I am using JetPack, the WordPress back end spun out into a useful micro and meso blogging/ social-media posting app. Now, if we could read federated (not Meta "curated") posts through a personally chosen interface I might bunny hop back into view 😉
Author: George Roberts
What I want from my poetry
I like clusters, soups and smoothies, putting things together and feeling the energy generated between the one and the many. My cluster of three: individuation, compassion and capacity. Individuation: each person, place and thing is unique, a moment, a point, an instance. Compassion: treat each and all with kindness. Capacity: know your shit; have allies. … Continue reading What I want from my poetry
We are all buried in Gaza
A reply to should an agency cleaner in the basement by Steve Pottinger https://youtu.be/MrWfdTqSRVc?si=43LveP2Q2iJs9gn3 The poem asserts, in its call for peace, that if a "Prime Minister" or a "Diplomat", or a "presidents mistress" [sic] were buried in Gaza rubble there would be serious work done to make a ceasefire work. The thing is, there … Continue reading We are all buried in Gaza
For a new left?
An idea central to my "political philosophy" these days is that Marxism and neoliberalism, while considered antitheses, each grows from European Enlightenment thinking where hierarchy and teleology are both values and organising principles (principles encode values). Each strives to "better" the world through arranging things in orders and directions. "Growth" in wealth is a common … Continue reading For a new left?
Poetry in the sauna
The time I recited one of my poems to a Premier League player in the sauna of a local gym
Spoken Folk
Spoken Folk is what I/we do. Spoken Folk is/are public and/or performances (piece/s) of (mostly) words punctuated with music. There may be print and images or objects but words drive Spoken Folk. The scale can be adapted to venue and event. Spoken Folk could be a small piece of something bigger, or an organising principle … Continue reading Spoken Folk
Privatisation
Privatisation, the political economic theme of the '80s and '90s, is often discussed in industrial terms. Coal, steel, automobiles, communications, water, and so on. But, I don't hear the term applied to housing. There was a "sell-off" of public housing, but it wasn't spoken of in terms like the sale of our national housing industry. … Continue reading Privatisation
Reflecting on process
Forty years ago I started on a journey that I had been planning for at least a couple of years before that. I wanted to be a poet. I came to Oxford to study language. I liked to say, as a sculptor needs to know how stone cracks, a poet needs to know how language … Continue reading Reflecting on process
Living in instances
Most artists do not inhabit all the instances of their art once they have released the piece in whatever form it may take. Performing writers, poets, monologists inhabit the moments of their performance but not that of each of the audience, who brings all their "stuff" to bear: difficult upbringings, hard money, out of the … Continue reading Living in instances
Riffing on the big themes
Nature, War and Love were the three headings in When Life Looks Like Easy Street. I still believe poetry has to engage with such big themes: archetypes and myths. And it has to live in instances. I have undertaken to submit five poems to the Verve Poetry competition. They are to have been never published, … Continue reading Riffing on the big themes
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