Poetry and the landscape are changing – and the poets are on the move. On a train leaving Paddington, to be precise, on a Sunday in April c.1943, in a special carriage stuffed with them. Joseph Gurnard’s Poets’ Excursion is an extended metaphor of the shifting tide of British poetry and of the changing face of the landscape poets wrote…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
What if the man you’re rooting for in a wartime darkly comic thriller is also a serial killer? In Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper (1943), Donald Henderson gives us just that: a shabby, lonely public-sc…| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
My book arrived – hurray! Now I can get to work figuring out just whose noses Joseph Gurnard was tweaking in this delightful little burlesque from 1943, which pokes fun at the poets of the day and the shifting fashions of poetry. First, let’s be clear: this is no Roy Campbell-style slash-and-maim, burn-their-crops, ransack-their-houses takedown. It’s a good-natured piece of…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Refugees They have no need of our help So do not tell me These haggard faces could belong to you or I Should life have dealt a different hand We need to see them for who they really are Chancers and scroungers Layabouts and loungers With bombs up their sleeves Cut-throats and thieves They are not Welcome here We should…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets,…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Another daily poem from The Paris Review – this time an early piece by Adrienne Rich. Recorders in Italy It was amusing on that antique grass, Seated halfway between the green and blue, To waken music gentle and extinct. Under the old walls where the daisies grew Sprinkled in cinquecento style, as though Archangels might have stepped there yesterday. But…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
“I’ve got a couple friends who are members of the internet. They are complete fiends on that thing. Personally, I have no interest.” Ten years ago – in April 2015 – our friend Barbara Asch was launched into the cyber stratosphere. Humans of New York featured her on their Instagram and Facebook pages. The post was picked up by Tumblr…Continue Reading→| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
All this week The Daily Poem from The Paris Review has featured work by Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. In other words, it is featuring the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (18…| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Some of this. And some of that.| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
You know how it is when a line of a song or chunk of a poem gets stuck in you head. It’s there when you wake up and still buzzing at you days later. This post is an exorcism of sorts although…| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
My Wittgenstein project has entered a fallow phase but it is merely on furlough for a while and will be back. Meanwhile, I was invited to contribute to Intrepid Ed News – the online magazine …| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
Before the eruption, it was a typical senior leadership meeting at Wayward. Head of School, Tim Endibel, was talking. On this occasion, he was explaining the new academic initiative for the lower s…| Rattlebag and Rhubarb
