Tag: simone weil

  • Knowing the shape of your cell; women mystic writers

    Dedicated to the Irish Magdalene Women, whose government chose to ignore their plight at the UN Committee  on  Torture  23/05/2011. “Some of the issues that are raised and looked at in the Ryan report and that have been raised in relation to the Magdalene laundries relate to a very distant, far-off time,” said Mr Aylward in his…

  • Simone Weil the quintessential outsider, women and mysticism

    Simone Weil was an outsider, this she clearly stated in her personal letters and essays which are gathered in fragments or in small volumes, such as in Waiting for God. Those meagre fragments that have been published are not really readily accessible save on the curriculums of theological colleges (in modular forms) and presented in…

  • David Orr is entitled to question the relevance of modern poetry.

    For me, ‘Relevance’ is a dirty word, it kills the creative impulse and grounds poetry is mechanism. I thought to add a link to the ongoing discussion about relevancy in modern poetry centred in a critique (Huff Post) of Beautiful and Pointless, a Guide to Modern Poetry. Dadaists and Surrealists would rightly cut up and rearrange…

  • A Saturday Woman Poet, Women Writers On Poethead in 2010.

    A Saturday Woman Poet 2010 , some Women Writers from the Poethead blog . The Saturday Woman Poet  category of Poethead is related to  other categories and themes within this site called , 25 Pins in a Packet , Women Creators,  A Saturday Woman Poet and Saturday Women Poets. I will be adding those links and archives at…

  • Le Personne et le Sacré, by Simone Weil

    Whilst awaiting this morning for a sheaf of three poems from my Saturday Woman Writer, I thought to add in an excerpt from the Notebooks of Simone Weil, whose Necessity is the most sought after poem on the Poethead blog. I will include at the end of the excerpt a link to Necessity in stand alone format (without…

  • Women editors and translators on Poethead 

    Women translators and editors form the basis of much of what is published on Poethead.  Mostly they have a Western (English Language bias), although not always , (in the cases of Levertov, Ursu, Weil, Hassanzadeh, Nagy, amongst others for example ) though I do think that as readers and writers many women underestimate the small presses, the…

  • UBUWEB and ‘Homad’ , Ethnopoetics and Translation

    UBUWEB and Pierre Joris‘ , ‘Homad’ Poethead has always been about books, indeed the idea initially was to share lots of women poets who have gone out of print or are not easily obtainable (save online through Amazon and such places). The blog came about as a result of an small bequest of books that Marianne Agren Mc Elroy’s daughter had given…

  • Reposting Excerpts from ‘Tula’ by Leo Tolstoy.

    There have been some difficulties with this post, which is companion to Simone Weil‘s Necessity and to Edith Sitwell‘s The Wind’s Bastinado. Both the above poems were transcribed from a small  library in Mayo, the original Tula was removed earlier today, this is an edited version. Leo Tolstoy: Essays from Tula, with an introduction by Nicolas Berdyaev. London, Sheppard Press,…

  • On Simone Weil’s ‘Thinking Poetically’

    I have been reading the Simone Weil critique, Thinking Poetically for the last few weeks, interspersed it seems with other activities and work. In many ways it has prevented me from posting up here because the subject matter is so imperative to the creation of her poetry; and yet and the Poet/Philosopher’s experiences in Vichy as a woman…

  • ‘Necessity’ by Simone Weil

    Necessity   The cycle of days in the deserted sky turning In silence watched by mortal eyes. Gaping mouth here below, where each hour is burning So many cruel and beseeching cries;   All the stars slow in the steps of their dance, The only fixed dance, mute brilliance on high, In spite of us…