Why read Olga Tokarczuk, Winner of 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature? Find out in this fourth episode of my series on the Nobel Prize for Literature. It discusses the life of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature Laureate, the novelist Olga Tokarczuk. I give you 10 reasons to read one of the most celebrated NobelContinueContinue reading “Why read Olga Tokarczuk, Winner of 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature? Podcast Ep. 120”
Tag Archives: poetry
Podcast on 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature, W.B. Yeats.
On the podcast this week I did the second of my series on the Nobel Prize, and featured the winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature, William Butler (W.B.) Yeats.
Day Three of Thirteen Days of Looking at a Bureaucrat
The third chapter of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat is the title essay, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat’. It plays with Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and seeks to open up the reader’s mind to the many unexpected, even poetic ways you can look at this plain, humble, even despised personality, the bureaucrat.
The poet, the bureaucrat and the émigré
During the week I have been finalising my next book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, and reading some essays and poems of Marina Tvetaeva (1892-1941), the great Russian poet, collected in Art and the Light of Conscience. A strange mix, true, but that is the life of my strange mind.
‘Once I lived in heaven above, now I live among grass and brambles’
Empress Zhu wrote, “Once I lived in heaven above, in pearl palaces and jade towers; now I live among grass and brambles, my blue robes soaked in tears. I hate the drift of snow.”
My new beginning as an independent author
This week was the beginning of the next stage in my new life, la vita nuova as an independent author. After a ritual week on the liminal beauty of the Bay of Lorne in South-Eastern Australia, I transformed from a government official, wounded and now retired, to become an independent author.
Who has burned cannot be set on fire.
Yesenin’s poetic celebration of rural life was itself far removed from Yesenin’s real life.
Poet and Citizen. Struggle and Song
A new Russian writer I discovered this morning is Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-78)…
Pushkin and the Trauma of the Flood
The Russians of today show no sign of pulling down the great statue of Peter the Great that overlooks the Neva. Nor do they show any signs of cancelling Pushkin.
Strange Freedom
From this traumatised, divided old Russian Soviet poet, we learn about our own strange freedom.
The Seminar and the Last Night
Shvarts has become for me an important poet.
A New Direction for the Burning Archive
I am going to approach the blog with the advice of “document, don’t create” that I saw on popular vlogger on youtube, Ali Abdaal. For periods of the last ten years the blog has been my primary creative outlet. But that is now changing. I have my books in preparation, my podcast, my poems and my essays. And driving all of that my restless curiosity about how to save culture and history from the flames. So I am going to use the blog as the platform for all of those aspects of my author life.
Flowers of the Mind 16
Elena Shvarts and the burnt archive. Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob, and the perils of order in history. The Stranger Effect and the charisma of Messiahs. The Coming of the Third Reich. Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil and the ethics of poetry as gathering flowers of the mind.
Flowers of the Mind 15
Elena Shvarts, New Jerusalem Monastery, Patriarch Nikon and the Resurrection of religious life in Russia. A definition of empire. Olga Tokarczuk and the Books of Jacob. Please consider purchasing my collected poems, Gathering Flowers of the Mind, and listening to my podcast, The Burning Archive. Best wishes for renewal in the New Year.
Flowers of the Mind 12
Omricon, fear and crowd psychology. Jay Bhattacharya and the catastrophic errors of public health. Grieving memories of Stuart Macintyre. Szymborska on what matters. Paul Kingsnorth on fear, tyranny and the vaccine wars. Elena Shvarts on both hopelessness and hope.
Flowers of the Mind 10
Robert Lowell on George Santayana. The silence of the doctors and the rule of public health. Virus gonna virus. Jordan B. Peterson on saying no to tyranny. The exposure of the RussiaGate and Steele dossier hoax. On prophecy. Bhagavad Gita and the sacrifice of the soul in the fire of the Gods.
Flowers of the Mind 8.
Beowulf, polyphony and Mikhail Bakhtin. RussiaGate indictments approach the spider. Peter Frankopan and Fiona Hill. Jordan B Peterson. Elena Shvarts. Jonathon Sumption on how fear has undone democracy.
Podcast 26 – Beowulf
In October 1731 there was a fire in the Ashburnham House residence of the Keeper of the King’s libraries in Westminster London. The fire threatened the one and only manuscript of the Old English poem, Beowulf. It was rescued by the librarian and others leaping from the window, clasping manuscripts. Singed but intact, Beowulf was literally saved from a Burning Archive. The episode is available on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
Flowers of the Mind 6. Asvina (week 4) 2021
Glenn Greenwald, Havana Syndrome and Anglophone Russophobia. Vladimir Putin, Nikolai Berdyaev and the Free Academy of the Infinite Conversation. The return of history and the last democracy. Woke cults. Saint Thomas More and Thomas a Kempis. Elena Shvarts. Culaincourt and the retreat from Moscow…. and Afghanistan. Gideon Haigh, Melbourne lockdowns, wastelands, and the false freedom event.
Flowers of the Mind 5. Asvina (week 3) 2021
Karamzin, Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia. Thomas Gray Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and lockdown. Andrew Marvell’s “The Garden”. Elena Shvarts. Poetry. Prophecy. The traditions of St Petersburg and modernism.