Reading at The Troubdour

I've been invited to read at The Troubadour this coming Monday 15th December at some point between 8.00 - 10.00 with probably another 40 poets.

Come down - it will be great to see you. It will be a packed evening of poetry, quiz and drinking!

Click here for a link to the event

Georgia O'Keeffe

We were discussing Georgia O'Keeffe in class last week and the next day this article was published in The Guardian.

Click here for the link to the article.

Anselm Kiefer - programme on BBC 1

I don't know how long this programme is available for but it's a fascinating documentary about the artist Anselm Kiefer. His work is being exhibited at the Royal Academy right now. Really worth watching the programme and then then visiting the exhibition at the RA, I think.

Click here for a link.

Sermon - The Theology of The Great Gatsby

Click here for a link to a sermon I gave on Sunday 9 November.

Hope you like it!

Anselm Kiefer at the Royal Academy

Over the last couple of years I've written poems about the work of this artist and am in the process of writing a third poem after seeing 'Sick Art' at the Summer Exhibition in August.

Anyway his work is on at the Royal Academy until the middle of December. I shall be going.

Click here for a link to the page.

Leaving St Kilda - Robin Robertson

Click here for a reading of Leaving St Kilda by Robin Robertson with a great accompaniment by Alistair Roberts  

Norman Ackroyd - an amazing artist and print maker

Click here to visit Norman Ackroyd's website 

haiku

beneath the oaks

bending in the June breeze -

strobe light shadows

Last Word Obituary for Pete Seeger

Click here for a link to an obituary of Pete Seeger

T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets performance on Radio 4

I remembered this afternoon that my friend Debra - who died suddenly almost two weeks ago - and me went to hear Stephen Dillane's performance of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets at The Donmar Warehouse in 2009 exactly 5 years ago.

I remembered it because the whole poem was broadcast this afternoon on Radio 4. This time Jeremy Irons performed the poem.

I remember that before we went in to the performance she quoted from the poem by heart this section.

"Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry and the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In the end is my beginning."

If you have an hour and fifteen minutes then listen to it here and now.