I look forward to the peace
conferences of the future
when lies, hidden behind speeches,
shall have their smiles blown away
by the dove’s wings, fanning in silence.

RS Thomas, from ‘One Day’

‘To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves & the world – & at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.’

All that is Solid Melts into Air, Marshall Berman

‘Poetry is most deeply concerned with telling us what it feels like to be alive at any given moment… Before the poets we had no evidence of what it means to be a living person on this earth.’

~ Stanley Kunitz, ‘On Poetry & Life: an Interview with Gregory Orr’

"The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.'
~A.N. Whitehead

AI-generated Alt-Text for the Great Wall of China is 'a large stone wall on a hill' - truly, wonder-free!

This book is a great way into the British Poetry Revival of the 1970s. '20 Notions on Allen Fisher' is a brilliant commentary on his methods & theories, & as helpful an insight into 'experimental' practice as I've found. A great way to put the 'mainstream' into perspective too.

Bank Holiday morning. A sunlit window, coffee, & Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed - a book filled with beautiful & troubling conversations: political, philosophical & ethical.

A game of poison around the Overton window.

To love somebody
who doesn't love you,
is like going to a temple
and worshipping the behind
of a wooden statue
of a hungry devil.

~ Lady Kasa Yakamochi

At home I knew a tree
by climbing it

Lost inside the guinep branches
I felt closer to God

And I was hidden
in a place before birth

a womb
nearing the sky

'Tu Fu’s life story is full of intrigue, interest and, at times, extreme hardship. The 19 poems presented in the book cover his writing life. Hinton uses the narrative to explore the poet’s spiritual development...'

Interesting:

The first time I read Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild, I enjoyed it. The second time I read it, I realised why I needed to read it, & why I need to read it again. A unique fusion of deep ecology, Taoist & Buddhist philosophy, homely anarchist politics & practical knowledge:

'AI fictions is its own kind of mirror. Most stories about artificial intelligence are not about the nature of machine minds. Most are about the paradox of humanity's own inhumanity, our legacy of treating ourselves & one another as mere machines...'
~Shannon Vallor

'The problem with our AI mirrors is not that they are evil, or that they wish to replace or exterminate us. These are pure, unadulterated fantasies... The problem is that when we gaze in our AI mirrors today, we see only machines looking back. We no longer know what we are.'
~Shannon Vallor