silencio

I’m ashamed to admit that I love The Silentists.

Why don’t I understand poetry?

L found a book in a second-hand-book shop in Johannesburg called Future Exiles: 3 London Poets – Allen Fisher, Bill Griffiths, Brian Catling. It was Paladin Re/Active Anthology No. 1, published by Paladin Poetry in 1992 and edited by Iain Sinclair before he was famous: the jacket blurb, I imagine composed by himself, is as [...]

Of Time and the City

Went to see Of Time and the City by Terence Davies on Sunday. I never know quite what to make of his films. The first one I saw, Distant Voices, Still Lives, in 1988, I reviewed for the university newspaper. “This is how to make films,” I wrote. “Cinematic concentrate. It’s an autobiographical picture of [...]

not-CV

I’ve just been typing up a list of every job I was rejected for in 1991 and 1992. There were a lot of them and most are terrifyingly dull-looking – it was around the time I moved to London and I didn’t know any better. But wouldn’t our CVs and biogs be more informative if [...]

The Museum of Doubt

is the title story of a rather good collection by James Meek. It’s a phrase that runs around my head a lot these days. I’m married to a doubter: only a few decades ago, I guess, that would have evoked a scene between a wise old priest and a passionate young intellectual, in which one [...]