The Magic of No Escape
Growing up in a Christian world (I was an Anglican choirboy for many of my most impressionable early years), my mind has been suffused...
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Alistair Appleton
- Jan 9
- 6 min
Sitting Out practice
The January full moon over the Seven Sisters, 2022. WHAT IS SITTING OUT? I’ve been exploring a practice called ‘sitting out’. It’s not a...
714 views27 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Dec 15, 2022
- 2 min
Again in the Black Cloud / J.H. Prynne
I finally feel inspired to post a poem from one of my favourite poets of all time, Jeremy Prynne. I've written about my fascination with...
317 views6 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Nov 27, 2022
- 1 min
Love / Czesław Miłosz
I've had Miłosz' Collected poems sitting on my shelf for decades and just fished that out this evening. He was writing this poem in the...
317 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Nov 2, 2022
- 1 min
A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford/ Derek Mahon
This poem by Mahon is a miracle. A shed in Ireland, abandoned during the Civil War in the 1920s, has been home for fifty years to a...
308 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Oct 18, 2022
- 2 min
A Bird In the House / Robin Blaser
This poem, by the modernist San Francisco poet, Robin Blaser is the source of the word "otherous" (in the very first line) which we...
251 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Sep 5, 2022
- 1 min
Paul Hoover / House of Cedar, Rafters of Fir
Hoover is not a poet I’m familiar with but another that I discovered on the excellent Poetry Foundation app. He is riffing on the imagery...
190 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Aug 15, 2022
- 2 min
From "Out on the lawn, I lie in bed" / WH Auden
A very Audenesque Auden poem from 1933 that undercuts the dreamy, chummy pastoral of the first few stanzas with an unsettling meditation...
290 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Aug 2, 2022
- 1 min
From “Tintern Abbey” / William Wordsworth
I loved Wordsworth when I studied him as a Romantic teenager at school. And then was rather abashed in the very postmodern University...
205 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jul 19, 2022
- 1 min
The Cold Heaven / WB Yeats
On a very hot week in the UK, here is a deliciously cold poem. One of my favourites from Yeats, it is filled with dazzling phrases -...
264 views8 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jul 12, 2022
- 2 min
The Island Revisited
After a three-year gap, we made it back to Holy Island! Kirsty, Dameon and I travelled up to Arran a day early but there were high winds...
762 views5 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jul 12, 2022
- 1 min
Adlestrop / Edward Thomas
Kirsty and I were travelling back from Holy Isle, crossing Scotland from Glasgow to Edinburgh on the train. We were talking poems. And we...
198 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jul 4, 2022
- 1 min
Prayer / Carol Ann Duffy
This is a beautiful sonnet from the erstwhile UK Poet Laureate. In a 'faithless' world prayers come in all sorts of forms. I particularly...
227 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jun 27, 2022
- 1 min
Biology / Stephen O'Connor
I came across this short poem on the excellent Poetry Foundation app which randomly selects a poem for your pleasure. Stephen O'Connor is...
205 views1 comment
