As the centenary of the October Revolution approaches, I’m reminded of my research visit to Moscow in the summer of 1984 when I made this diary entry: My stroll up to Red Square started with a daunted look at the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution Square. What did they pull down to celebrate the anniversary
The film Kathleen and I made two years ago to commemorate the 50th anniversary of T. S. Eliot’s death (and his residency of London NW6) is being screened next week by West Hampstead Cinema Club as part of a programme of short films about places. The screening will take place at 7.30pm on Saturday, 23rd
We’re delighted to announce the launch of A Brush with Verse, a new anthology of original artwork, poetry and prose. The book is available exclusively from Peth’s Staging Post and comes with a bonus CD and illustrated postcard. See our trailer below: To purchase your copy, visit the Brush with Verse page on the website and
As Google reminds us, today is aviator Amy Johnson’s 114th birthday. This month also marks 85 years since Amy Johnson set a solo record for her flight from London to Cape Town (having two years earlier been the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia). In the late 1920s, while doing secretarial work
Next month marks the centenary of T. S. Eliot’s first volume of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, published by the Egoist Press in an edition of 500. It was this collection of twelve poems that first introduced Eliot to Leonard and Virginia Woolf. At the Hogarth Press in 1919, the Woolfs printed Eliot’s second volume
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. John Milton, Areopagitica As promised a short
Plead for thy peace thou beautiful romance Of nature … William Wordsworth A sonnet to mark May Day. COMING SOON: our short film marking the centenary of the Hogarth Press and telling the tale of a very well-travelled book …
The ebb and flow of beings, the steps of the comers and goers, – all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare. Victor Hugo A short sequence of poems in celebration of the Bard’s birthday:
I had found Winter’s grave; I had found Spring, and I was confident that I could ride home again and find Spring all along the road. Edward Thomas, In Pursuit of Spring An Easter greeting and a glimpse of the Sussex spring. The painting featured above is a self-portrait/landscape I’ve been working on recently and
I am in the early stages of planning an illustrated ‘slim volume’ of verse with an accompanying CD. Reviewing the material, Kathleen has reminded me of the poem ‘Masks and Faces’ and I thought perhaps a reprise of the old blog for which it was written might be timely.