Tag: privilege

poetry appreciation

silent watches

Jul 15, 2021 #birds, #compassion, #Edward Thomas, #good fortune, #melacholy, #nature, #night thoughts, #owl, #privilege, #The owl, #the small hours, #Thomas by Lucy Crispin

The silent watches of the night haven’t been so silent of late. I live just round the corner from a popular pub, so some of the noise has had to do with En-ger-land (glad that’s over). But a lot has been generated by some extremely vocal owls who have, I swear, taken to sitting on a windowsill very near me in order to have protracted conversations in the small hours. It’s so loud! Fortunately, it’s lovely too.

Owls seem to be one of those things lots of poets bang on about. Edward Thomas’s ‘The Owl‘ is one of my favourites.

Read More
poetry appreciation

the nearest thing to life

Jul 31, 2020 #A Litany for Survival, #Audre Lorde, #difference, #disadvantage, #fear, #function of art, #George Eliot, #Lorde, #privilege, #safety, #universal by Lucy Crispin

In an essay written just before her first published venture into fiction, Eliot claimed that ‘The greatest benefit we owe the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies’. She continues: ‘art is the nearest thing to life, it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot’. It feels worth remembering this at the moment, when so many arts organisations and institutions seem to be staring down the twin barrels of Covid and being insufficiently valued/funded anyway (don’t get me started on what happened to the humanities when Literacy Hour and the National Curriculum came in…). And Eliot’s line rings round my head as I think about this week’s poem, ‘A Litany for Survival‘ by Audre Lorde. (You can find a tantalising trailer for a film about Lorde here.)

Read More
error: Content is protected !!