Amber! Amber!It is all amber. The wood of the barVarnished with sunlight:Amber! The porter rolling in my Glass like syrup:Amber! The eyes all around,Blue, green and brown:Amber! Call them amber!They’re warm enough,For we are wracked — Caught in hiccupped laughter,Creased. Seeping to our edges, Happiness has drenched us.May it be forever Thus.
Angel raises my gaze.Angel nudges my chinSkywards to be struck. Angel caresses my cornea, Lit with pale fire thatMakes me splendid. “Hold the book so I can see,So wisdom billows In my hollows.” “Let me sign andSneak the ending, Apparition.” “Holy smokes!”
I’m back from the theatre The play ended with a girl leading her father beyond the city walls. The girl was Electra. The man, Oedipus. The city, Thebes. Perhaps those names strike dissonant cords of memory. As they exited the tragedy, the outcast king questioned whether his people were at peace. He’d put out his …
Has anyone ever tried to convince you to write like Dante? Probably not, because who writes poetry anymore?* Modern pen-pushers are busy with blogs, emails and social posts. But we should remember the medieval poet Dante Alighieri. (And not just because it’s Valentine’s Day and he was drippingly romantic.) We should remember him for his …
Authors are great exaggerators I realised that while hammering out an essay on Jules Verne. Verne conceived of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea after seeing a submarine — well, a model of one — at the world fair. So a machine that took passengers under water existed in 1867. Verne’s innovation was making the …
Are you sure, Monsieur Verne? The way scientists and writers interact — I’ve seen it described as a codependency. Authors take inspiration from science. Their stories expand what readers can imagine. Those readers include scientists who engage with experimental ideas. They pull on pristine lab coats and test whether fictions could enter reality. That’s how …
The unease starts with the title Yellowface winks obscenely from bookstore shelves. It stimulates. It sets the machinery of the mind in motion… and then jams its gears. The reader gets the term is racially charged. Recalls ‘Blackface’ – yep, that’s a thing. Thinks of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But that’s about all …
Any ending is temporary That becomes clear on the first page of White Teeth, when a despondent Archibald Jones tries gassing himself. The act should have ended Zadie Smith’s novel before the debut had properly begun. But… ‘No one gasses himself on my property,’ Mo snapped as he marched downstairs. ‘We are not licensed.’ Archie …
It is a time of time There was snow last night, I’m told. By the time I was awake, it had been overtaken by grey drizzle. But the mind can play tricks. I can imagine the dancing snow, even as I look out on a pavement dressed in rain. The snowflakes would have whirled in …
Everything showed. Breath pocked the air.Streets curled like matchsticksCaught in their own flare.And the dog scuffed stone with me — noticing,In the transparent avenue, a crack:A wall of coats and handbagsTrailing a casket, shiningly black.And I leant to mourn, to decry the day,To quieten my face and my stride.But I held life by the leash …
