?
Your time melted away faster than I had tears to cry. The brimstone throat, the silent smile, the helpless shrug of those who knew enough medicine to kill you.… Read More »Clocks
Value your mind said the crow – who spoke only when Swiveller wore dark grey. All else is dust and wind… And when you find soul time, your souls’ time,… Read More »Garden Philosophy
What and how does the title of the novel signify in the light of your reading of the text?
“She also helped us write, and thanks to her presence Esteban Trueba was able to die happy, murmuring her name: Clara, clearest, clairvoyant.” (367)
My fate changed on January 8, l981. That day we received a phone call in Caracas that my grandfather was dying. I could not go back to Chile to bid… Read More »Isabel Allende on House of Spirits and Resurrection?
Dedicated with love to the memory of UA Fanthorpe We first met when your last breathcooled in my palm like an egg;you dead, and a thrush outsidesang it was morning.I… Read More »Premonitions: Carol Ann Duffy
Oliver wanted more of more. And if Oliver was more woman than man (so Swiveller said celebrating) then all that lonesome wandering had to lead somewhere and that was to the Artful… Read More »What the Dickens!
‘That crow knows that you love me.’ Swiveller was sharpening her pen. Metaphorically of course. For this was the twentieth century after all. How did she know then? It was the angle… Read More »Signs.
Modern Love It is summer, and we are in a houseThat is not ours, sitting at a tableEnjoying minutes of a rented silence,The upstairs people gone. The pigeons lullTo sleep the under-tens… Read More »Modern Love: Douglas Dunn
COLOURS BY SOMEONE ELSE Sweetheart, this evening your smell is all aroundDown by the fishing-boats, the sky trembling above the pier. Your tears have dried on my palms.Darling, we should… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy: Colours by Someone Else
I am delighted to hear the news this morning that Carol Ann Duffy will be the new Poet laureate. How fabulous for all those readers who have found so much… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy is Poet Laureate!
Anne Hathaway ‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed…’ (from Shakespeare’s will) The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas… Read More »My favourite Carol Ann Duffy poem with Warming her pearls!
Even the bluebells held their breath
If I have made, my lady, intricate If I have made, my lady, intricateimperfect various things chiefly which wrongyour eyes (frailer than most deep dreams are frail)songs less firm… Read More »A poem for April
Flo was between floors and held her famous long thumb exactly three inches away from the bell. But she didn’t ring, there was no need , as the shadow of a smiling… Read More »Flo finds her flow!
Flo lifted her thumb over the golden script and shaped her perfect mouth around the letters produced out of the purple handkerchief: ‘I can choose to go why-ing, anytime …’ She lifted… Read More »Flo again
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly… Read More »NLP and Life Metaphor: Dickens and Bleak House
there…. tenderly uncovered angel wings breathing….
For Grace, After A Party You do not always know what I am feeling.Last night in the warm spring air while I wasblazing my tirade against someone who doesn’tinterestme,… Read More »Frank O' Hara: For Grace, after a Party
Mathew Welton was thoughtful and entertainingly reflective last week at a research day at Bolton University. He was discussing the experience of writing an opera about Frank O Hara and… Read More »Frank O Hara : Morning
The first time I read this helter-skelter of a novel I remember secretly crossing myself just in case….for Bulgakov’s masterpiece takes the reader to meet a very human Jesus in… Read More »Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
Last week I attended a very enjoyable day course run by Jane Davis at the University of Bolton on the Get into Reading Project which has achieved moving and powerful… Read More »Millions.
She wanted to taste blood. There was a certainty about her mortality which consoled; no lie; no obfuscation; no false hopes. Just the simplicity of blood. And the strange thing… Read More »Blood
The plants looked grey today and even the old crow seemed preoccupied. She had dressed carefully and wrapped a scarf about her throat and head. When she looked to the… Read More »Steppes
Both men glanced up, for the rectangle of sunshine in the doorway was cut off. A girl was standing there looking in. She had full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes,… Read More »John Steinbeck : Of Mice and Men.( Chapter Two) Curley's Wife.
The Day Lady Died It is 12:20 in New York a Fridaythree days after Bastille day, yesit is 1959 and I go get a shoeshinebecause I will get off… Read More »Frank O'Hara: The Day Lady Died.
The Signora had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are… Read More »E.M.Forster A Room with a View: Opening Chapter
The Darkling Thrush I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray,And Winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of… Read More »Thomas Hardy: The Darkling Thrush
