poems | essays | photographs
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 [...]
Happy New Year. Going to refrain from repeating my message from last year (something about not celebrating the passage of precious time). I find myself this year, back home after 8 years living in Korea, teething in my own culture & wondering what the future has in store. This period of adjustment is challenging & [...]
…The same day my period beganI discovered the poet Kim Seung-hee. I happened on the book at lunch in the libraryattracted by the title Life Inside an Eggwhich me & a friend chuckled about because we'd had eggs for lunch& because we knew a rumour that one of the girlsin the library had an abortion we didn't [...]
The above pic is not from Yeongsil Trail, but Donnaeko Trail, which is connected. The pic captures a hazy view of Seogwipo, the 2nd, other, southern city of Jeju. Donnaeko is, for roughly 6km a steep path, sheltered by dark umbrage most of the way—you suddenly come out of the trial & are met with [...]
My online presence, has reduced significantly, I feel. I'd just like to offer an apology for not being more involved in other peoples' writing; something I really enjoy engaging with. I am, as well as working 7 days a week sheltering tourists & feeding them, working on a collection of short stories, which is constellating [...]
Nietzsche concludes book III (268-275) of The Gay Science by posing 8 questions to himself & answering them. I found, answering them as if they were philosophically incentivized Rorschach blotches, quite revealing. I prepared this post yesterday, it was my father's birthday, so I sent him the questions to answer, to find out something about [...]
- Thrilled that I was able to encourage Irena to submit to us, she is a poet with a rare insight on her lived perspective as a woman, wife, mother, migrant & humanitarian.
Please, please, please encourage Irena to write more, she’s really very good at it & needs people to tell her, to give her the confidence to do it as much as possible, for my sake, think about me dear readers, I want more to read from Irena.Thanks for reading & see our submissions page if you are interested in submitting, we are always open to submissions from emerging writers, hidden, shy writers & the cream of the crop. We don’t care where you are in your career, we want the best, we want poems that reveal, expand, incise with insight, boldly baffle, poems impossible to predict but speak to our deeper senses of understanding, the poems from everyone to everything, the poems of our climate, clippered with lillies & speak out the kindling as they rage on the pyre.
The moon where I live
sucks up all darkness,
it’s a pond upside down.
The moon that I know
casts a circle of brightness,
a Chinese lantern in the sky.
Like a pot of honey never falling,
she just sits there, waiting for my glance.
I no longer ask such questions as
what’s the air like, is there noise?
I am happy sitting near the window
resting my eyes on the distant ball of stone.
I narrow my view—does she ever wonder,
am I a blot of blood, a stubborn stain
or just a fleeting interest
with a shimmering spotlight,
a random puppet
positioned in a frame…?
In the blink of an eye, everything’s forgotten,
there is nothing of my presence imprinted on the Moon.
An ocean that no one sees,
drops of rain falling on its surface at night…
I mean the sea…
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i understand people may not understand, perfectly, the language used, it is written using the intonations of my home town of Cannock, back in England, which has a peculiar idiom. It is English, but somewhat truncated, due to a mix of lunacy & bad genes. But there is melody there & i thought it might [...]
If you aren't Absurd yet, then get to it, it'll put everything in perspective. Thomas Nagel writes on this here, worth a read. Of course, the most well known exposition on the Absurd, is Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, which really is a text that alters you. ∞ It’s sobering | to slink down [...]
Near the end of Camus’ The Plague, Dr. Bernard Rieux says “But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.” After reading this, my skin & bones, the rhythms of my organs, the coursing [...]
“ 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
