There
are still many very good poets writing today. One of my favourites is
the Irishman John F. Deane, who is greatly influenced by Kathleen Raine
herself, and by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ted Hughes, the Romantics, and
many more besides. I would highly recommend this beautiful collection
inspired by his island of birth, off the coast of Ireland. It contains
twenty-five remarkable poems, illustrated by John Behan.
This blog is open to anyone interested in literary culture. We live in a results-centred, utilitarian world, and unfortunately our educational systems are increasingly occupied with job-training and ‘skills’. Although exam results and jobs are essential, I believe strongly that teaching must be informed by the transmission of a love for the beauty and wisdom in our artistic creations. Without this, education withers and dies. 'You have been to school/ But kept your wisdom' (Kathleen Raine)
Monday 17 February 2020
A Tribute to Kathleen Raine, her work and vision - Paris, March 2021
We are organising an international event around the work of the poet Kathleen Raine which will take place in Paris in March 2021. It will include guest speakers from France and abroad, talks on her poetry, her essays and autobiographies, her work on Yeats and Blake and other poets, as well as "tables rondes" on translations of her work into French and the Temenos Academy, which she founded in the early nineteen nineties. Here are the links to the Sorbonne pages for further information:
Sunday 2 February 2020
The Art of English - Fowler & Fowler
There is a strange idea around that English is somehow "easy", and that most people on Earth speak it, or at least "get by", which is apparently all you need in our globalised world of communication...
Because of historical events, it is true that English has spread enormously, aided by the British Empire followed by post-war American global domination. The downside to this is a certain cultural hegemony, a sort of globish, which helps trade and easy travel perhaps, but there must surely be more to communication, to the infinite richness of English, than trade, profit and mere usefulness.
English is above all beautiful, by its very nature. And certainly not easy! The great writers have risen to the challenge of English, and so in our way should we. It has its rules, its quirks and eccentricities. It has its nature, which has shifted over the centuries, and continues to shift. I think we need to live closely with its nature, "fit into it", like a pair of shoes, let it tell us what is best.
What makes for "good English"?
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