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By the Light of Owen Barfield
In response to an earlier post on this blog, Vassilis Zambaras posted a comment in which he quoted from Owen Barfield‘s classic Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning. I had read the book early in my twenties and frankly was too callow, both as a reader and a writer, to grasp the fullness of Barfield’s insights. Vassilis’s comment sent me back to the book, though, and I’ve been discovering just how much I missed the first time through.Read More
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The Freedom to Blaspheme
I imagine we have increasing instances of this to look forward to on the way to the Romney-Palin ticket in 2012: Christian activists are due to stage a protest outside the Welsh Assembly tomorrow over Patrick Jones’s poetry collection Darkness Is Where the Stars Are, which they describe as “ugly, indecent and blasphemous”.Read More
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Taslima Nasrin takes refuge “somewhere in Europe”
“Bangladeshi writer ‘exiled again’”. Let us all hope Taslima Nasrin at last finds peace and the creative freedom she deserves. Stepping back a bit from Taslima’s travails…: It would be illuminating to see a “diaspora map” showing the flow of intellectual resources—i.e., writers, artists, scientists, academics, etc.—from oppressive parts of the world to relatively free parts of the world. Something like this map tracing the first Jewish diasporas.Read More
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On the Letters of Ted Hughes V
Finishing The Letters of Ted Hughes—which I managed to do while recovering from a nasty bout with the flu—left me with a strange mixture of exaltation and biting sadness: something, I mean, beyond the sadness that books like this (biographies, letters, etc.) inevitably inspire because they end in the grave.Read More
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Poetic Brutality…
I launched into reading this article with an expectation of yet another clash of fundamentalisms, of the sort that has plagued Bangladeshi poet Taslima Nasrin. The outlines were familiar: a lecturer, one Sanjay M G, is attacked for reciting a poem “with ‘objectionable content….’ ” But it turns out the content involved a slur against a long-deceased political leader, Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha Empire (d. 1680).Read More
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Nut-Case Update
“Thirteen people have been arrested in Turkey as part of an investigation into an ultra-nationalist gang reported to be planning the assassination of Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.” ==> Full Article HereRead More
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Governmental Gutlessness
Here is the latest news in the increasingly absurd failure of “the world’s largest democracy” to protect Taslima Nasrin’s freedom not only to speak and write, but to walk in the open air without fear for her life. Now she is being refused the opportunity to receive a prestigious international award in her own country.Read More
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Congratulations to Taslima Nasreen
I just stumbled across this draft of a post that I failed to actually post back in January…. “Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has been chosen for the prestigious Simone de Beauvoir feminist award in recognition of her writing on rights for women,” reports Sify News.Read More
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Congratulations to Taslima Nasrin
“Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has been chosen for the prestigious Simone de Beauvoir feminist award in recognition of her writing on rights for women,” reports Sify News.Read More
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A Digital Recipe for Free Speech?
A distressing article about censorship in Iran ends with an account of one writer, novelist Reza Ghassemi, who dodged the repressions of Ahmadinejad’s “cultural ministry” by issuing his latest novel in PDF format. In this he joins our own Bill Knott in committing works to digital packets instead of paper.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
