Architects of the human soul
On their month long trip to the Soviet Union in 1947, John Steinbeck and the photographer Robert Capa had several...
A perfectly healthy sentence
What a lovely thing, a perfectly healthy sentence summing up what it feels like when you read one. The poetry...
Key Performance Indicators … with a twist
'Here and there in the leafy glade of her letters a ripe berry of information gleams.'
When was the last...
Key Penmanship Indicators (KPIs) – IV
That's it, isn't it, 'the authentic sunlight of life', when writing rings true like a fine china bowl resonating perfectly...
The aim of aimlessness
This made me think - surrendering to aimlessness to write poetry (and other things? A good letter? A story?). Perhaps...
China through Chinese literature
Glad to highlight a new audiobook company dedicated to bringing modern Chinese fiction to a wider audience through new and...
Poetry as a boat
Another maritime metaphor in Heaney's introduction to a poem set in a sea-world. The ‘big quay’ of language and literature can...
In praise of idiosyncratic spelling
Those were the days, when you spelled, or spelt, or spellt, a word as you saw fit. Then the spelling...
My publisher, falsely so called…
Listening time: under 3 minutes.
I loved this drawn out account of Thoreau's dealings with a publisher wanting...
Saying what you think and writing how you want
This, in particular the second part, resonated with me. In an age where Search Engine Optimization sometimes seems to want...
All the details of the tree
A fine injunction to a writer, first to face truth and then to give unhidden all the details. Neither is...
Kingly encouragement
Surely one of the pithiest, funniest and most ebulliently floor-wiping book criticisms in the history of scribbling and patronage. All...
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