Tammy Duckworth is a Senator from Illinois and fourteen years ago she was a captain with the Illinois National Guard serving in Iraq. On November 12th 2004 she was piloting a Black Hawk helicopter when a rocket-propelled grenade tore through the cockpit. Duckworth’s right leg was gone in an instant, shredded in a flash … Read more
If you’ve ever been young and full of dreams …. If you ever headed to the big city with your imagination teeming with the prospect of joining the generations of those who came before you and left their mark … this is a poem for you. Think Paris, New York, London – any great and … Read more
It seemed to them that they were to go on living like that, and writing like that, for ever and ever. Then suddenly, like a chasm in a smooth road, the war came. – Virginia Woolf from The Leaning Tower, A paper read to the Workers’ Educational Association, Brighton, May 1940. Writing and speaking in … Read more
We’re happier when we chat to strangers, but our instinct is to ignore them https://t.co/ExmL3GSCWw via @researchdigest — Tina Seelig (@tseelig) July 19, 2018 A tweet from Tina Seelig led to this interesting piece of research: It’s become a truism that humans are “social animals”. And yet, you’ve probably noticed – people on public transport … Read more
Not bird not badger not beaver not bee Many creatures must make, but only one must seek within itself what to make from Lament For the Makers Frank Bidart Choosing what to make, with what, where, with whom and why makes us human. What to make? Where? And With What? But then there are so … Read more
When I was ten or eleven my primary school class was taken on a trip to Blenheim Palace. Big excitement as it included a boat trip on the Thames. I don’t remember too much about the trip but I did have this Brownie Box camera and a whole twelve picture roll of film. The camera … Read more
When I was four years old I found a sixpence on the quay at Poole Harbour. I’ve been picking up stuff that catches my eye ever since. Beach glass, shells, rounded stones and the sea-drift that the tide brings in. Rusted nails and washers, Gate hinges and horse shoes, Marbles and chestnuts. The lost … Read more
Valentine for Ernest Mann You can’t order a poem like you order a taco. Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two” and expect it to be handed back to you on a shiny plate. Still, I like your spirit. Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. … Read more
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. Before the advent of motorways in the UK (first section of the first – the M1 opened in 1959) it was true that almost any straight road you found in England was built by the Romans. The burst of road building during the industrial revolution meant … Read more
This post was updated on March 9th 2019 with the addition of a postscript: A film about Hamilton’s life and work via ht @LucyLondon7 This is one of those “nevertheless she persisted” stories. The Canadian artist Mary Riter Hamilton had studied in Europe before having to return to Canada to care for her ailing mother. … Read more
When Norah Neilson Gray (1882 -1931) taught at St. Columba’s School for Girls in Kilmacolm her students called her “Purple Patch” because she was always urging them to look for the color in the shadows. You can see that she took her own advice in this painting Hôpital Auxilaire 1918. It shows the reception area of the Royaumont … Read more
There isn’t much to learn about Nellie Elizabeth Isaac online and some of it’s inaccurate. But as always with the string of magic beads that is the internet – there is always something to discover. Isaac was born in 1886 and grew up in respectable middle-class Hampstead (not West Ham). Her father Percy Lewis Isaac was … Read more
Some paintings are made to pair with a poem. Read Edward Thomas’s As the Team’s Head Brass and then take another look at A Winter Landscape, 1926 by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889–1946) As the Team’s Head Brass As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs … Read more
In 1918 Australia appointed sixteen official war artists. All were men. Iso Rae – who had lived in France throughout the war – was not included. The Australian impressionist painter Isobel Rae (1860-1940) moved with her mother and sister Alison – also an artist – from Melbourne to Paris in 1887. Three years later they … Read more
All agreed that 1917 had been a sad offender. All observed that 1918 did not look promising at its birth. At midnight on New Year’s Eve 1918 the poet Edmund Blunden looked out over the whole Ypres battlefield: It was bitterly cold, and the deep snow all round lay frozen. We drank healths, and stared … Read more