poems | essays | photographs
A collection of idiosyncratic essays, written mostly in a lucid, stream of consciousness style.
It has taken me longer to get this done than I promised. I started writing it just before I was due to move to Exeter. I am beginning to settle in here. But Jeju & Korea are never far from my thoughts. Genesis Yoon Yong as both hero & poem germinated together. I had read [...]
(More untidy, preliminary insights from reading Heidegger. ) Taking a thing for granted is complex. There is an art to not taking something for granted. Being in the world is firmly established, as we interact with other things, tools or technologies, in order to provide the balance needed to be alive, we don’t exactly sense [...]
Metaphor to magnify This may be a bit rambling, it may chime, but this is a semi-riff-with-structured-argument on a number of books (provided at the end) I have read in the past month (except Being & Time, which I am currently reading, but which has featured in good measure in Morton’s & Harman’s books). I [...]
The Death’s Head’s Testament continues on from Stephanie’s previous book This Being Done & fortunate for us Stephanie is in the present progressive, hammering out the dimensions of poems. The poems here continue to wade in the difficulties of womanhood, family, child-rearing, love, life, memory & death. There is wakeful invention, an intellectual alacrity, sure-footedness [...]
You’ll never believe me…I was waiting to Skype God. You can imagine the anxiety! I mean…the Almighty, the Alpha & the Omega, Tetragrammaton—YHWH. It was buffering his end, ringing out. There was a lot of eeking & blare. The postman dropped his delivery. I was gripped on what God was going to look like. I [...]
The Rock (not the muscle-headed Hollywood Rock who doesn’t perform his own stunts but looks hard like he does) in T.S. Eliot’s play explains, The lot of man is ceaseless labour,Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant. Now assuming idle here isn’t a play on idol—which, with a lit-crit [...]
ITV’s Good Morning Britain's backdrop-countdown to Brexit is a dramatic reminder of what is to come. However, until March 29th we are all of us just speculating, guided by a homunculi Tiresias that lives in ours and others' ears, themselves just speculating off of the fragments of other speculators spoon fed 24hour news straight out [...]
I originally posted this piece on Medium, which I recently discovered. I want to ask a favour of you. I have never asked anyone to follow my blog, & I now have over 700 followers, so I don't feel guilty asking something of people now. I may (most likely will) be returning to England in [...]
I’m aware this “review” could potentially end up as flat out extolment for a poet who has become my friend and whose poems I was fortunate enough to have read in their early drafts. Am I biased? Probably. But I am going to make an effort to evidence what makes this a worthy read. There [...]
Granny, get your chequebook out On May 19th of this year, the [happy] Prince Harry got married. We all saw the boy in his Saville-Row-Dege-&-Skinner-tailored-frockcoat-of-the-Blues & Royals, soldierly, bold & brave— pride of Britain. He looked so charming— & his wife Meghan in something that looked recycled, it was according to Elle or something, but [...]
“ There, I am desperately free and naive; but knowing this oh dear happiness, dear misery; there is no distinctive sign except that one tearing one’s heart, and a smile destined to nobody(...)" E.Stachura
all about travelling in korea
come lay down ink...
Vincent Hanley
