Les Branson. Screenshot from the prizewinning documentary Guerrilla Filmmaker Les Branson’s interview with Paul Halas, with additional questions from Phil Hall and James McGuire. Les Branson is a filmmaker, poet, playwright, novelist, newspaper columnist and erstwhile business person, one of those people who’s annoyingly talented in multiple areas, and breathes fresh air into everything…

In the light of Sudeep Sen’s forthcoming participation in the International Colloquium of Poetry and Philosophy organised by Ulises Paniagua Olivares, Ars Notoria (The Art of the Noteworthy) is republishing Sudeep Sen’s essay Rabindranath Tagore as the Intimate Other. In this essay, “Tagore as the Intimate Other,” Sudeep Sen (labelled by the BBC Radio as one of…

Hugo Giovanetti Viola. Photograph Guillermo Wood. Hugo Giovanetti Viola (Uruguay, 1948) is a multifaceted artist who has worked in poetry, narrative, popular song, essays, theater, film, journalism, and cultural production. A guitar teacher since 1967 and director of the Taller Literario Universo since 1990, he co-founded the magazine Universo in 1970. During Uruguay’s de…

Credit, Lego ANIMASI, Screen Capture, Public Domain It is close to Easter 2026 and I learn that Pete Hegseth, the current Secretary of War for the United States, opened the Pentagon Chapel for Good Friday services. Oddly, his note inviting 3,500 employees indicated services were for Protestants only. While Catholics do not celebrate Good…

                       1819 was a miraculous year for English poetry. John Keats wrote six odes, the first five were written in the Spring, the sixth, in the Autumn. These six poems (On a Grecian Urn, On Indolence, On Melancholy, to a Nightingale, to Pscyhe and To Autumn) have become a foundation stone of English Literature.…

Photograph Inge Colijn by Inge Colijn Geneva Camp in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is an old urban refugee camp. With the 1947 partition of India many Urdu speaking Biharis moved to then East-Pakistan. Those who supported the West Pakistan army during the 1971 Liberation War remained stranded here as stateless communities when East-Pakistan became Bangladesh. Between…

Courage. Prompted by Phil Hall X by Phil Hall I have always loved the Tarot since the age of 17, when I bought a pack in a Brighton New Age shop in 1977, and I can throw a pretty good set of cards. After use comes understanding. The set I used to scry the…

Darryl F. Zanuck. J. (1943) Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, Public Domain Darryl Zanuck and Fox by Norman B. Schwartz Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) was not only the Wizard of Menlo Park, the inventor supreme of the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph. He was also the quintessential capitalist. Not only could he…

Spam has a reputation so durable it can survive a frying pan, a joke, a war and a supermarket aisle without so much as loosening its tie. Photograph Kent Ng Pexels Sweet and savoury hallucinations people mock, fear, hide, inherit, sneer at and eat anyway by Arun Kapil Some foods never enter the kitchen…

My Hat. Photograph Phil Hall by Phil Hall We’re talking about religion and the imagination. Some of the wildest thoughts human beings have ever had have been religious thoughts. Some of the most extravagant love stories, like the Song of Solomon—are religious. Some of the most apocalyptic science fiction ever written came from religious…