Humane socialism
by Peter Cowlam A marine organism in unfathomable ocean depths receives light from a star a light year away, and responds, with a tiny twitch, the merest throb. By definition, the light the organism is influenced by has taken a year to reach it, as a staggered simultaneity, asking us to reconcile an apparent contradiction. […]
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We are pleased to publish three poems from Dominic Fisher’s latest collection of poems, A Customised Selection of Fireworks, available from Shoestring Press later this month (May 2022). A Customised Selection of Fireworks It’s the sequence that really matters colour rhythm flow which isn’t something the lay person gets right every time. Maybe start with […]
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WE MUST STOP THEM by Phil Hall Gato, the new Google Artificial Intelligence system (tremble in your social media, free speech boots) is a perfect illustration of the point that the hyper-rich are beginning to use AI as their intermediary and control system. At the same time, the owners and purveyors of Artificial Intelligence try […]
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review by Peter Cowlam Kitaab International is a Singapore-based publishing house, whose open call through various media outlets across the world, when the anthology was planned, resulted in 1,500 pages of poetry sent in by almost 500 poets. As commissioning editor, Sudeep Sen invited further writers from across ‘AustralAsia’ to send their work to him […]
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Stop the War! ‘Do you know what I do to people who get in the way of me?’ asked the thuggish manager of a Gazoprom plant sitting across the table from me. ‘No, what do you do to them?’ ‘I destroy them.’ He said. And he stared at me, unsmiling. We must understand one thing […]
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SUDEEP SEN 1. RABINDRANATH TAGOREhaiku triptych ERASURE lines of poems scratched out, erased to ink in — new shapes — art revealed SELF-PORTRAIT gouache shade’s matt-blur — an outline of the psyche — subtle peek into soul’s eye SONG rabindra sangeet’s nasal baritone — honey- tinged, monotonic — Sudeep Sen My emotional and aural response […]
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WPP [World Poetry/Prose Portfolio] New Series | No. 1 ALFREDO PÉREZ ALENCART, born in Puerto Maldonado, Perú in 1962 is a Peruvian-Spanish poet and teacher at the University of Salamanca. He has published 15 books, among them, Mother Forest (2002), Hear me, my Brethren (2009), Cartography of the Revelations (2011), Paradise Mud (2019), The Sun […]
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By Paul Halas The democratisation of the image Art is everywhere, whether it’s highbrow gallery art, pulp, throwaway art, or the vast array of moving images available to us. Perhaps because my parents excelled in the production of animated films – possessing talents I sadly didn’t inherit – I was always fascinated by the incredible […]
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Review by Jon Elsby Some years ago, a slim, paperback volume entitled The Holiness of G. K. Chesterton appeared. It was a collection of essays by various Roman Catholic academics who shared the (still somewhat eccentric) view that Chesterton should be canonized. Now, we have a book by Richard Ingrams – best known as the […]
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Not-God is simply not enough. By Philip Hall The alternative to God is not Not-God. Rather it is something INSTEAD of God. But then what in heaven’s name would that be? Applying Ockham’s razor must not produce an absurdity. You cannot dispense with the notion of God without producing an absurdity (Try not to stumble […]
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Mathematics, Substance, Consciousness by Martin Clewett There are hundreds of theoretical physicists thinking about how to properly construct a mathematical description of the universe consistent with all the measurements we have so far made of it. Properly means the mathematical description must produce new predictions that can be checked. There are two accepted mathematical descriptions. […]
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“tell us brother, what colour was Jesus?” by Andy Hall In the Remote Venda area of Northern South Africa local champions from the village of Gabo meet their counterparts from the neighbouring village of Chifudzi on the other side of a river, to partake in an annual bareknuckle boxing tournament known as the “Musengwa“. It […]
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You need to become more self-reliant. by Tasneem Sheikh Wake up! Wake up! I hear my aunt wake my sisters, cousins and me early in the morning. We were teenage girls on a vacation, staying at a distant relative’s house. The host thought it was a great time to throw a huge lunch party for […]
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Episode 5 The Quixotesque misadventures of unreconstructed Marcher Morgan Jones-Jones, who has probably not heard of the suffragettes let alone second- and third-wave feminists. Rosie had laughed long and hard when Morgan claimed he worshipped his mother. In those days, he was trying to impress her with every bit of ammunition at his disposal, including […]
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Remarrying body and mind Our post-enlightenment belief system is built on pure materialism. It must tear before consciousness can be put to work to heal. by Philip Hall What is the experience of dying? Well, the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol) describes it. You can imagine monks told monks, as they were dying, […]
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Reviewed by Peter Cowlam You might posit, from an Hegelian perspective, and given the long-term goals of history, that reformations of one kind or another cannot be avoided. There can be no refining process otherwise. If the long-term goal of human history is spiritual as much as material, then an intractable problem occurs in the […]
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We need socialism if we don’t want to turn into capitalism’s cyborgs The distinction between humans and intelligent machines is consciousness, so in future we must all seek jobs which require consciousness by Phil Hall Machines will soon be able to do a lot of the physical work and some of the intellectual work of […]
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The Origins of the Old Road from Winchester to Canterbury by Derek Bright Over a century ago the writer Hillaire Belloc penned the term the ‘Old Road’ for an ancient trackway that ran between Winchester and Canterbury. Belloc’s work, entitled the ‘Old Road’ has been described by a number of commentators as the first authoritative […]
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The carved wooden doors and doorways of a Dogon village are great works of the imagination. By Leigh Voigt Mali is in the middle of the bulge of Africa. In the middle of Mali, is Timbuktu; inaccessible, intriguing, fabled. The very word conjures up images of men in blue robes on camels in the desert. […]
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Tench: always there for me, even after years of neglect by Paul Halas Most anglers have a favourite fish, even if, like me, they don’t spend their entire lives obsessing about a single species. I’ve fished for well over sixty of my seventy-plus years, and a great affection for the first “serious” fish I ever […]
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