( a poem released last night at local monthly poetry meet the Cellar Bards)
Strolling down the supermarkets aisles
my wavering willpower in temptations path
special offers buy one, get one free
rows of ready meals, beer and crisps
on spur of moment, shopping list changes
as I walk on by must try to stay focussed
find some sustainable coffee, organic chocolate
candles and bubble bath that ease the mind
to help distract from capitalists obsessions
with greed and unmitigated power.
Advertisements release hunger
suppress the inner need for control
misconcieving and wetting appetite
subliminally like others forget to think
act like a sheep and buy another drink
a trick that makes me angry
when environmental degradation
and human rights abuse continue to grow
stuck among endless rows of plastic
processed food, that looks and tastes like shit.
Shopping can be a political act
what we choose to boycott, buy or consume
in the meantime will grab a notepad and pen
sip milk of human kindness that never ends
cancel out all walls of oppression
seek outsretched arms of affiliation
avoid goods stolen from Palestinian land
find free keys of love, for heart to rest
rekindle the gift of friendship
places to ditch superfluouos crap
Israel is expected to host the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2019,
following Netta Barzilai’s win at the 2018 edition. Israel is
shamelessly using Eurovision as part of its official Brand Israel
Strategy which presents “Israel’s prettier face” to whitewash and
distract attention from its war crimes against Palestinians.
Israel massacred 62 Palestinians in Gaza, including six children just two days after its 2018 Eurovision win. That same evening, Netta Barzilai performed a celebratory concert in Tel Aviv, hosted by the mayor, and said, “We have a reason to be happy.”
And Shortly after her win, Barzilai said she looked forward to
the world seeing “the Israeli carnival” when Jerusalem hosts the contest
next year. People will see “how wonderful we are, what a vibe we have.
Best people… the best place in the world.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called Barzilai “the best ambassador of Israel,” underlining his far-right government’s art-washing agenda.
Inspired by conscientious
artists who shunned Sun City in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s,
Palestinian artists and cultural organizations have called for
nonviolent pressure in the form of boycotts on Israel until it complies
with its obligations under international law.
Last year
alone Israel killed 290 Palestinians and injured more than 20,000,
including thousads shot with live sniper fire. Most of these fatalites
and injuries took place in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians have been
demonstratng for the end of Israel's criminal siege and for the right to
return to the homes that they have been expelled from since 1947.
Israel effectively declared
itself an apartheid state by adopting the "Jewish Nation-State Law."
last year, Palestinian citizens are now constitutionally denied equal
rights, further enshrining racist discrimination aginst Palestinians
with Israeli
citizenship. Against this backdrop of escalating brutality and
entrenched apartheid. Israel is desperate for new ways to whitewash its
violations of Palestinian human rights.
Straight out of apartheid South Africa’s propaganda playbook,
Israel uses the arts to explicitly deflect growing condemnations of its
violations of Palestinian human rights. Israel is using Eurovision to
art-wash its egregious crimes against the Palestinian people..
Watched
by 186 million people last year Eurovision is a hugely popular
televised event. But already, hundreds of prominent artists including
former finalists and one winner, legendary artists, trade unions and
political parties. have supported the Palestinians call to boycott the
contest, if hosted by Israel regardless of its location.
In September, about 140 artists, including musicians, writers, actors,
directors, novelists, and poets, including six Israeli artists, signed a letter calling for the boycott
of the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest
.https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/sep/07/boycott-eurovision-song-contest-hosted-by-israel
The letter demanded the song contest should be boycotted if it is “hosted by Israel
while it continues its grave, decades-old violations of Palestinian
human rights.”
“Until Palestinians can enjoy freedom, justice and equal rights, there
should be no business-as-usual with the state that is denying them their
basic rights," the letter said.
And tens of thousands of people have signed petitions urging broadcasters and participants to refuse to go.
The European Broadcasting Union has since written
to the Israeli prime minister requesting that "visitors to Israel be
allowed to travel anywhere without restrictions regardless of their
political opinions or sexual orientation, and that [Israeli public
broadcaster] Kan have complete freedom in editing the broadcast".
However, some have dubbed this a pointless demand
given that it is a request that concerns itself only with the contest,
and not on lifting the systematic repression placed upon Palestinians
and vocal supporters of their liberation all year round.
Even if Netanyahu agrees, the contest would be taking place in a country
that continues to colonise Palestinians through an illegal occupation,
regular house demolitions, discriminatory laws, and its deadly blockade.
How
can an event like the Eurovision Song Contest, despite its slogan of
“Dare to Dream,” not be deemed complicit with the subjugation of
Palestine by allowing Israel to play host?
This
year will be the fifty-second year of the occupation of Palestine,
and is unlikely to be the last. Let us do more than just dare to
dream of a free Palestine but work towards it and support it in
whatever way we can. The normalisation of Israeli Apartheid is part
of a broader structure of erasure and violence.. We must refuse to be
complicit. Until Palestine is free.
Join more than 35,000 people and sign the petition to boycott Eurovision hosted by Israel!
In Solidarity.
We, the undersigned residents of Europe and beyond, call on
members of the European Broadcasting Union -- our public broadcasters --
to withdraw from the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Israel, to
avoid being complicit in Israel's ongoing violations of Palestinian
human rights. We support the many prominent artists, including former
contestants, who have endorsed the appeal of Palestinian artists and
journalists to turn their backs on Eurovision 2019. We urge songwriters and performers to boycott the 2019 contest
hosted by Israel just as they once boycotted the apartheid regime in
South Africa.
Celebrated beloved author, American
literary legend and visionary Ursula K. Le Guin who wrote science fiction, fantasy,
essays and poetry, who we lost a year ago today. A quote of hers is pemanently embedded
on this blog. Have written about her before, this is a vastly updated post based on previous ones. Her body of work encompasses novels, including the famous and beloved Earthsea
novels, a series of epic fantasy novels that set the blueprint for the genre. novellas, short stories, poetry, criticism and more (including
speculative anthropology). She published her first short story at
thirty-two, and while perhaps the chief characteristic of her early work
was, as she says, an "open romanticism," Le Guin's work gradually
became, again in her own words, "something harder, stronger, and more
complex." It also became the site of radical emancipatory visions,
courageous and profound reimaginings of the way life is, and a beautiful
yet clear-eyed utopianism. It became, in other words, extraordinary.
She was a giant of 20th century literature. On her shoulders stand not
just classics of genre fiction but everything from Salman Rushdie’s
postcolonial magical realism to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter
mega-franchise.
Le Guin used science fiction and fantasy not as a genre but a “method”.
Future societies, distant planets and magical realms provided “a safe,
sterile laboratory for trying out ideas”.
Ursula K. Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley California, on October 21, 1929.
Le Guin’s parents were anthropologists, their summer home “a
gathering place for scientists, writers, students and California
Indians”. Their interactions with Native Americans seem to have laid the
basis for much of her “Hainish cycle” of novels, which explore a
variety of planets through the culture shock of the ambassadors sent to
meet them.
One of the visitors was Robert Oppenheimer. Le Guin would later use Oppenheimer as the model for her protagonist in The Dispossessed.
Ursula had three older brothers,Karl, Theodore, and Clifton.The family had a large book collection, and the siblings all became interested in reading while they were young She might be best-known nowadays for the groundbreaking book ' The Left Hand of Darkness' a
science fiction novel published in 1969 set in the Hainish universe, Le
Guin often used science fiction to transgress normalised conceptions of
gender and sexuality.Not content to limit her incisive examinations of
society to fiction and allegory, Le Guin spoke and wrote frequently
about contemporary politics. She often described fantasy and fiction as a
tool for social change, a way of imagining the world not as it but as
it should be. Her criticisms in both fiction and beyond it , often
focused on social inequality and the unsustainability of capitalism .
Her novel ' The Dispossessed' was a thought experiment on how an
anarchist society would work. The novel begins with the journey of the
physicist Shevek from the planet Anarres, which was settled by
anarchists a century and a half previously, to the planet Urras, a
caricature of our own world in the 1970's.
In alternating chapters, it tells the story of Shevek's life on Anarres
and its discontents, leading up to his decision to leave, and his
adventures on Urras and how grotesque a society based on power and
profit seems in his eyes.
A truly mesmerising read, given us an idea of how a possible anarchist
society could function and, more importantly, the moral foundations of
such a society. Anarres is flawed and falls short of its ideas of
individual freedom, mutual aid and voluntary coperation, but is still
infinitely preferable to the money- hungry, power-hungry nation of
Urreas.
In short my sort of Utopia. It is a society without government, laws,
police, courts, corporations,.money, salaries, profit, organised
religion or private property. Its people speak an artificial language, a
kind of benign Orwellian Newspeak, which lacks words for concepts such
as 'debt or 'winner,'
“We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your
own freedom. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid
between individuals. We have no government but the single principle of
free association. We have no states, no nations, no presidents, no
premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords,
no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars. Nor do we have
much else. We are sharers, not owners. We are not prosperous. None of us
is rich. None of us is powerful. If it is Anarres you want, it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with epty hands. You must come to it alone, and naked, as the child comes into the world, into his future, without any past, without any property, wholly dependent on other people for his life. You canot take what you have not bee given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere,"
―
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Le Guin would write more than 20 novels, 100 short stories, seven essay
collections and more than a dozen books of poetry. Despite many of her
protaganists being men, she always considered herself a feminist, but
was always confident in questioning societal conditioning and how it
impacted the human perspective on gender and sexuality.
Le Guin used a 1986 speech to young women that
today sounds made for the #MeToo movement. She said, “In this barbaric
society, when women speak truly they speak subversively. They can’t help
it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you
subvert. We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our
truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.
That’s what I want — to hear you erupting.”
In 2010 at the age of 81 she arrived in the digital age and started a blog
It included everything from moving reflections on her cat to wry
observations about coming to terms with her advancing age, " If I'm
ninety and believe I'm forty five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying
to get out of the bathtub."
Le Guin combined hostility to all oppression and war with extreme
scepticism towards collective action, tinged with both anarchism and
Taoism. Le Guin was closely aligned with anarchist politics. In the 1960s,
she was involved in activism, including opposition to the Vietnam War,
and began to identify with pacifism and anarchism. She immersed herself
in a broad range of writing, including work by Gandhi, Martin Luther
King and even Peter Kropotkin.
While her work often celebrates anarchism, Le Guin dodged labeling
herself as such in a 2016 interview, somewhat halfheartedly describing
herself as a "bourgeois housewife." Regardless of how she viewed her own
politics, she was certainly sympathetic toward anarchism as a set of
ideals and practices.
For her, freedom is a responsibility of the individual, not a
battle between classes. But if that makes her writings hardly a roadmap
to the revolution, as a reminder to look up to that horizon they are
irreplaceable.
Le Guin's appreciation for the natural world, her interest in
environmental issues, and her questioning of capitalist exploitation are
evident throughout her work. One can find in most of Le Guin’s fiction
and nonfiction hard-won wisdom about living a balanced life.
Published in 1975, "The New Atlantis" offers an early,
short-story-length warning about climate change. In a near future of
climatic and geological upheaval, a man on a bus announces to the
narrator, Belle, that a new continent is rising from the depths of the
sea. “Manhattan Island is now under 11 feet of water at low tide, and
there are oyster beds in Ghirardelli Square,” she confirms. The oceans
are rising due to polar melt, and Antarctica may soon be habitable,
because of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, a polluted Portland, Oregon, has
no electric power in the wake of earthquakes.The story not only
presents a vision of environmental decline and authoritarian dystopia,
but it also offers a glimpse of utopia. Belle, Simon, and their
compatriots still have enough spirit to imagine a better day, when
humankind might exist in harmony with what rises up out of the
transformed ocean.
The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Neebulas, seven Hugos and SFWA'S Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards.
Author and Marxist China Mieville observed that Le Guin had a
"slow-burning fury at injustices" and" a very sharp and unremitting
diagnosis of things in the social world."
This slow burning fury was on display in 2014 when Le Guin was awarded
the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the
National Book Foundation.This is one of literature's most prestigious honors, recognizing
individuals who have made an exceptional impact on the United States'
literary heritage. http://www.nationalbook.org/amerletters_2014_uleguin.html#.Wmfeh6hl_IU
Her speech quickly went viral and was turned
into memes on social media:
“Books
aren’t just commodities,” she said in that speech. “The profit motive is
often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its
power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any
human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and
change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."
The National Book Award speech wasn't the first or last time Le Guin
used her voice and position to challenge those in power. She refused to
support sci-fi/fantasy anthologies that only published male authors.
After the 2016 election, she wrote about the despair and frustration
felt by so many in that moment. She defended Standing Rock protesters,
comparing that struggle to the civil rights struggle in Selma, Alabama.
As we braced ourselves for the beginning of the Trump presidency, Le
Guin wrote, "I know what I want. I want to live with courage, with
compassion, in patience, in peace." And she did.
The story that sums up her philosophy borrows a thought experiment
from Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Henry James. The Ones Who Walk Away From
Omelas imagines a society peaceful, happy, equal and free — except for
one child, condemned to perpetual torment as the price of Utopia.
For some, not even Utopia justifies that oppression. “They walk ahead
into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards
is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of
happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not
exist. But they seem to know where they are going.”
Like the people at the end of this story the people who make the revolution will decide
that a better world is possible and set out to find it. Her legacy is clear, it's for us, as
writers and readers, to think deeply, work with love and discipline, and
to have the courage to believe in the transformative power of fiction,
and of imagining other realities, free of capitalism another world can be possible. She was simply brilliant: as a writer, as a thinker, and as a human being. She is greaty missed. Thank you Ursula K. Le Guin
How It Seems To Me - Ursula K. Le Guin
In the vast abyss before time, self
is not, and soul commingles
with mist, and rock, and light. In time,
soul brings the misty self to be.
Then slow time hardens self to stone
while ever lightening the soul,
till soul can loose its hold of self
and both are free and can return
to vastness and dissolve in light,
the long light after time.
Civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King is honored with a holiday in his memory today. Martin Luther King Day is commemorated on the third
Monday in January each year. This year’s official holiday is Monday,
Jan. 21, a week after King’s actual birthday on Jan. 15.
King
was born Jan. 15, 1929 in Atlanta. He rose to national prominence when
he led the boycott of the Montgomery’s transit system after Rosa Parks,
an African-American, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a
city bus. King later helped form the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference and went on to lead protests throughout the South and, in
1963, was a central figure in the March on Washington. King was killed by an assassin on April 4, 1968 in Memphis.
MLK Day is a federal holiday, though it was not made official until 18 years after his assassination.
Efforts
to honor King with a federal holiday began just months after his April
4, 1968 death. Those efforts failed, as did a 1979 vote by Congress that
came after King's widow, Coretta Scott King, spoke out in favor of the
day. Momentum for the holiday grew in 1980 when entertainer Stevie
Wonder released "Happy Birthday" in King's honor, leading to a petition
calling for MLK Day and, in 1983, House passage of a holiday bill.
Though Martin Luther King Day is an American holiday, the man himself was thoroughly international. His political thoughts traverses all borders.Like so many strugglers in the long fight against racism, King appreciated that it was, at it's heart a global project.
Many years later despite some victory's and gains, the march for
equality is unfinished, and for some his dream is unrealised, take for instance the case of the Palestinians who are daily imprisoned.
We cannot let go of Dr King's dream, because, surely it is everybody's
dream, we must continuously try to change the world, remember those in
the U.S.A fighting for jobs and freedom, a land still lanquishing to
find itself, while perpetrating injustice, discrimination and
inequality. A country that imprisons more of their citizens than any
other country in the world. African Americans in particular, though they
are 12% of the population, make up 38% of the state prison population,
despite their crimes being no different from their white and hispanic
counterparts.
Sadly King's legacy is gravely dishonoured every day that Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office, but in the Trump era. However Dr King's words can still be be both sobering and inspring, his words are a
timeless representation of the struggles that disenfranchised people face..Lets continue to honor him and continue to live his legacy
through our actions. In the face of cruelty and injustice, speak out, and speak up, for surely history will
judge us all for our silence. we can still find the courage to stand up and say enough.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor … it must be demanded by the oppressed!” King determined. Reminding us that “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in the moments
of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at during times of
challenge and controversy,” He also warned us that “We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools,”
Here is an old poem of mine in his honour
Strength to Love
Martin Luther King had a dream
That still today stirs our conscience,
He rejected violence to oppose racial injustice
Spread a message of peace, love and understanding,
His only weapons were his words and faith
As he marched in protest with his fellow man,
A force for good, but radical with intention
Pursued civil disobedience was not afraid
of confrontation,
We are all born equal under skin
This noble struggle never stops within,
The causes of poverty must still be eradicated
There is so much more room for change,
As fresh iniquities call, lets keep hope alive
Standing firm let our voices ring out,
Keep sharing deeds of deep principle
In the name of pride and in the name of love,
We are all still citizens of the world
As Martin Luther carries on reminding,
“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.
The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”
We must continue to resist and overcome,
One day soon, all our dreams will be realised.
The prime minister is to consider
repealing the Human Rights Act after Brexit, despite promising she is
“committed” to its protections, a minister has revealed.The House of Lords EU Justice Sub-Committee has exchanged correspondence with the Government about clarifying the wording of the Political Declaration regarding the European Convention on Human Rights. The government will decide on the future of the landmark legislation
once “the process of leaving the EU concludes”, a letter to a
parliamentary inquiry says. The wording was described as “troubling” by the Lords EU Justice
Sub-Committee, which warned the letter casts doubt on repeated pledges
to protect the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
“Is the government sincere in its commitment to the ECHR?”, asked Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, the committee’s chair.
“If so, why has it failed to give assurances that it will not
repeal or reform the Human Rights Act, which in essence incorporates the
rights set out in the ECHR into domestic British law?”
The idea for the creation of the ECHR was proposed in the early 1940s
while the Second World War was still raging across Europe. It was
developed to ensure that governments would never again be allowed to
dehumanise and abuse people’s rights with impunity, and to help fulfil
the promise of ‘never again’.
The ECHRwas formally drafted by the
Council of Europe in Strasbourg during the summer of 1949. Over 100
members of parliament from across Europe assembled to draft the charter.
The United Kingdom was the very first nation to ratify the convention
in March of 1951.
The Convention came into full effect on the 3rd September 1953. It
was intended to be a simple, flexible roundup of universal rights, whose
meaning could grow and adapt to society’s changing needs over time. Not
only were ordinary people to be protected from abuse by the state, but
duties were to be placed on those states to protect individuals. It has
been hugely important in raising standards and increasing awareness of
human rights across CoE member states, and beyond.
Until 1998, the only way UK citizens could bring a legal challenge
relying on their rights under the ECHR was to go the European Court of
Human Rights, and this process could be lengthy and expensive. The Human
Rights Act (HRA) allows the rights guaranteed by the ECHR to be
enforced in UK courts – increasing everyone’s access to justice in this
country.
The Human Rights Act bought the ECHR into British Law, meaning that
judicial decisions on human rights cases could be reached within the
domestic legal system, building up a body of specifically domestic case
law to refer to in the future. There is no justification for editing or
repealing the Human Rights Act itself, that would make Britain the
first European country to regress in the level and degree of our human
rights protection. It is through times of recession and times of
affluence alike that our rights ought to be the foundation of our
society, upon which the Magna Carta, the Equality Act and the Human
Rights Act were built – protecting the most vulnerable citizens from the
powerful and ensuring those who govern are accountable to the rule of
law.
We should not allow politicians to take away our universal privileges
for the benefit of a chosen few and repeal legislation that has been
crucial to lifes of so many ordinary people.But the state has shown time and time again it's every interest
in preventing light from being shone into dark corners.
The Human Rights Act was created to protect us all as individuals from
abuses by the state and state bodies, allows UK nationals access to
rights contained in the ECHR which
allows us over 2,000 protections, ensuring all authorities treat people
with fairness , dignity and respect,that together helps us hold authorities to account when things go wrong.
Worrying though gradually piece by piece the
Tory's have tried to take away our basic freedoms and rights and want to
overturn recognised principles that we should all be proud of. despite this many remain fervent in their support for this Act because of its
positive contribution to society and the message that it serves
globally that we have enshrined an international human rights convention
into UK law. The Human Rights Act is ours, scrapping it will take away
the rights of everyone, and it is the most vulnerable that will suffer
the most.
A useful reminder of whether the Act needs to change, or should remain
is to look at the list of rights protected by the Act and ask yourself
,"Which one would I give away? Which one would I not want for myself or
for members of my family?"the right to life? the right not to be
tortured? the right to a fair trial? http:/legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1
Sometimes we can't appreciate the value of something until it is taken away.We have to continue to stand up for the Act. A few years ago Theresa pointed out that the Tories were seen as the
nasty party. Most thought it was a lament. It is looking more and more
like a boast.Theresa May simply can't be trusted .I for one would not put anything past her. Whether you voted to leave or remain in the European Union, you did not vote for fewer rights.
Sad to hear that the prolific poet Mary Oliver, died on Thursday aged 83 from lymphoma cancer at her home in Hobe Sound, Florida.
Mary won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for her collection of poems
American Primitive. Her works included White Pine, West Wind and the
2017 anthology Devotions.Among the other accolades
she received during the course of her illustrious career, she was also
awarded the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems in 1992, as
well as the Lannan Literary Award for lifetime achievement in 1998.
She was born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio, where she often found escape from a difficult childhood walking in the woods.She attended Ohio State University and
Vassar College, but did not graduate from either institution. In 1953,
at the age of 17, she visited Steepletop, the home of Edna St. Vincent
Millay. She would eventually become friends with the poet’s sister and
lived there for several years, organizing Millay’s papers; it was there
in the late 1950s that she met photographer, Molly Malone Cook,who became her life partner and literary agent for over 40 years until she died in 2005.She dedicated much of her work to Molly over the years.
In more than 15 collections of poetry and
other works of prose, Oliver’s writing focused on the one thing we
all have in common: We are all, inherently, part of the Earth we call
home. That understanding was part of what made her writing so accessible
and profound. Urging us to pay attention to nature for inspiration is
something that, in our plugged-in and always-on society, made Oliver
especially relevant. She wrote about human mortality with the tone of someone counting her blessings.Her view of death; and what a worthwhile
life should feel like, was summed up in her much-loved 1992 poem, The
Summer Day. First published in 1992, it’s a pointed and potent reminder not to take for granted “your one wild and precious life.”
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
One of Oliver’s most famous poems was “Wild Geese,”
which I post below. and include a video of her reading it. In it, Oliver
offers reassurance and gives us permission to be ourselves.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver was a hugely influential and urgently necessary poet including countless readers to whom poetry as an institution was
often inaccessible or opaque. I will end this post with the followng poem from her pen, which acts as a kind of epitaph. R.I.P Mary Oliver, your words live on and will continue to bring comfort, joy and respite to many.
When death comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
As the clock ticks down over Brexit, and the deal offered by Theresa May is rejected, and she clings desperately on to power while claiming to be reaching out to other parties but at same time wont budge one inch.,it is clear to many that she simply can't be trusted.
Her sudden repositioning of herelf as a kindly consensus builder is an extraorfdinary illustration of her utter delusion and her seemingly endless willingness to completely reverse her political stance in order to preserve her own personal self interest.
Lets not forget that the 21-month period initially agreed was from the beginning never, ever going to be
sufficient to negotiate something as complex as a new trading
relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
By saying that the door is suddenly open to the opposition parties to help her find a solution to the Brexit shambles she has created, she's brazenly demonstrating her incompetance too, by hastily attempting to do the consesus building that she actually needed to do at the very beginning of the Brexit process.
After suffering the worst parliamentary defeat by a British Prime
Minister in history and refusing to stand down, Jeremy Corbyn mocked how unreliable her confidence and supply
agreement was for maintaining her minority government: “Last week they
lost a vote on the Finance bill, that’s what called supply. Yesterday
they lost by the biggest margin ever, that’s what’s regarded as
confidence.
“By any convention of this House, by any precedence, loss of both
confidence and supply should mean they do the right thing and resign.”
The SNP’s Pete Wishart added: “She’s lost a quarter of her Cabinet,
170 members of her backbench want her gone, she’s experienced the
biggest defeat in parliamentary history, what shred of credibility has
her Government got left? For goodness sake, Prime Minister won’t you
just go?”
But though the diminished government limped through to fight another day in parliament, it looks weaker than ever, Theresa May is certainly not looking strong and stable.
Yet the rancid Daily Mail reverts back to type, in such a horrible misrepresentation of reality. It is so typical of Tory MPS and the Tory press to now blame Jeereny Corbyn for the Brexit chaos. The bloody Daily Mail has been calling for a no-deal Brexit for months.
Lets be prepared for another round of hateful Tory smear campaigns against the Labour leader, this time over Brexit.What is clear is that after the historic and humiliating defeat for
the Prime Minister, there is absolutely no confidence in her Brexit‘deal.
The Prime Minister must not come back and try to pass her deal again
in an attempt to continue to run down the clock. It is as dead as a
Monty Python parrot. It has ceased to exist. Polls actually show public opinion has steadily turned against Brexit.the whole mess has highlighted serious flaws in our political system . Whatever side uou are, leave or remain, the system is clearly not working for this country.
How can anyone seriously now put their faith in Theresa May after all her blatantly self serving reversals is absolutely baffling, many now believing it's time to let the people decide and call a General election immediately.Because without trust you simply cannot lead, it's time for Theresa May to do the decent thing and go.
