Next month marks the centenary of T. S. Eliot’s first volume of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, published by the Egoist Press in an edition of 500. It was this collection of twelve poems that first introduced Eliot to Leonard and Virginia Woolf. At the Hogarth Press in 1919, the Woolfs printed Eliot’s second volume …
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. John Milton, Areopagitica As promised a short …
Plead for thy peace thou beautiful romance Of nature … William Wordsworth A sonnet to mark May Day. COMING SOON: our short film marking the centenary of the Hogarth Press and telling the tale of a very well-travelled book …
The ebb and flow of beings, the steps of the comers and goers, – all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare. Victor Hugo A short sequence of poems in celebration of the Bard’s birthday:
I had found Winter’s grave; I had found Spring, and I was confident that I could ride home again and find Spring all along the road. Edward Thomas, In Pursuit of Spring An Easter greeting and a glimpse of the Sussex spring. The painting featured above is a self-portrait/landscape I’ve been working on recently and …
I am in the early stages of planning an illustrated ‘slim volume’ of verse with an accompanying CD. Reviewing the material, Kathleen has reminded me of the poem ‘Masks and Faces’ and I thought perhaps a reprise of the old blog for which it was written might be timely.
It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart. Rainer Maria Rilke The Vernal Equinox brought rain and fierce winds to East Sussex but a week later Spring has finally and enchantingly arrived.
She turned to the sunlight And shook her yellow head, And whispered to her neighbour: ‘Winter is dead.’ A. A. Milne, When We Were Very Young The Christmas before last we were treated to an unseasonable ‘host’ of daffodils in our Sussex garden. This year the signs of incipient spring have been scarcer but yesterday our …
By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world. …
A sonnet for Twelfth Night: And the latest version of my still life/self-portrait: