Month: January 2026

The beautifully pedestrianised centre of Abingdon in 1969. Thank you town planners. Photograph Tony Hall This horrific geopolitical act would plunge us back in time to Abingdon in the late 1960s By Richard Steinhardt If the USA attacks Iran, Iran will destroy the oil installations in the Arabian Gulf and…

An Amexican Quilt. Generated by WordPress The Coming Break up of the USA by Phil Hall Mexico, not the UK, not Canada, not Germany, not China, is the USA’s most important partner: its most important trading partner to the fertile south with a border thousands of kilometres long. And 50%…

Not all brains work perfectly and survive life’s turbulent journey. Photograph by Amel Uzunovic The Brain Dear Reader Have you ever thought about your own brain, this mysterious organ, controlling all your actions, intentions, emotions, memories and feelings? Sitting up there in your skull, working to make your legs walk,…

by Roger Murphy He watched the story unfold in the papers. The first report appeared the day after he arrived, the last just as he left. The whole tragedy spanned the two weeks he spent in Cork, sorting through his mother’s effects and tying up the loose ends of her…

As you get on the bus, there is no fuss. A seat with priority is there. Photograph Phil Hall Poems by John Grant I Do Like a Ham Sandwich I do like a ham sandwich with slices of tomato, But a sandwich of roast chicken, no stuffing.That’s the way to…

by John Grant I’m a little gnomeSitting on a stoneWaiting for the national elf to phone.“I am the most important national elf!There is no one more important than myself.But I have a little problem that is quite upsetting my life.Someone broke into the palace;Stole off with my fairy wife.“My elfin…

Reagan sitting with people from the Afghanistan Pakistan region in February 1983. Photograph Michael Evans, Public Domain by Phil Hall Because of the actions of Israel, which is a settler state founded in May 1948, in the same month, in fact, when Apartheid was formally instituted in South Africa, nearly…

Tophet Salambo Carthage Tunisie. Photograph Patrick Giraud Wikimedia Commons The scribe once more I am once again the standing scribewith a heart beginning to rustby decision of unreachable gods.I write like this and here simply, stubbornly,to breathe in the memory of some others,for in this brush or reed or pencil…

Photograph Luis Aguiar Keynote Lecture Delivered at the “Third International Colloquium on Poetry and Philosophy: Sensibility is Thought,” coordinated by the Mexican writer Ulises Paniagua, with the support of various universities, cultural centers, publishing houses, and the Economic Culture Fund. “The philosopher thinks better than they write, and the writer…

Photo by Nikhil Singh Rajput on Pexels.com Quite a few Rooi Baba flew towards Dabbo now and then, as she swung on the tyre, looking at the Madar plants growing along the side of her house, releasing cotton-like flowers into the air. She stretched her hands trying to catch them…

Photograph by Emmanuel Newton Part of you knew you’d end up here with Alec, with his tongue inside your mouth but part of you’d held out hope that you wouldn’t. You know this kind of thinking is naïve. That the dreams spooling from your head are snakes, and he’s in…

Zorhan Anchevski. Photograph courtesy of the author ZORAN ANCHEVSKI (b. 1954) — poet, translator, essayist, and scholar — has published ten books of poems. His awards include: Studentski Zbor, for best first book of poems (1984); the international poetry award Giacomo Leopardi in Italy (2004), The Miladinov Brothers, the most…

SUGANDHA DAS is a young poet who founded ‘Mildly Offensive Content’, in 2013, among India’s earliest performance-poetry collectives. With poets from around the world, they staged over 300 shows across the country and helped shape India’s spoken-word landscape. She has lived in far-flung areas of India, finding elegance and beauty…

Senator Joseph McCarthy. Photo Credit, United Press – Library of Congress, Public Domain Bogie Versus the Committee by Norman B. Schwartz There is a common misconception that it was the malevolent Senator Joseph McCarthy who was responsible for destroying the careers and lives of many an actor, writer and director during the…

David, with proud members of his family. Photograph Margaret Yip by David Yip After seven years living in Gran Canaria, I returned home with a couple of suitcases to live in Barrow. Once again, I sold everything I owned—from my car to my TV and even a full tropical fish…

Renee Good, 26 seconds before the ICE agent shot her dead. Photograph Jonathan Ross – Alpha News, Public Domain R.I.P. | 1988-2026 by Sudeep Sen RENEE GOOD R.I.P. | 1988-2026 Minus one-degree centigrade    in the Himalayan Almora tonight — ICE predicted it would frost over.     I sit bundled…

Photograph by Coppertist Wu by Amal Chatterjee This is the story he told me. Exactly. I have changed nothing, except perhaps the names, places and the events. Otherwise everything is as he said.             I came to Amsterdam for love, he said, the gold ring on his finger glinting as…

Detail from William Blake, The Temptation and Fall of Eve, 1808, Google Cultural Institute Public Domain Can we be bothered to save the Earth? by Pete Field If there is a personal deity then they (non-sexist pronoun) have a well-developed sense of humour. Is the old Testament the ultimate and funniest…

A few feet behind him, a bloke with pinched face and grey razored hair, flanked by two enormous bodyguards. Illustration WordPress by Craig Sterling Andy Harris woke to the tick of a heart-rate monitor. Must have been some night out. A hospital bed. A drip in his arm, bandages across…

Photograph courtesy of the author A GRINFUL OF DYNAMITE                                            (Letters to the World)                                                                                                                                 For Les Murray                                                 That round pointed fuse                                     several miles of raw earth in truth                                     you took hands full farmer shovels                                     and slowly that smile lit a grinful of dynamite bonafide stretched ear…

Sinai. Photograph Tina Bexson by Tina Bexson I slowly slide my head an inch across my forearm so I can see the three prisoners by the door. I do this in such a way to make me appear asleep – I do not want them to know I am watching…

 With potato grower Willie Scannell of Ballycotton Enough lessons. Come to the table! by Arun Kapil I didn’t understand Irish food by reading about it. I came to understand it by standing still – week after week – watching what people bought, cooked, trusted. For fifteen years – Dingle, Donegal,…