Good sports by Trevor Plumbly
My contribution to the world of sport is minimal to say the least. As a result of family circumstances, I was neither watched nor encouraged to play team sports. Painfully thin, I learned early in life that physical well-being was preferable to the risks posed by playing school sports. These days however, I live in a country where a sprained All-Black thumb can send a decent percentage of the population into stress mode. Even my grandsons have been peer-pressured into joining these educationally approved forms of ritual abuse. Most thinking adults struggle… Read More
Poetry please by Angela Caldin
I’m delighted to say that our joint post with three limericks inspired by our feelings about Donald Trump reached our widest audience yet on Facebook (that’s what Facebook told us, so it must be true). Disappointingly though, none of our followers sent in a limerick of their own. This made us a little downcast, but our spirits rose again when we received not a limerick, but a whole poem from Ann Chapman which I’m taking the liberty of publishing here. I was going to add a photo of the leader of the… Read More
RIP Alf by Trevor Plumbly
The Moving Finger Writes… Tennyson was the pick of the romantics; he always seemed to be able to chuck a bit of mythology and tragedy in the pot and knock up a winner. It’s not generally known to my selective pool of readers, but, as a lad, I did pen the odd verse. Not your dead Sheila’s regatta stuff, more gut wrenching angst. I wasn’t published so those rummaging through second hand bookshops, hoping to stumble across a copy of these gems, are doomed to disappointment. I regarded these early outpourings as… Read More
A Bit of Poetry by Lord Byron
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal. From Childe Harold by Lord Byron
Carol Ann Duffy, a Truly Accessible Poet by Angela Caldin
Brief Background on Carol Ann Duffy I knew three things about Carol Ann Duffy a few days ago. I knew she was the Poet Laureate in the UK, following on from Andrew Motion and Ted Hughes. I knew she was the first woman to hold this post. I also knew that she was gay, or perhaps bisexual. Now, since my husband gave me a copy of her collection of poems entitled ‘The World’s Wife’ for my birthday, I know a great deal more. Mainly that she is witty, subversive, inventive, observant, thoughtful,… Read More
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