Monday 13 May 2013


THE DRUM, THE DANCER,
THE AUDIENCE

Black bin liner, inside out,
filled with wind, anchored
at the rim of a cast iron bin.

Close your eyes.
It is a snare drum playing
polyrhythms to the morning.
Accents, flams, ruffs,
and silences that hold the sounds
together, keep them free.

Open your eyes.
The dancer takes the place
of your imagination. Clicking
fingers, intakes of breath
as each highlight flashing
momentarily denotes a change
in time signature, testing
the concentration, captivating.

Better go soon. The commuters
are almost here, with their spoilsport
tactic of getting in the way,
not realising these dances-in-the-wind
will never, cannot ever be repeated.

Thursday 9 May 2013


WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Names variously engender style, charm,
wit, warmth, control, subtlety, flair,
passion, love, adventure, courage.

They come from every direction
you care to look. Some are still with us.
Many more are yet to appear below, to
join these writers who enrich the world.

Dante Alghieri (1265-1321)
Moliere (1622-1673)
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
George Innes (1825-1894)
R.D.Blackmore (1825-1900)
Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
Charles Altamont Doyle (1832-1893)
Bjornstjerne Bjornson  (1832-1910)
Ion Creanga (1837-1889)
Joachim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908)
Dmitri Sinodi-Popov (1855-1910)
Minakata Kumagusu (1867-1941)
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976)
Grahame Greene (1904-1991)
Laurie Lee (1914-1997)
Kiffin Williams (1918-2006)
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Max Clifford (1943-    )
Karen Armstrong (1944-    )
Thom Jones (1945-    )
Stephen Knight (1951-1985)
DeBarra Mayo (1953-    )
Kathy Sierra (1957-    )
Caroline Page (1958-    )
Jago Eliot (1966-2006)

Can you name all the works they have written,
count the numbers of folks they have inspired?
Can you name the shared experience
that links the brains of these great writers?

Yes. The name of the brain condition is Epilepsy.

Note: a more interesting list can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_epilepsy#Art_and_writing