Inspired by veterans at the site I wrote this song tonight. My gift. Feel free to add, subtract, change, whatever it takes to make this a great song. We have blood and dirt on our hands from all these son’s and daughter’s commands we never really did very much
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My journey with AIDS…and more!: Meanderings of a mental health client in good company
Originally posted on My journey with AIDS…and more!: Would it be much of a surprise, even to the casual reader, that I am a mental health client? I have been since soon after my conclusive HIV diagnosis in 1990, although I wish now that I had sought such accompaniment long
Continue readingScripturient: Horace and him. And maybe me, too.
Horace and Me, subtitled Life lessons from an Ancient Poet, is a recent book by Harry Eyres (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2013) about his efforts to connect the dots of his modern life to meaning via the ancient circuitry of a classical Latin poet. It attracted me because these past few years I
Continue readingPostArctica: Saying Goodbye To Summer
There are so many ways we say goodbye to summer A woman’s voice singing by the canal The sharp contrasting light between buildings downtown The thinning tourist throngs The empty […]
mark a rayner: Alexandra Leaving – a short history
This song is based on a poem by the Greek poet, Constantine P. Cavafy. His source material was a story from Plutarch about Mark Anthony, as he watched his allies and supporters leave Alexandra before his enemy Octavian attacked the city. The original poem is called “The god forsakes Antony,” and is a meditation on the […]
Continue readingScripturient: These Old Bones
These old bones; You wouldn’t think they’d cut a rug jitterbug dance between the rain drops but once I could. Once I did. Danced to the music, lover in hand, that time in the park when we didn’t care laughing in the face of the storm. The rain, t…
Continue readingScripturient: The gems of Salomé
I was perhaps 11 or 12 when I first encountered Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé. Some of it, at least. At the time, I knew nothing of Wilde, his writing, or even much about theatre in general. After all, I was in grade seven or eight. It would be a …
Continue readingTHE CAREGIVERS' LIVING ROOM A Blog by Donna Thomson: THE WEIGHT OF LOVE IN DEMENTIA CAREGIVING
Recently I had the immense pleasure of reading every poignant and fascinating word in a literary magazine called The Sun. The January, 2016 edition is on the subject of care. I highly recommend this magazine (and particularly this edition) to car…
Continue readingScripturient: World Poetry Day
Today, March 21, is World Poetry Day. Do you care? Not that I’m cynical about poetry – I think it’s important stuff. Poetry is far more important than, say, hockey. The Kardashians. The Oscars. The budget. The latest iPhone or iP…
Continue readingScripturient: Reading Pablo Neruda
One hardly expects poets to generate spirited debate in the media these days*, but they did, not that long ago, well within my own lifetime. Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was one of those who sparked great, passionate emotions in people, for both his writin…
Continue readingMolly'sBlog: Love Poems of Ovid
Love Poems of Ovid selected and translated by Horace Gregory, Mentor Books, Toronto, 1964 Ovid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid) – full name Publius Ovidius Naso – is considered one of the greats of Latin literature, up there with Virgil and Horace. Certainly his ‘Metamorphosis’ is a great work, one that has influenced many other
Continue readingMolly'sBlog: Love Poems of Ovid
Love Poems of Ovid selected and translated by Horace Gregory, Mentor Books, Toronto, 1964Ovid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid) – full name Publius Ovidius Naso – is considered one of the greats of Latin literature, up there with Virgil and Hor…
Continue readingMolly'sBlog: Love Poems of Ovid
Love Poems of Ovid selected and translated by Horace Gregory, Mentor Books, Toronto, 1964Ovid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid) – full name Publius Ovidius Naso – is considered one of the greats of Latin literature, up there with Virgil and Hor…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: In Flanders Fields? It’s time to encourage another generation of school kids to read some better poems from the Great War
PHOTOS: In Flanders Fields? The reality of the Great war’s battlefields: squalor, incompetence, mechanized industrial death. Below: John McCrae, and a Great War poet still worth reading, Wilfred Owen. A civilization that forgets its poetry is barely worthy of the name. Like fiction and unlike non-fiction, poetry is how a
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Hollow Men – Poem and Commentary, for All Hallow’s Eve
Want something spooky, even terrifying, for Halloween? Read this. The Hollow Men: I think this truly epic poem (one place where the word is meaningfully used) should be read at least once a year, if not once a month, just to remind ourselves of what is actually going on. It
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Hollow Men – Poem and Commentary, for All Hallow’s Eve
Want something spooky, even terrifying, for Halloween? Read this. The Hollow Men: I think this truly epic poem (one place where the word is meaningfully used) should be read at least once a year, if not once a month, just to remind ourselves of what is actually going on. It
Continue readingKersplebedeb | Kersplebedeb: Halifax Double Book Launch: LUMPEN (Ed Mead) and ESCAPING THE PRISM (Jalil Muntaqim)
WHEN: Saturday, October 24at 7:00pm WHERE: Plan B Halifax, 2180 Gottingen Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3K 3B2 facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/624566001016376/ Comrades in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have organized the first joint book launch for Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead and Escaping the Prism … Fade to Black by Jalil Muntaqim. Ed Mead will be
Continue readingScripturient: The Road Not Taken
I was surprised to read a recent piece in the New York Post that suggests a poem I have long loved was actually not what I thought it was about. It was one of those epiphanies that made me reassess my attitude not only towards the poem but towards what
Continue readingScripturient: Reading Tennyson’s Ulysses
Last weekend, while watching the delightful movie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I heard Bill Nighy make a wedding speech that included lines from one of my favourite poems: Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson. I recognized it immediately and it made me open the poem and read it again.
Continue readingmark a rayner: Did I Miss Anything?
Question frequently asked by students after missing a class by Tom Wayman The Astonishing Weight of the Dead. Vancouver: Polestar, 1994. Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here we sat with our hands folded on our desks in silence, for the full two hours Everything. I gave an exam worth 40
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