What I am reading… Gerard Manley Hopkins
Here, listen to the uncanny insight… 75 The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;…
What I am reading… Solzhenitsyn on his limited experience
From a review of recent books on Solzhenitsyn come this brief account of the conservative Russian…
The political ghosts of literature
I have been reading some fragments of Maurice Blanchot – The Madness of the Day, The…
Poem: The unwritten book
This morning I have been writing poetry, and so for a post today let me share…
A postscript on Utopia
Coincidentally – a word that tricks chance into being fate – I was reading this week…
Craft, voice and the fire
“We all know poetry isn’t a craft that you can just turn on and off. It…
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…
Regaining time
The other evening, I pulled from the shelf the sixth and last volume of Marcel Proust’s…
A task: from Milosz to me
A short post. The miracle of literature: how words crafted for another voice, at another time,…
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…