Roberto - a market bird made magnificent in this vibrant, poignant poem from Jason Lovell. Read it here: inksweatandtears.co.uk/jason-lovell/ #InkSweatandTears #Poetry #PoetryCommunity #Macaw
John Looker
@johnlooker.bsky.social
Poems highly commended in competitions by Daljit Nagra and Cilla McQueen and included in the anthology of the Austin Poetry Festival. Journals incl Magma, Poetry Salzburg, Artemis USA. Books by Bennison Books. Lives in SE England. johnlooker.wordpress.com/
This mosaic shows Thisbe & Pyramus. Ovid tells us they fell in love by chatting through a crack in the wall between neighbouring houses. Forbidden to marry by family, they secretly met one night by an ancient tomb. Thisbe arrived first & hid in a copse… 1/3 🕰️c350AD 🏛️Paphos 📷Public #MosaicMonday
This is such a remarkable book. I first read it five years ago. This time I am reading extremely slowly, not for the plot but for the insights. #books #literature #klaraandthesun
A glimpse of P G Wodehouse using a continuous paper roll in his typewriter 30 years before Kerouac
Weirdly, the Odyssey and Ceuta discourses have one degree of separation, as Ceuta features large in Ulysses's further adventures per Dante (which adventures largely inform Nolan)!
I have a hunch Elizabeth Jennings' poetry will go through successive periods of new appreciation. It's the intelligence at work. On her centenary I've been rereading, prompted by Michael Schmidt in PNR 290 and Daljit Nagra on BBC Radio4's Poetry Extra. #poetry @pnreview.bsky.social #BBCRadio4
. You are selling hope. Hope I have in bucketsfull. Buckets full of holes. #haiku #poetry #micropoetry #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #blueskypoets #hope
There’ve been kerfuffles about the accuracy of the Odyssey movie. Perhaps one thing they got right was the armour. Whilst the film armour looks vaguely classical, it’s more cinematic perhaps than this actual Mycenaean bronze panoply found in Dendra. 🕰️C15thBC 🏛️📷Archaeological Museum, Nafplion
I've just signed the UK European Movement's petition asking Andy Burnham to drop the red lines on Europe and set out a plan for the UK's European future. If you are British and feel the same you can add your name here: www.europeanmovement.co.uk/5_asks_for_a...
Our 5 Asks for Andy Burnham
Andy Burnham must seize the moment to build a bold, forward-looking agenda for his administration to lead the UK towards a new European future.
europeanmovement.co.uk
"Will Shakespeare Goes to a Poetry Workshop (or Be, Not Be?". #poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #comicpoem #choughpublications
A memento from Lake Colac last summer. I had sleepily rolled over in my back of car bed to be met with the sight of a full moon rising from the lake. I did not expect a photo to do the beauty of it justice, but that didn’t stop me from swinging out of bed, grabbing my camera and giving it a shot.
"Heat," by H.D. O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters. Fruit cannot drop through this thick air— fruit cannot fall into heat that presses up and blunts the points of pears and rounds the grapes... #Poetry #Poems #Summer #Heat poets.org/poem/heat
If you want to see a master at work, read this, from page 5 of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Pay attention to the rhythm. Watch how he lulls you with clause after clause, like waves coming into the shore. Then a shorter sentence with the disruptive em dash, followed by “four shotgun blasts.” 🧵
Canyon evening. "Then everything falls away. The world for a little longer is something to see ..." — Louise Glück, Twilight
“He was an example of everything that is opposed to civic duty, of the most complete and malignant individualism.” The prosecutor in The Brothers Karamazov describing Karamazov senior. I’m enjoying rereading Dostoyevsky. Some of his characters seem horribly contemporary. #literature #books
I feel the word ‘odyssey’ is often misused, as if it were a voyage of discovery. There’s 2001, A Space Odyssey for example. Homer’s Odyssey was a homecoming and much of the tale concerned what happened next. I had that in mind when I wrote the last of 8 poems in a modern setting: #odyssey #poem
John Looker@johnlooker.bsky.social · last mo.There’s a lot of interest in Homer’s Odyssey at present, isn’t there, with Christopher Nolan’s film. I’m looking forward to seeing it. I wrote 8 poems retelling highlights of the story but with a woman, Odyssea, in a modern setting. If anyone is curious, here’s the final poem. #Odyssey #poetry
“Let me be rich and all the rest poor, I’ll eat sweets and drink cream and not give any to anyone else.” (One of Dostoyevsky’s characters in The Brothers Karamazov). Of course no one really thinks like that, do they. Oh, wait a minute, I can think of a number who clearly do. #literature #books
More from The Brothers Karamazov: “the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world and indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision” Hm, where have I seen this recently? However … must read on. #literature #books
I’m rereading The Brothers Karamazov. It is infinitely quotable. Here’s a minor observation, off piste, but it’s caught me: “Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels but together … they are often merciless“ That seems to be true of more than schoolboys. #books #literature
