Renovating the Burning Archive
I have spent the morning renovating the Burning Archive. A new theme changes the look and…
Craft, voice and the fire
“We all know poetry isn’t a craft that you can just turn on and off. It…
On the history and meaning of the eight hour day
The story I told in this article still has resonance for me. It was a story about how, even in the apparently material conditions that defined work and industrial conflict, the meaning of events were inseparable from the striving for recognition and the webs of significance that we, culture-making beings, weave through the time of our lives.
Axel’s Castle, a mirror and an encyclopaedia
When I was about fifteen, I found Edmund Wilson’s Axel’s Castle in a library. It was…
A thousand thanks
Some time in the last couple of weeks the counter on my wordpress visitor stats clocked…
Poem: the tethered mind
The tethered mind The mind prowls, tethered to its past. An unknown unknown rises from An…
Elegy
A little under two weeks ago my mother died. I gave the eulogy at her funeral,…
Poem: peaches in a bowl
Today, a poem composed on the day of my daughter’s departure to study in Europe for…
More reflections on 2017: persistence, terror and Das Schloss
Persistence Twelve months ago I was approaching Christmas and the end of a liberating period of…
Reflections on 2017
The year is drawing to a close, and while it is yet weeks from New Year,…