THE MAN WITH A MICRO-CHIP IN HIS RIGHT HAND Stopping wantless under cherry blossoms He hears a girl singing from the sewer, then harmonizes voices with some hums, then sings the final chorus like he knows her, their voices shaking red chrysanthemums – but now the crowds of fading stars are fewer and his voice … Read more
Ownership You come into your own While words give hue and cry In the stillness that you own When you are on your own With solitude to pacify You come into your own And the silence is your own Though melodies will reply To the stillness that you own With the calm that you have … Read more
Note From The Organisers Feel free to turn up (or not) wearing a full suit of armour, or a hat with a big feather in it and transparent trousers; or to come dressed as a future Bishop of Cork and Ross, or as the prophet Isaiah’s discredited older brother. But this march is no wild … Read more
Levi ‘Lev’ Driscoll, wrote the odd sentence or two when creativity revealed itself to him. This month, albeit at a snail’s pace, he’d immersed himself in Frank Herbert’s classic, Dune. How he relished reading the exploits of Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica, deep into the vast inhospitable desert on Planet Arrkais. Lev marvelled at … Read more
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) reshaped the trajectory of modern literature. In acknowledgement T.S. Eliot famously called him ‘the Father of Modernism.’ Many monolingual English speakers might be unaware that, along with Shakespeare and Dante, Baudelaire has been instrumental to how we in the West perceive the world. As an example, I think back to the early … Read more
My boss sent me looking for Luigi. One of his super-rich clients had been sucked in by a betting scam Luigi was running down at the dogs. Luigi took this dude for a lot of twine and you could maybe say that my boss was seeking… restitution. It was my job to stick close to … Read more
“Take me off!” Dad directed all his anger at Mi Sun, an Asian nurse who barely spoke English. But now she understood him perfectly. For Rage is a universal language. Frantic, she phoned my sister and managed to communicate that despite my father’s protests, she didn’t have the authority to halt a patient’s treatment in … Read more
To sit quietly and take in the view was unusual for Alexander Seymionovitch. His tall French windows flung wide open were like an extension of his arms warmly embracing the air of a new world which at least to him seemed astonishingly peaceful. Even though his thoughts circled like a pack of Siberian wolves, he … Read more
My Approach to Literary Networking after Francois Villon Most days I’d rather be bundled into the courthouse between two hairy policemen, with a highly debatable anorak dragged over my face, and blamed for killing Kirov – the crowd lobbing big thick spits and battering the van as I’m carted off – or be stopped at … Read more
Over the treetops, along the edge of the upper lake, a merlin hunts a starling. Isolated from its flock, that starling fights to avoid the clutches of a small falcon. Fallen memories of past murmurations dance on the surface for a moment and then perish in the peaceful water below: it looks inevitable and only … Read more