Tag: poetry

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Hope, Anger and Exhaustion – lack of despair causes despair

rrn69

Two friends meet in an art gallery after decades of silence. The idealism that once bound them together fissured and fractured under the weight of collective and personal griefs. Through their memories of youthful certainty, the antagonism of their conversation and the embers of their enduring kinship, they navigate the wreckage of our world today- the hope, the anger the exhaustion.Jamaican-American poet and playwright Claudia Rankine best known for “Citizen” (2014), her prize-winning work of prose poetry about black experience in the US, which explored microaggressions, police violence and Serena William’s treatment by tennis officials and exposed the depth of … Continue reading Hope, Anger and Exhaustion – lack of despair causes despair

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Simply dazzling: Peru’s Prince of provocateurs

rrn69

Essayist and novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, Polemicist and politician (a Spanish citizen from 1993),  born in the Peruvian city of Arequipa in 1936, the Nobel Prize-winning literary colossus and debonair provocateur whose contradictory life is considered to be perhaps the greatest contemporary writer and most influential intellectual in the Spanish-speaking world. He was also indisputably the most controversial: He was never out of the headlines in more than six decades of literary and political activity, from the moment he exploded onto the cultural scene in the early 1960s with his first novel, The Time of the Hero, until his last, I … Continue reading Simply dazzling: Peru’s Prince of provocateurs

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Extending the algorithmic control of Amazon warehouses into every corner of our lives

rrn69

Henry Snow, US Labour and economic historian, reminds us that he idea of a building designed round a central inspection tower “was a workplace before it was a prison”, the brainchild of the philosopher’s mechanically minded younger brother Samuel, who fascinated by shipbuilding, undertook a high-level apprenticeship in the late 18th century that equipped him with “both a trademan’s knowledge and bourgeois European science”. Whether on Caribbean plantations in the seventeenth century or in Amazon Warehouses today, the powerful have constantly developed new techniques to control workers- and new justifications for doing so. Ideas of control perfected on the factory floor … Continue reading Extending the algorithmic control of Amazon warehouses into every corner of our lives

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sally Evans

rrn69

“DRIVING IN THE BOOK LANE” – A MEMOIR BY DR SALLY  EVANS –  PHD IN LITERATURE – POET, House wife, Mother WIFE,  MOTHER  AND LONGTERM BOOKSHOP OWNER! Price £7 or £10 posted (UK) Fiction Direct Memoir at The Callender Press. 21 Chapters in total. @sallyevans2025 Poet, novelist, publisher, editor, bookseller and sometime librarian Dr Sally Evans uses the memoir form to consider what turned her into a “bookwoman”. From London to Newcastle, from Kirkby Lonsdale, Teesside and Edinburgh to a bookshop in the Trossachs, Sally drives around in a landscape of books and book people in search of the meaning of life. Questions, … Continue reading Sally Evans

Uncategorized1 Comment

Good writing evokes sensations

rrn69

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, an English literature professor at the University of Oxford, reveals his love of reading with his students, and collating twenty years of teaching, his book Look Closer explores the iconic works of literature that have formed, sustained and entertained him, from timesless classics like Wuthering Heights and Dracula to modern masterpieces like Normal People and The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as children’s books, poetry, plays, short stories, and even comics. Douglas-Fairhurst explains how to slow down, take note and bring a text to life, Look Closer makes clear how literature works and why in these turbulent times, reading … Continue reading Good writing evokes sensations

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Photography celebrates its bicentenary in 2026

rrn69

Flashes of Brilliance is the story of the wildest experiments in early photography and the wild people who undertook them. Spare a thought when you take photos from an airplane window, or using a camera underwater, watch a movie or view an X-Ray. These inventions made such things possible were experimental revelatory, and sometimes dangerous- and many of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors behind them were memorable eccentrics. Did you know, the earliest photographers didn’t just take snaps in the studio, or did dull sepia plats of formal gardens, or took staged portraits, but they were detectives, baloonists, deep-sea divers.  … Continue reading Photography celebrates its bicentenary in 2026

Uncategorized1 Comment

World of British Aristocracy

rrn69

Despite a decline since 1945, we view the Aristocrats or upper class as synonymous with glamour, adventure and whose status and fortunes inspired instinctive respect, you have look at the newspaper headlines about dukes and lords, continued interest in Lord Lucan’s 1974 disappearance.  The Duke of Westminster, whose wealth dates back to the 17th century, is worth £10bn, and according to Doughty some peers still live largely “Edwardian lives”. Heirs & Graces presents evidence that we would be better off if at least some stately homes were torn down, if hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords, and if the … Continue reading World of British Aristocracy

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Curious history, endurance of English as a global phenomenon

rrn69

Would you believe it, two thousand years ago English was confined to a handful of savage tribes on the shores of north-west Europe, today, in one form or another, it is spoken by a billion people around the world. More widely scattered, written and spoken than any other language in history, English has become a global phenomenon. Exploring this amazing success, The Story of English is an essential companion for student and general reader alike. The Story of English discusses the influence of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible on the English language as well as how Early Modern … Continue reading Curious history, endurance of English as a global phenomenon

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Idiotic luxury indulged by people who do nothing, but moved by the spectacle of suffering

rrn69

French philosopher Vincent Delecroix’s novel, translated by Helen Stevenson, Small Boat, weaves a short, sharp, shocking tragic story shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025. In November 2021, an inflatable dingy carrying more than 30 migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel killing 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, at 1:45 am the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. Since the boat was about a kilometre from British waters, the same passengers kept calling Cross, shockingly, the female … Continue reading Idiotic luxury indulged by people who do nothing, but moved by the spectacle of suffering

Uncategorized1 Comment

Swimming with dolphins…

rrn69

A English girl named Ishmaelle “born in a windswept cottage in the coast of Kent in the year  1843,” where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After the death of her parents and infant sister, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Call Me Ishamelle reimages the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from a female perspective. Guo was inspired by a real-life story of 18-year-old Rebeca Ann Johnson who sailed out of Nantucket to Massachusetts, as the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, as part of the crew of the Nimrod, … Continue reading Swimming with dolphins…