Blog posts - page 19
Statues continued
25 Jun 2020 politics
After yesterday’s post, I happened to be reading The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. He writes about the reaction to the protests about Columbus statues in the nineties:
Colston and the Myths of History
24 Jun 2020 politics
Every country is deluded in how they narrate the past. No history is complete and each history is a story shaped to make the narrators feel better. But I think here in Britain, we are more deluded than most. As a nation, we pick and choose the ‘good’ parts of our history, ignoring all the others. We ignore the destruction our empire left in it’s wake, ignore our part in the international slave trade, ignore our history of institutional racism and environmental destruction. Certainly when I was growing up we weren’t taught about the British Empire at all, other...
The Sky is Damaged
20 Jun 2020 this was meant to be the future
From her vantage point of the second highest branch, Cassie saw it first, growing over the horizon like a bruise. She often spent afternoons by herself in the garden, away from the noise of the house- The music pounding from her brother Jamie’s closed door, Sampson barking at nothing, the rumbling of the ancient boiler. Her parents constantly screaming at each other. Or worse, being polite through gritted teeth. Cassie preferred the relative silence of the garden. Birds might chirrup at each other, but it never sounded angry. For most of the Easter holidays, she had got into the habit...
All change
12 Jun 2020 plague notes
You may notice my website looks a little different. I have moved it from Wordpress to Jekyll, teaching myself rudimentary HTML and CSS in the process. I changed a template by DpStrange, modifying it to fit my needs. I also transferred all 278 (!) blog posts over. I honestly hadn’t realised I’d done so many, but then I’ve been working at this blogging game for the last four years. I’m pleased with the results, but it you see a problem or coding issue please let me know.
Condolences
09 Jun 2020 poetry
What good is this scattering over the grass,
this gold and white confetti, these eyes
opening at dawn and closing in the twilight?
These are Freya’s flowers and she is welcome
to them. We have no use for blooms. Callous gods,
you cannot substitute one beauty for another.
What help is protection now? Your garlands
are mere distractions, we have no desire
to chew on the pollen, fill our mouths
with bitter medicine. Left long enough
the petals blister our skin, we become
sun scaled. Spread them no more,...
Echoes and Edges Collaboration
03 Jun 2020 publications
Echoes and edges were kind enough to set my poem How to hear the hills to an incredible deep soundtrack as part of their live stream collaboration. You can watch it here.