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Uncategorized August 30, 2020

BRACKETS

A sonnet I’ve rediscovered these – a pair of brackets  Brass, lying loose in our utility room  In this house, they’re something we don’t lack, it’s  Two boys clamber, but their doom’s  To do it in the dark and dust; they climb  At ever easeful play, perhaps adventure  Fixed in brass, their heedless golden time  Is …

Uncategorized August 3, 2020

PETH’S STAGING POST IS BACK

On this, Edward’s 84th birthday, we’re delighted to announce that Peth’s Staging Post is again functioning properly. We hope you’ve all been keeping safe and well at this extraordinary time. Edward has been keeping busy with his art during the months of lockdown. Below are three examples of his recent work in pastel.

Uncategorized December 24, 2019

CHRISTMAS EVE

Both these pictures were done this summer. The winter scene, oil on canvas, is based on a photo I took in January, and the summer scene, from a different perspective, is based on plein-air viewing. I have used the snow scene for our Christmas card. The Art Nouveau watering can is a drawing I did …

Uncategorized April 26, 2019

CHINA DIARY

This is a reprise of an earlier blog, with new additions, partly (and slightly belatedly) to celebrate the Bard’s birthday. Hoping you all had a lovely Easter weekend.

Uncategorized February 16, 2019

TWO HAIKU

What the haiku form can do is to reach down into that noiseless, strong, obscure, deep central stream and give both poet and reader a sense of epiphany. Seamus Heaney Two haiku celebrating the first glimpses of spring:

Uncategorized December 23, 2018

CHRISTMAS EVE

A seasonal sonnet (click the Play button below to hear the audio version):   December Eleventh, chill and misty morning I sat with laptop, plagued with writer’s block Our semi-precious baubles hung, adorning The Christmas tree; I tried to write, ad hoc A verse to grace a card to greet the season But how could …

Uncategorized December 6, 2018

T’OLD FIELD

If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now and then, a stance. Seamus Heaney, ‘The Aerodrome’ A seasonal reprise of another poem:

Uncategorized November 25, 2018

INFINITY AND SO ON …

… the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back Out of the marvellous as he had known it. Seamus Heaney, ‘Lightenings’ viii With winter almost upon us, I decided to record a new version of my poem about the universe and the everyday miraculous:

Uncategorized November 2, 2018

AUTUMN LIGHT

She seemed a compound of the autumn leaves and the winter sunshine. Virginia Woolf, Night and Day A new sonnet to camera, with a cameo appearance by ‘Bean’.

Uncategorized October 5, 2018

IDYLLS FROM STONEHAM FARM

… into the deep heart of English country, with country noises brushing the surface of a deeper silence. John Betjeman, ‘Back to the Railway Carriage’ A new sonnet, in celebration of both National Poetry Day just past and the everyday miracles surrounding me in my sequestered patch of Eden.