When we leave we need to pass this on
When we leave we need to pass this on To hop the twig with two handfuls, Head bent to follow the echo Whether an other’s or our own. When you’ve got this, then we’ll go Wading the tough river with its noise Underfoot, clay between toes Toward the jutted bank, the hang-tooth of s
I Saw the Son of Man
I I saw the Son of Man lying on the 95 – probably one of a dozen prints, someone’s elementary school project now splayed like a fossil ripely excavated, blanching in the sun – his sheltering apple strudelized. It reminds me of how the sky is, its sheer-blue polythene perforated
ALLOTMENT: A Fruit Basket Of Unresolved Sibling Tension
On the evidence of the title alone, audiences might be forgiven for thinking that Jules Horne’s Allotment, performed in the BT Studio,would be play about a very English kind of parochialism. In cultural terms, the allotment has become a powerful symbol of the upper middle-class – a section of so
The Woman of the Perfume Ad
The woman of the perfume ad is a complex construct. The advertisers who create her are geniuses of manufacturing desire, of finely chiselling models into shape with slogan and sign. Perfume ads come with tropes: her armpits are hairless; no blemish taints her skin; her hair is slicked back with seaw
Three environmental poems
When the world dies in fiction, it’s palatable because it is removed from the truth. When the world is dying in reality, perhaps it is too difficult to digest into verse. As the dry seasons lengthen and fragile climate treaties dissipate into smog, the landslide into apocalypse feels more imminent
Photo Essay
Jordan has long been a place of transit. A land of nomadic peoples. Nabateans, Romans, Sasanians, Byzantines. Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians. But despite what feels like the constant movement of its peoples, the landscape itself is beautifully still. You can’t help but breathe slower, as
Nebuchadnezzar
Ah, so you want to dream better! I’m your man, I’m the one to ask, for dreaming is all about asking the right questions without knowing that one oneself questions! The point of the exercise, excuse me, sir, is stop that thinking, which you, learned sir! do so much of. Instead you must wor
The Art of Conversation
This table is heavy, laden with your pithy thoughts. You gurgle your Pinot Grigio as you laugh, apple crumble sliding down, easy does it, two halves each one ought to leave at nine it does not do in this place to overstay one’s welcome and you’ll have waxed your lyrical on p
Did We Get Marie Kondo Wrong?
That manky old jumper doesn’t spark joy anymore? Bin it. What about those trousers you never wore? Chuck them. Those books you meant to read but never did? That essay that made everyone in the tutorial cry in a moment of collective mourning for your failed intellectual potential? What about your a