Do go and see Shame: Slut-Shaming, on at the Edinburgh Fringe in Studio Five, George Square. Directed by a friend of mine, Alice Butler, this is an extraordinary multi-media take on a vile contemporary phenomenon, with which I’m sure we’re all familiar. What it’s really about is hatred of women; and therefore what it’s really really about is womb envy, the same old story – men getting their retaliation in first. Does that matter to you, bedroom-confined geek cowboy? Are you really so uncertain about paternity – your own future prospects, or perhaps the circumstances of your own conception? They used to think it was the west wind that did it, and until very recently nobody’s been sure; shall we all (us chaps, us cheery, insecure, frightened men) get the old DNA tested? Now, there could be the final surprise …

Here are the section headings I used in my 2001 book, Writing the Passions: many of them are crying out for a further essay; or possibly fragment:

Disavowal and the Body
The Humane and the Animate
Towards a Re-Animation of the Passions: On Strange Plateaus
The Psychotic Twins
Textual Passions
On Cooking, Being Greedy, and Listening to Music
Crime Passionel
On How to Pathologise
The Vicissitudes of Plenitude

Ah well – those are only the headings from the first chapter, with nine further chapters to go. But there will be world enough. And time.

Here is a fragment, one of several I shall be posting:

… at the meeting in the 1970s of the IRC (Institute for Resistance to Contentment), we came across this fragment. It was stained, and it appeared as though various bits and pieces were missing; though who can know? It seemed to refer to the time when I, with Fabor Riccienzi and Bruna Newman, were reminiscing about the dreadful events of – oh when? I forget when – but there were, of course, the raids. The raids were continent-wide, none of us here could have forgotten then. So much was lost; even before we have begun (have we begun? I forget). Let us suppose we have begun … coughing and sweltering in the endless irradiation …

There appears to be no signature. The signaturemdoes not appear. Instead, there is a copy of an invitation to fast-track forward to the World Museum of Peppers.

This week sees the publication of my next pamphlet, Bristol: 21 Poems. It contains ‘The Bristol Sonnets’, thirteen of them, and here is the first one to whet the appetite:

John Cabot

I stand on this far stretch of New-found-land,
Sea-birds swoop low. The king who gave me ‘full
And free authority’ to sail so wild
Is in his counting-house, no doubt. I pull
Fish from the teeming sea with my bare hands;
My men are gone inland, but I must stare,
Although I know no ship will ever come
Across the lengths of ocean, in the glare
Of a sun no Christian soul has seen before.
My ships are sunk, raw matchwood for the waves,
And I am old. How many years have passed
Since I set sail? Behind me lie the graves
Of those whose lust for spices drove them more
Than life itself before the storm’s dread blast.

I’m proposing to use this blog to publish poetry and political comment. Here is a poem I published some years ago, which is an adapted translation from the Chinese:

 

Poeme Trouvee

 

Some years later both the
Young man’s parents died; and he showed
Such filial piety in his mourning
That a divine fungus appeared on the roof
Of his mourning-hut; and the grain
In that district grew three
Ears on reach stalk. The local
Authorities reported this to the Emperor, and informed him too
That several dozen
white swallows had nested in the rafters
Of our hero’s roof. The Emperor
Was so impressed that he immediately raised
The young man’s rank.