https://youtu.be/iTV6F3lTU7o

The accompanying video is of Emma Kirkby (an old family favourite of ours) singing “Dido’s Lament”  by Henry Purcell. It’s one of the saddest pieces of English music I’ve ever heard, and so, is most appropriate.

I’ve modelled my poem around Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night”, on the premise that the night we currently face is not, in any sense ...

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Thursday the eighth of February,

and eleven point seven miles I’ve walked,

a running total in defiance

of the enemy within,

of voices in my head who’d rather

I sit quiet, with nose to screen,

consuming crap made just for me,

algorhythmically designed

to rob me of humanity,

of poetry in my walking’s rhythm,

a miracle that’s in full flow,

performed by those who gave...

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Your Jewish Voice for Labour

is another voice for me,

a voice for cooperation,

a voice for good, not ill;

your Jewish Voice for Peace,

asks no more blood be spilled,

let your protests’ sound increase;

speak up my sisters, brothers,

for all humanity,

speak out against vile smears,

against hypocrisy,

speak out against apartheid,

Mandela was correct:

our freedom...

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In Praise of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution

The words in German are from a revised version of Schiller’s Poem "An die Freude" Ode to Joy. I’ve paraphrased them in English to form the first four lines of my poem.

Part of Schilller’s poem formed the basis  of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, an extract of which, was adopted by the European Union, on the grounds that ...

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