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 the Persian Gulf (which…

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% of Mexican territory now…

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, your arms swing, your…

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 life. Reading the papers…

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 go. At Christmas, swap…

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 guards (there’s twelve of…

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 everyone in the Arab…

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 dwellthe chronicles, the crossings-out,…

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 writes better than they…