Halfway through the first month of 2026, I'm just about waking up. For me January started in a different country, then on my return home I got the ol' man-flu. Various dislocations from the norm. Now, though, I've managed to get a paper diary, which means the year has permission to actually begin. Still, the… Continue reading So Give Me Coffee and TV
An England v. Sweden game, three years ago: You might have heard of this audacious backheel. Or watched it on a loop, heard it mythologised. A friend had tipped us off just a few days earlier: “Have you been watching the women’s Euros? It’s something else…” We had to admit that no, we hadn’t been… Continue reading Bronze, Berger, and Being Part of Something Bigger
These words (Latin for ‘Behold the man’) come from a tragic moment in Jesus’ biography. In painters’ renderings of the moment, Pilate’s hands are often open towards Jesus, directing our eyes to Him, as if to say: “what has he done? What have we done?”
Of the bird called carduelis carduelis, there are hundreds of very clear appearances in religious and secular art - if you fancy some better-researched renaissance info, Herbert Friedmann has the book for you, called The Symbolic Goldfinch. But I didn’t know about any of this when I wrote a poem, years ago, one morning.
How do you feel about cultural comfort food? About the ‘guilty pleasure’? As they’re commonly used, the terms connote a certain uncoolness, that the culture isn’t ‘difficult’ or capable of providing long-term sustenance. Have you been consuming more of such things in 2020?
“It is so like meTo dream of better places” I’ve been doing a strange kind of hibernating – the kind that happens in the full flush of springtime. It began when nuthatches were building their nests, under that canopy of trees near my home. We discovered new walking routes then, every possible walk within thirty… Continue reading To Dream of Better Places
While we're staying in, many of us will be enjoying the fruits of creative people's labours. Let's support them directly via Bandcamp, and more...
We go to cinemas for a different view of the world we live in, or to visit an imagined world and escape the laws by which this one's bound. Like the best films, Mati Diop's Grand Prix-winning film Atlantics satisfies both longings.
In which my post-sleep brain comes to life in the company of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's genius; we consider the internal monologue of St Cecilia; and my new music project is announced.
Here’s why I’m going to bat for BlacKkKlansman. I don’t have to ask my partner about her best moviegoing experience of 2018, because I remember the visceral responses that came from the seat directly to my left – expressions of every feeling art can produce, a pile-up of emotions at the picture’s several denouements, and… Continue reading Worth of a Nation: Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, the Oscars and Capra
Culture Me Up 