don't confuse the narrator

‘it gives us the other’

The abstracts have been published for the sessions at the It Gives Us the Other poetry and translation conference & workday to be held in Nottingham in April.

I suspect some people will wonder who on earth I am and what I’m doing leading a workshop there, so they’ll Google my name and some of them will end up here. (Although I don’t think there’s anything on this blog that explicitly says who I am, the Googlebots are cunning little spiders and have managed to make the connection.)

So, just so that things are made a little easier and a little clearer, I’m gathering together a few relevant posts here:
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debt and ruin

WordPress blogs use Akismet to deal with spam, and it seems to work quite well. Even so, I usually check all the comments, just to see that nothing has been caught up in the filter by mistake.

I am wary of any ‘hobby photographer’ who wants me to check out their ‘amateur artwork’ with a view to using it on DCTN, but I do love the badly written false praise:

It is rather interesting for me to read that blog. Thanks for it. I like such topics and anything that is connected to them. I would like to read a bit more soon.

Clearly spamming isn’t a lucrative enough activity to warrant paying decent copy writers.

The latest comment on the fine feathers three post amuses me as it’s from a debt consolidation company: “Eliminate debt working at home.”

I don’t think what ‘Melia – the Ruined Maid – was doing counted as ‘working from home’, but she certainly seemed to have found a way to escape the poverty trap.

world poetry day

I have been reminded that today is World Poetry Day – “a time to appreciate and support poets and poetry around the world.” Someone even went so far as to wish me a “happy” day, which seemed rather out of place as I’m never very creative when I’m happy.

Ah well, I really should post a poem, I suppose. But not having been very creative recently, it’ll have to be an old one.
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not born yesterday

I missed the story in the Guardian on March 6th about our “growing lifespan”. (I do think ‘growing’ is a strange adjective: surely ‘increasing’ would be better?)

Anyway, I came across the story today after reading the bemusing phrase:

The lifespan of the average British person increases by five hours a day.

on the BBC website.

Reading that made me suddenly feel tired.
Continue reading “not born yesterday”

sap rising

Not only rising, but dripping out of the cut ends of the vine branches and leaving a puddle on the porch roof and damp spots on the stones of the patio.