• “The Fountain” by Denise Levertov.

    Don’t say, don’t say there is no water to solace the dryness at our hearts. I have seen the fountain springing out of the rock wall and you drinking there. And I too before your eyes found footholds and climbed to drink the cool water. The woman of that place, shading her eyes, frowned as…

  • ‘Sculptor’ By Sylvia Plath.

    Dedicated by the Author to Artist Leonard Baskin. To his house the bodiless Come to barter endlessly Vision, wisdom, for bodies Palpable as his, weighty. Hands moving more priestlier Than Priest’s hands, invoke no vain images of light and air But sure stations in bronze, wood, stone. Obdurate, in dense-grained wood, A bald angel blocks…

  • “An t’Éan Cuaiche” by Máire Nic Mhaoláin.

    Mhotaigh an scamallamán an teas trí chlúmh scáinte, Is scáil ghreine is scáth faoi seach sa duilliúr séimh, is siosarnach ghaoithe sa ghiolcach, is ceol srutháin faoi. Rith driuch fionnaidh tríd -bhí rud deoranta sa néid leis! Thar dhuibheagán an spáis is dhiamhair na gcianta tháinig an treoir Trí dhamha na réaltaí tríd an aigéad…

  • Charlotte Salomon: Painter.

    The above image is by Charlotte Salomon, it came  courtesy of Susan V Facknitz who loves the work. The original conversation was about sibyls and oracles and the work of engagement by post-holocaust writers and poets. There are a few such artists and writers on the site, those would include: Nelly Sachs, RB Kitaj, Leonard…

  • Earth Caves and Such.

    I was reading a translation of the Old English ‘A Woman’s Lament, from a book of translations by Burton Raffel: ‘Poems and Prose from the Old English‘. It is written in the Woman’s voice and from experience of the inner exilic condition (possibly imprisonment): ‘The valleys seem leaden, the hills reared aloft, And the bitter towns all bramble…

  • ‘Form’ by Eva Gore-Booth

    The buried statue through the marble gleams, Praying for freedom an unwilling guest, Yet flooding with the light of her strange dreams The hard stone folded round her uncarved breast.   Founded in granite, wrapped in serpentine, Light of all life and heart of every storm, Doth the uncarven image, the Divine Deep in the…

  • Marguerite Porret, Marguerite of Porete, and Mrs Anna Livia Plurabelle.

    This morning, I was up very early and drinking tea at my window with John Moriarty’s Curlew book before me. The book, What the Curlew Said, describes lightning as emanating from a cloud of ducks or rather, the author who is bodily expecting lightning instead experiences what his body had not expected, ducks landing on a mirrored lake. Moriarty inserted into…

  • Dream Machine at IMMA, Hans Christian Anderson and William S Burroughs

    The current exhibition of writers who do/did visual arts at IMMA is something people should  see.. and it’s travelling Europe! Curator Hendel Teicher has constructed an exhibiton of Paperwork by Hans Christian Anderson (1805-1875) and William S Burroughs (1914-1997). The basement area of the New Galleries at IMMA are given over to two major works,   ‘The Screen…

  • “The Unnameable” by Lovecraft.

    There really is nowhere quite like Barcelona to sit and read horror stories. I didn’t get very far with Lovecraft ‘cos he was scary, though of a recognisable horror genre … I did not dwell long on the story, finding the atmosphere vaguely repressive and samey (everyone is after all entitled to response to literature and Poe always seems to…

  • “Anchises” by Blanaid Salkeld

    I wish he were the polar star in heaven, or the little Pleiads seven, And I would be the best astronomer that ever watched for even. I wish he were the sun from East to West- even for me to see…what of the rest?- I would not grudge their share, or mind… or if he…