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Reflections of a working writer and reader

 

 

Posts filed under “writing”.

Thursday Thoughts: 3

Mark My word, if and when these preachers get control of the (Republican) party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and [...]

Thursday Thoughts: 2

“How do we say No? In the fullness of time, how can we say No?” and “To create is to resist, to resist is to create.” John Berger, from his article The Need to Learn, in Brick 88 . * Whenever I find myself in a situation where I realize my own stance, though heartfelt, [...]

New Review for Winged with Death

Winged With Death by John Baker, Flambard Press (2009) ISBN 978-1906601027, 291pp £8.98 ‘It was 1972 and I was eighteen years old. I had jumped ship and watched while she sailed away.’ The narrator’s account of his decade in Uruguay gets off to a running start. A young man in a remote country is a [...]

Cock and Bull by Will Self

These two postmodern stories from 1993 have remained under my radar until now. Will Self writes irony and challenges gender roles along the way with immaculately timed black humour. The lead character in each of these stories wakes up to something of an anatomical surprise. In the first story, Cock, a woman grows a penis; [...]

A Poem by Mary Oliver

When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the [...]