Ever since I stumbled on Sonnet Mondal’s poems, I have been captivated by their stunning simplicity and words evoking a magical experience. That he achieves this consistently is breath-taking. In this occasional series, our aim is to connect you with some of these exceptional beauties I come across. These are rare, as they don’t…

City of London street. Photograph Andy Hall by Phil Hall The London Stone is a block of Clipsham limestone, roughly 53cm by 43cm by 30cm, now housed behind a grille in Cannon Street. It is unremarkable—a lump of weathered oolite, It is a stone that has a history, but it has no inscription and…

HAL 9000. Image Tom Cowap Wikimedia Commons … and China is ahead in the AI war by Phil Hall Western AI’s overreliance on massive clustering and scaling represents a dangerous delusion and wish fulfillment at a time when AI is being weaponised, mainly by US tech companies. These companies are making a high stakes…

Karaganov in 2017. Photograph Dmitry Rozhkov If the way you followed leads you to advocating for nuclear war, Karaganov, of what use is your way?* ‘These officials are in essence — our rabble; the rabble of yesterday’s and today’s day: not the gentry and not the common people; not beasts, not clods of earth,…

Production Cels Courtesy of Geoff Dunbar Interview with an animation great Geoff Dunbar has been a major figure in the world of British animation since the early 1970s, winning several awards for his films, and creating a truly impressive volume of work. Animator/producer/director Dunbar is best known for Lautrec (1975), Ubu (1980) and Rupert…

A coral reef does not merely adapt to the ocean, it co-constitutes the living reef-ocean system. Photograph Francesco Ungaro Reimagining Evolution as a Creative Partnership of Wholes and Parts by Phil Hall Traditional adaptivity—traits that enhance an organism’s survival and reproduction within a fixed environment—falls short when seeking to understand holonic evolution. The dominant…

Inspired by a photograph by Eve Hall Snr. We must embrace complexity, and evolve to meet the challenges of our time A person who understands that all people are members of his body is a sound person to guide them. Paraphrased from the Tao Te Ching by Phil Hall The self emerges from stories.…

John Grant is a valued member of our New Malden Writers’ Group. His poems are clear in their ideas and accomplished in form. They do what they say on the tin! We always start with a poem by John and end with a poem by John because they put the New Malden Writers in…

Gargoyles in Bristol. Money going up may not trickle down again. Photograph Phil Hall                                         At the bathroom door Drying my handsI saw my grandfather’s hands againthe deltas there, the sandbanksspots and blotches in the shallows. I saw them withdrawingto the silent island of himselfand mine still going out to sea. And you turningat…

Tejidos Songhay [Mali] [Colección Fondo Kati]. by Ismaël Diadié Haïdara To Paco Montañés, painter Theme and Variations – I 1 Tebræ are two-verse poems (with 6 feet in the first verse and 8 in the second), shorter than haikus, initially created by Hasaniya-speaking women of the Sahara Desert. They are like objects whose structure repeats…