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Tag Archives: Poetry

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 3, 2017

. By a recent edict, the cultivation of opium in China must cease entirely by the year 1917 The crop is reduced by one-tenth each year, and all those using opium in 1917 will be banished. — The Nelson Evening Mail, June 14 1907 . The Sports Direct on Baker Street has actually closed down. A […]

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Brief lives: Samuel Derrick

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Samuel Derrick (1724-69), was an Irish writer, friend of Dr Johnson, Boswell, and Tobias Smollett, and master of the ceremonies at both Bath and Tunbridge Wells. He published, among other works: The Dramatic Censor, No. 1; Sylla, a dramatic entertainment, from the French of Frederick II of Prussia; A Voyage from the Moon, from the […]

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Mortality 101 – or; Catullus at the graveside

Friday, November 11, 2016

‘I want to explain about the Catullus poem … Catullus wrote poem 101 for his brother who died in the Troad.’ — Anne Carson . I have come, my brother, over lands and oceans, to this field of bones to observe the rituals of the final hour, and mumble pointless words above your ashes. Misfortune took […]

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Lines composed upon a can of Stella, spilt over my laptop

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

.             *–   #]# ~ 0#]@~9*. /70 +69574859658410+-*8+/98-+639*74 .             +/88-9+63   .             +-20300.20 .             ~~ .             ]+-3 -*82105263120152485-/

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Dr Johnfon’s Ducktionary – or; fome juvenilia, revifed upon mature confideration

Thursday, September 22, 2016

In this place (as oppofed to that) Is repofited horizontally a Hearty, wholefome and falubrious Young male exemplum of fub-genus Water fowl (be it wild or be it tame), The accufative fingular of which Samuel Johnson – Artium Magifter, Legum Doctor (honoris caufa) – Did trample and crufh most Contemptibly beneath his foot; Suppofing it […]

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Ayenbite of Inwyt

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Against the temptings of the Devil, say the following: ‘Sweet Jesu, by thine holy blood that thou sheddest, and thy rood, for me and for mankind – I entreat Him be my shield against the wicked enemy unto my life’s end. So be it.’ This book is Master Michel’s of Northgate, written in English by […]

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Two Chinese Texts

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

(for Dominic Hilton) i)  Your seat is empty this evening… ii)  Who, then, will eat the avocado?

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Mortality 101 – or; Catullus at the graveside

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

‘I want to explain about the Catullus poem … Catullus wrote poem 101 for his brother who died in the Troad.’ – Anne Carson I have travelled, brother, over lands and oceans, to this field of bones to observe the rituals of the final hour, and mumble pointless words above your ashes. Misfortune took you […]

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Flak Jacket to Dust Jacket

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us About Conflict, from The Iliad to Catch-22 By Christopher Coker (Hurst 325pp £25) My Life as a Foreign Country By Brian Turner (Jonathan Cape 240pp £16.99) Seamus Heaney once remarked upon the heroes of antiquity that it is ‘not so much their procedures on the page which are […]

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From my father’s marginalia on TS Eliot

Friday, September 26, 2014

‘What the devil does this mean?’ – TS Eliot, note in Edmund Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen Pagan spring about to be replaced cf. feathers in Gerontion This a prayer – the old securities will collapse. No guarantee for children on acc. of his piety. Period between death and rebirth. Prefiguring of passion + cross. Calvary. Eliot […]

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