On human frailty in governing
Once ten years ago I gave answers to one of those personal profile questionnaires that aimed…
Poem: Spring in Lisbon
Spring in Lisbon The pale indigo fireworks of spring Stand like guardians Of my origins. In…
The poetry of travel
“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” Anais Nin…
On the renunciation of the political world
Since I was very young I have been drawn, like a moth to light, to the…
Poem: Boundless
Another poem from my collection in writing, Meditations. It may be prefaced by these words from…
Reflections on 2018… fragments
This year has had no coherent themes for me, and perhaps that is why I have…
Reflections on 2018… on (not) belonging
This year has seen the mass formation of stories of belonging in defiance to an imagined…
Reflections on 2018 – 1. self-portrait at 55
The year is drawing to a close, so time to begin reflecting on what the year’s…
Poem: South Ward
I have made many visits to mental health hospitals over the years, almost all of them in support of my mother who suffered for most of her adult life from severe mental illness. The experience of these institutions humbles the mind. It teaches us how each of us is a “preposterous hodgepodge, uniquely arranged” – in the words of the great Inga Clendinnen who knew the gulf between the experience of the well and the sick – “a more significant division in any society than class or gender or possibly even homelessness.”
Another project of mine
As well as reading literature and history, writing poetry, prose and this blog, I also play…