From ‘Hanging Out with Muhammad Ali’ by Andy Hall. Photograph Andy Hall
EDITORIAL: To the Ostriches
With the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds before midnight, the mood is, of course, best summed up by Yeats, whose poem The Second Coming is being quoted more and more often.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?W.B. Yeats
In this issue, unfortunately, we must deal with subjects like racism, ignorance, exploitation, and fascism — and the possibility of a nuclear holocaust started by the death thrashings of the American Empire, which hopes that, perhaps, if it triggers a global conflagration, in a devastated world, the USA will be the last nation standing.
What is the logical end result of building a society based on greed? Obviously, it is poverty, inequality, oppression, injustice, violence, thievery, and perhaps even annihilation. Without piracy, pirates can’t make a good living.
As the New Yorker cartoon by Manikoff says, ‘And so, while the end-of-the-world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors, we believe that the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities for profit.’
There are great opportunities for the US and Western corporations to make profits from manufacturing and selling weapons, from skyrocketing oil prices, from rebuilding what they blew up, from using AI to pillage the entire cultural inheritance of humankind.
And if all this sounds a little melodramatic to you, you ostrich, then look around you at the signs and portents. Notice a war or two in progress, a genocide, a disastrous attack on the world’s energy supplies?
No, you did not dream it! A baby eating toad is now the president of a psychopathic colonial nation founded on the basis of genocide and slavery.
We can hope and work and vote and agitate for a better world; for the restoration of the land, for opportunities to work and create useful and worthwhile services, we can work to remove the suckers of this dangerous vampire squid from off us all.
Remove the parasite of global capitalism and save your lives and souls! Save your families and your town, and country and planet!
But, still, even in the face of this horror of nuclear brinkmanship let us celebrate what there is to celebrate, which is plenty while we are all still alive.
In the small spaces and in the unmonitored and unsurveyed freedoms we have that remain, we can concentrate on love, friendships, parenting and teaching, growing and cooking good food to share, on playing music together, on art, poetry, photography and sensible debate. We can still express human emotions thoughts and and philosophies, and design and build small and big things and maintain them. Above all we can treasure and look after the natural world.
We can talk about what has happened, what is happening, and what we would like to happen, and then, please God, let’s work collectively to make it happen.
Ars Notoria Magazine
FEATURED
The Birth of the Atlantic and the Construction of the Figure of the “Negro”by ISMAËL DIADIÉ HAÏDARA
Ulises Paniagua Olivares: ‘Sensibility is Thought’
Hanging Out with Muhammad Ali by Andy Hall
Vote for the Greens & Put Forests Centre Stage! ANANDI SHARAN
Photo Essay: Celebrating Holi in the Streets of Mumbai by Andy HalL
LIFESTYLE
Black Pepper, White Salt, Green Magic by Arun Kapil
A London Pub Crawl BY PHIL HALL
The Gersois Meal by Paul Halas
Roadkill: Eat it, You Are Not Guilty of Its Death by Pete Field
FILM / SHORT STORY / PHILOSOPHY
18 Hitching the Wagon by Norman B. Schwartz
PETER COWLAm: THE LOTTERY GATES
Frusick: Making Sweeter Music by J.W. Wood
J. L. Borges: Berkeleianism versus Buckleianism by Peter Cowlam
POETRY
A Water Jug of Larks BY RODRIGO TRUJILLO
Sudeep Sen’s Walks in Leopard Country
The Orbis Poetry Prize 2025: A Subscribers’ Choice BY YOGESH PATEL
A Selection of Jennifer Johnson’s African Poems
Three Poems from Armenida Qyqja
Daljit Nagra’s Poetics of Tactile SabotageBY YOGESH PATEL
POLITICS & HISTORY
From Empire to Domestic Ethnic Cleansing? by Pete Field
Attracted to Conspiracy Theories and Fascism? by Bryan Greetham
Dear President Donald Trump . . . MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN! by Dustin PICKERING
The Futility of War and the Hapless Victims of War BY MOLLYJOSEPH
LITERARY LIFE AND MEMOIR
Paul Halas: Mon Oncle
Carol Rumens & the Birth of the Online Literary Commons BY PHIL HALL
Cheryll Barron answers
SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION
The Phobos AnomalyBY PHIL HALL
NEW MALDEN WRITERS
NEW MALDEN WRITER KARL RUTLIDGE:Morning, world. Still here!
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The Lottery Gates
Photograph El Capra by Peter Cowlam The Transmutation Si came down from the fields, where he’d been working, for the day was nearly departed. The sun had sunk towards the mountains, while the mingling hues of evening had faded in a wash of summer twilight. It was a pleasant, tranquil hour. As was his…
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RODRIGO TRUJILLO: A WATER JUG OF LARKS
Photograph Salih Pexels.com A Water Jog of Larks You wore zopilotes in your hairand you didn’t knowyou went down to the river to submergethe light blue as you movedthe river washed you of timethe river carried your time awayWhen are you from?How much of you has gone?in the depths of dream you gather flowersA…
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THREE POEMS FROM ARMENIDA QYQJA
Armendia Qyqja. Courtesy of the author A few years ago, I published an anthology of contemporary Albanian poetry called The New Condemned with my company World Inkers Printing and Publishing. Its purpose was to document the effects of the repressive communist regime on Albanian culture and to highlight its cultural uniqueness in literature. This…
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Dear President Donald Trump . . . MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN!
The USA targeted and killed 175 girls in its opening salvo against Iran. The US people are now deeply demoralised at home and the US government and corporations are desperately hated abroad for their death dealing and grotesque warmongering. Mehr News Agency My second letter to Trump was written in the warning tone of…
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CHERYLL BARRON ANSWERS
My visitors were mule deer, not pronghorn antelope. Photo by Samuel Sweet Pexels.com A reply to the article: Carol Rumens & the Birth of the Online Literary Commons Dear virtual Phil, What a surprise. Thank you for including such a stimulating delving down to the seeds of the keiretsu-cooperative in your elegant tribute to…
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ULISES PANIAGUA OLIVARES: ‘SENSIBILITY IS THOUGHT’
The Poet and founder of the International Colloquium of Poetry and Philosophy, Ulises Paniagua Olivares Our wondrous journey to the 6th International Colloquium of Poetry and Philosophy The International Colloquium of Poetry and Philosophy comes round again. This year, 2026, it happens in two countries: Colombia (face-to-face) and Mexico (online). The celebrations will take…
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THE GERSOIS MEAL
Sara. Illustration Pete Field An Extract from Paul Halas’s forthcoming book, Sara’s Lives To be published by AN Editions in March 2027 The Riversmeet Coffeehouse was just opening when we approached it, but they were happy to serve us very fine St Helena Peaberry coffees and a couple of excellent but horribly expensive croissants.…
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From Empire to Domestic Ethnic Cleansing?
Welsh Tea Cakes. Zingy Yellow. Wikimedia Commons Reflections on English and Welsh Nationalism by Pete Field Before I start asking questions I must state my position. I am English, from the North-East of England and I support a United Ireland, an Independent Scotland, a free Wales and independence for the North of England. Devolution…
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A SELECTION OF JENNIFER JOHNSON’S AFRICAN POEMS
The White Nile. Photograph Flavia Corpas At Ars Notoria we are pleased to be able to introduce Jennifer Johnson to our readers. She was born in 1956 in Sudan, by the side of the Nile, between Khartoum and what is now the border of South Sudan – on the edge of the dividing line…
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The futility of War and the Hapless Victims of War
A B-29 over Osaka on 1 June 1945. US Air Force Public Domain “Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only ONE day, of modern warfare.” — Peter Ustinov, actor, writer, and director (16 Apr…
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Daljit Nagra’s Poetics of Tactile Sabotage
Writing becomes grooming: repetitive, humble, necessary. Richard Steinhardt. Photograph by Lisa Steinhardt (p. 77, Versed) Nagra, Daljit. Yiewsley. Faber & Faber, June 2026. Hardback: £14.99; ebook. Faber Poetry Subscription title for June 2026 (subscribe by 31 May to receive). “A return to the poet’s boyhood and the town that made him.” by Yogesh Patel…
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SUDEEP SEN’S WALKS IN LEOPARD COUNTRY
Sudeep Sen is the International and Poetry Editor at Ars Notoria and a leading international poet whose prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions), EroText (Penguin), Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms (Bloomsbury), Anthropocene (Pippa Rann, Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize), and Red. Edited landmark anthologies include: The HarperCollins Book of…
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The Orbis Poetry Prize 2025: A Subscribers’ Choice
Crystal Orb. Photograph Phil Hall by Yogesh Patel There is a particular genuine sincerity in a prize decided not by a closed jury but by the interactive poets of a literary journal. This is the unique and honest quality for which my Word Masala Foundation sponsors the Orbis Poetry Annual Prize. It is fully…
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18. Hitching the Wagon
Kennedys From Patriarch to Son by Norman B. Schwartz Part I: Ambassador Kennedy. Like Father, Like Son Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr (1888–1969) was a man of enormous political ambition, first for himself and then for his sons – the first killed in the Second World War, two others assassinated, John F. Kennedy (born 1917)…
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Black Pepper, White Salt, Green Magic
Parsley. Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko Pexels.com Herbs as care, spellwork, scandal and the people’s green masala by Arun Kapil The first herb that properly got me was not basil, not rosemary, not some noble Mediterranean shrub clinging to a hot stone wall. It was cress. Tiny brown specks on damp tissue. Nothing much to…
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The Birth of the Atlantic and the Construction of the Figure of the “Negro”
Etudiante lisant L’unité culturelle de l’Afrique noire, en 2021. JN Picture ‘European civilisation has been a long process of epistemicide—the destruction of knowledge, languages, cultures, and the production and distribution of wealth.’ Afrocentrism and Identity Construction “Mɔgɔ kelen tɛ yɛlɛma kɔni kelen ka kɛ bɛɛ ye.”A single person cannot become everything all alone.—Bambara proverb, Mali.…
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Frusick: Making Sweeter Music
by J.W. Wood They came up with the technology at the end of the last century: right after they’d perfected WiFi and 3D optics. Like so many inventions, Frusick was just waiting for some bright spark to pluck it out of the ether – and that’s exactly what some bright spark did. Via cute…
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Paul Halas: Mon Oncle
The Légion d’ honneur was awarded to Uncle. Photograph Alexei Nikolay Evichromanov During my very infrequent visits to Paris, passing Drancy Station on the RER suburban line between Orly Airport and Paris is always a poignant experience. My uncle spent some time there during World War Two. In 1966, as a seventeen year old,…
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Attracted to Conspiracy Theories and Fascism?
by Bryan Greetham I wanted to examine the claim that fascism was a last-ditch response to a failing capitalism – an attempt to rescue it. One powerful incentive to embrace a radical right party, like the National Socialists, was self-interest. The radical right appealed more to all those social groups (teachers, civil servants, army…
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The Phobos Anomaly, John Brandenburg, and the Case for the Artificial Destruction of Martian Civilisation, and 3I Atlas as the future drive-by killer of Earth
Does Phobos look as if it is a pile of rubble, or does it look like a battered 500 million year old metallic hulk? Photograph NASA Will 3I/ATLAS, bide its time in the Oort cloud before swinging in again for the kill? by Phil Hall John E. Brandenburg is a plasma physicist with a…
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Carol Rumens & the Birth of the Online Literary Commons
Carol Rumens RIP (10 December 1944 – 25 April 2026, aged 81) was born in Forest Hill, South London, and died from a brain tumour. She studied Philosophy at the University of London and earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Writing for the Stage from City College Manchester. She served as poetry editor for Quarto and the Literary Review,…
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J. L. Borges: Berkeleianism versus Buckleianism
The Philosophy of Tlön, Uqbar, & Orbis Tertius By Peter Cowlam Berkeley, who was Bishop of Cloyne in 1734, denied the existence of matter in a reply to Locke (1632–1704), whose conception of the universe was Newtonian and mechanistic, a place where material bodies conformed to a clockwork modus operandi – that is to…
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Hanging out with Muhammad Ali
Andy Hall with Muhammad Ali, photo by Don King Andy Hall Meets the Greatest Of All Time by Andy Hall In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would be hanging out spending time with my hero Muhammad Ali, let alone have the opportunity to get to see him; but I did just that…
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A LONDON PUB CRAWL
Photograph Phil Hall From the Lamb & Flag to the Red Lion (with Anthony) by Phil Hall This is the story of a pub crawl. The first pub I remember going to was the Barley Mow near Abingdon; they let children in, and sometimes we were allowed to drink shandy—lemonade with a little beer. When…
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Roadkill: Eat it, you are not guilty of its death
Stag in Richmond Park. Photograph Phil Hall Trillions of creatures die yearly, a massive cull which goes virtually unnoticed by Pete Field In the mid-sixties driving in the countryside meant squashed insects on the windscreen, sometimes hundreds of them. You had to get the wipers going, smear them off with water. Now our insect…
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Photo Essay: Celebrating Holi in the Streets of Mumbai
Photograph Andy Hall by Andy Hall The principle practice in street photography, and why I love it, is the immersive experience. That’s the only way you’re going to snatch those serendipitous, split-second moments you long for, as you wade through the river of human activity around you; all the time not asking, not showing, just…
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Morning, world. Still here!
Photograph Bryan Smith The inspirational minister of the Methodist Church in New Malden and Kingston, Karl Rutlidge is sick with an inflamed heart. This is not a metaphor! He has Myocarditis an inflammation of the heart muscle. It is usually triggered by viral infections. His many friends in and outside the Methodist Church wish him…
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