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, 20236 min read
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...
877 views27 comments
Alistair Appleton
Dec 15, 20222 min read
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...
429 views6 comments
Alistair Appleton
Nov 27, 20221 min read
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...
383 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
Nov 2, 20221 min read
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...
612 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
Oct 18, 20222 min read
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...
305 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Sep 5, 20221 min read
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...
196 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
Aug 15, 20222 min read
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...
1,403 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Aug 2, 20221 min read
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...
220 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jul 19, 20221 min read
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 -...
283 views8 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jul 12, 20222 min read
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...
793 views5 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jul 12, 20221 min read
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...
202 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jul 4, 20221 min read
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...
268 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jun 27, 20221 min read
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...
213 views1 comment
Alistair Appleton
Jun 20, 20222 min read
The Swan / Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is the best-selling poet in America by a long shot. And her life, mostly in Provincetown, Massachusetts but in her last years...
567 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jun 13, 20221 min read
Thunder / Elizabeth Bishop
I love Elizabeth Bishop's poetry. The Moose and The Sandpiper are both masterpieces. But I came across this uncollected sonnet of hers...
425 views8 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jun 6, 20221 min read
Weeds / Maureen N. McLane
I came across this poem in the London Review of Books (which is the source of much of my knowledge about the world, but not often poetic...
150 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jun 3, 20226 min read
Let the stillness soak through you
I have to come clean. Sometimes I find it almost impossible to still my mind. I’m a meditation teacher, a therapist and a practitioner of...
477 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jun 2, 20228 min read
Two reasons why “This Is Us” might be the greatest piece of art of the 21st Century
Daniel and I sit down, rather solemnly. Me with a bowl of ice cream. He with a nice glass of wine. We want this to be a good and...
506 views23 comments
Alistair Appleton
May 30, 20221 min read
Lana Turner Has Collapsed / Frank O'Hara
I love Frank O'Hara's poetry and I wrote an IG post on his birthday a few months ago. "One of the most delicious and intoxicating poets I...
192 views1 comment
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