Category Archives: font

LINGUA FRANCA Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers. George Orwell Ever since the acquisition of words provided me with a receptacle for memory, I have loved language.  Its music, its power to evoke, its … Continue reading →

On a Christmas morning many years ago I was born. Mum and I were in a small maternity home in Horton Kirby, West Kent. A few miles away in my grandparents’ terraced cottage on Hockenden Lane, Swanley, Dad and Alan … Continue reading →

On July 25th 2015 my friend the poet, blogger and curator Dave Bonta was kind enough to publish on his eminent blog, Via Negativa  a first draft of French-Canadian poet Yves Préfontaine’s extraordinary poem Peuple Inhabité. Life in a time of Corona has … Continue reading →

A CLEAR BLUE SKY My dad was a man of prose – a specialist: words used like gardening tools to conjure shapes, to fashion patterns. Language mattered: correspondence ran to pages – letters to the council; ‘thank you’ cards to … Continue reading →

STAINED GLASS The quality of light: this, a piece of late evening sky. How darkness can shine: last of the sun, a first breath of stars, a waxing moon. Judas walks out of the small room while they are still … Continue reading →

IMMORTAL A summer morning. I’m 10. I’m sitting in a sandpit, back supported by a bucket upside down. The sun is brilliant, and standing high; it must be nearly noon. I tip back my head and I yawn and the … Continue reading →

Memories of loneliness within the crowd and seeking solitude in order to conjure up home… UNDER BLUE ANCHOR They were singing The Parting Glass. The fire was high. Some eyes were closed with the weight of the song; others gleamed. … Continue reading →

Another restless night. At 01.20 I stood at the window watching the skyline. During previous bouts of insomnia, there was always something faintly comforting about the long, probing lights of planes flying into Luton Airport from the east and descending … Continue reading →

I’m okay during the day. There’s lots to do and in between the TV bulletins updating us on the steepening infection curve, the increasingly ravaged images of angry, exhausted doctors and nurses on the front line and the sad, baffled … Continue reading →

LIFE IN A TIME OF CORONA 3. I stood looking out of the kitchen window. Hardly a breeze; everything very still. Early violets studding the grass; those last daffodils; the may pushing through the privet. The unconscious persistence of nature … Continue reading →