Month: juni 2018

Reading: Lines on my face by J.D. McClatchy
J.D. McClatchy (1945 - 2018) was a prolific poet, editor, critic and librettist from Pennsylvania. He was praised for his polished and erudite verse. Lines on my face Decades now of looking back at it— in some old satellite’s rearview mirror, say— has something to show beyond the folds and feeders, the volumes of magma ...
Call me if you are a publisher and I will see if I can mention you in my next poem
Reading: Wedding by Alice Oswald
Alice Oswald (b. 1966) is an Oxford-educated classicist and award-winning poet. She has written poetically about ecology and wrote her own take on the Iliad. Her 2016 book is called "Falling Awake". I read the 1996 poem "Wedding": Wedding From time to time our love is like a sail and when the sail begins to alternate from tack to ...
Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees
The Refugee Convention entered into force on 22 April 1954. In the above text, we look at the word particularly. We note that it does not mean exclusively. Even if the head of the family (which we should consider an outdated term, but can still understand) has not fulfilled the necessary conditions for admission to a particular country, the Convention ...
Meditation on love
Can we imagine a love that is without lack, hence without desire? We sit for a brief meditation on love. Erotic love, parental love, the love for truth, beauty and the good. Imagination that our love is indeed without lack, that the constellation lover - beloved has a value as it is and does not ...
De vader de man
Ik ging naar het CPNB om de kloof te zien. Ik zag de nieuwe kloof. Twee overzijden die elkaar vroeger nog konden lijden, kraaien ophef. Een minuut of tien dat ik daar lag, in 't gras, mijn jointje gerookt, mijn hoofd vol van het landschap wijd en zijd - laat mij daar midden uit de ...
Pols
Welk voordeel kunt u doen met de droge mededeling dat ik vrouwelijke polsen aantrekkelijk vind? Het viel me een paar weken geleden ineens op tijdens een lange busrit hier in Seoul. Een vrouwlijke passagier hield zich naast me vast aan de rubberen lus, zodat haar slanke pols zich vlak naast mijn gezicht bevond. Ik observeerde de slagaders, ...
What is it like to be a pig’s brain
I read about scientists who brought a pig's brain back to life for 36 hours. What is it like to be a pig without a body? If that question is answerable, it can be answered only in the language of the mind, which is produced by that pig's brain.
Reading: Discussing Death with Death Row Inmates by Liao Yiwu
Liao Yiwu (b. 1958) is a Chinese poet and critic of the Communist regime, for which he has been imprisoned after he wrote a poem about the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. I read one of his poems today, on his 60th birthday. Discussing Death with Death Row Inmates Each night of stars is a ...