Lately I have been listening to the forgotten but rediscovered Harvard lectures by Jorge Borges from 1967 - 1968: I share some of his quotes on poetry from his first lecture.

The Riddle of Poetry - 'Beauty is all about us'; 'poetry creates itself'; 'Life is made of poetry if poetry is a passion'; 'poetry is a new experience every time as language itself is shifting'. 

To hear this gently spoken man of 70 discuss his thoughts on poetry is inspiring. Here is the link to his series of 6 lectures entitled The Craft of Verse.  http://thefunambulist.net/2011/08/18/literature-lectures-of-jorge-luis-borges-at-harvard-in-1967-68-on-ubuweb/

Here is a list of other wonderful lectures to listen to on this link: 

• Michel Foucault
• Sun Ra at UC Berkeley
• Richard Feynman
• Joseph Campbell
• Carl Sagan
• Margaret Atwood
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Leonard Bernstein
• Richard Dawkins
• Buckminster Fuller
• Walter Kaufmann on Existentialism
• Jacques Lacan
• Roland Barthes
• Nobel Lectures by Writers
• Toni Morrison
• Bertrand Russell
• Oxford Philosophy Lectures

 October 2024 - ten years after I last posted on this blog page! I have now gained a PhD in literature. It was an amazing journey exploring the wonderful Louise Bennett, Jamaican poet, performer and social commentator. My focus was on her use of Jamaican proverbs across all of her works. 

Now I face a new chapter of my writing career and writing poetry has once again called me -  I will  post my latest poems here. 

Written on Slate

Now that I am embarking on my PhD on cultural memory in the African diaspora I enclose my poem which I originally wrote on slates. For reference, the sankofa bird is an image representing a bird flying forward but forever looking back to its roots.



kyrie eleison -
as the sun melts
and darkness slides in

the heartbeat of the eath stills
and oceans spill
on the tilt

rocks crumble and cry
dry
tears

and particles colouyr the breath
of the
wind

and the sankofa bird flies forward
forever looking back

to when the rainbow itself was
enough

poetry evening

I am looking forward to taking a new poetry class at HannaCherries teashop this evening. We are starting obviously just after Valentine's day with a look at romantic imagery - poems such as Donne's "A Valediction forbidding mourning"which has the famous image of the twin compasses; and of course Burns and Shakespeare, Shelley and Rossetti! So nice to spend time with words in the company of other wordsmiths and tea and cake! A perfect Monday night!

"A Bright Nowhere"

Watching a recent programme on Seamus Heaney I realised that I had been shutting out reading and writing poetry whilst I studied and that this was what was making me feel unsettled. His lyrical poetry is so powerful and beautiful and as the Nobel Prize acknowledged, he took the local and made it global. I have no right to put my name on the same page as his, but listening to his words has inspired me, finally, to start writing again so I present my latest poem following  Heaney’s “Kite for Christopher and Michael”

somewhere between here and there

ebullient kites skirl lightly above us

strings aching with every wind blown

twist and turn

to pull us upwards 

into the blue mirrored horizons.

floating ribboned tails flick
the last stripped tree branches
caressing their nakedness
and in this high, privileged space
the coloured canvasses sketch our unknown sequels

in an aura of bright imagination.

and now, as late shadows start to cross the sand

it is our turn to stand with planted feet and take the strain,

where before us, elders hands wrapped around the cords
severed by our own births.

I return!

Five months have passed - really where does time go! I now only have 6 more weeks until I complete my Masters dissertation and submit - fingers crossed.PhD after that I hope!  Naturally I have not written much poetry during this time - hopefully my pen will start to flow creatively after January. In the meantime, I post a poem I wrote last year on a visit to Surgeons Hall.

stifled breath,

conscious yet of the flow of ideas, waiting

to flood blank pages;

desire to capture the light behind glass

but distracted by frozen foetal forms,

gruesome in beauty;

heartbeats halt in hesitant lives

watched by blood red eyes,

embalmed in language.

such diverse images flutter between troubled breaths,

yet now are grounded by pen and ink.

Another 6 months has gone by!

It is becoming a habit that I seem to update every 6 months! That is because I am writing my Masters dissertation - so enjoying Louise Bennett, the Jamaican poet who writes in the Creole. So much to research. In the meanwhile I post up a  poem which I wrote 3 months ago about out historical roots.

the path that lies beneath our feet

consequently, the glittering scales of today rest

critically tipped towards a white future.    

precious silence lives only in the shallow spaces -

  in the slipstream

            of technologically high velocities of noise.

because, we have forgotten to breathe, to inhale,

to momentarily halt the relentless momentum

to stand still and recall slower, measured moments

and feel the power of the living, long fingered  roots beneath us

insistent, curious roots that probe layer upon layer

of hidden, vital strata,

spreading into the crushed, compacted bones of lost generations

whose memories create a solid path for us to walk ahead.

our fresh exciting footsteps, cutting  into soft virgin soil,

mimic those imprints from another era

which are  pressed out deep

deep below –

 their paths of  knowledge

mesmerising magnets

for our over anxious feet.

as the years drip through porous rock

it is in the silence that we will hear their voices

guiding us,

only if we choose to pause

and listen..