Writing ~ Re-connecting
Writing ~ Re-connecting
“The people united will never be defeated.” Is unity in diversity possible without the snakes and ladders of power and corruption? Thanks for the hopeful inspiration from this song, resurrected in October 2019 in Chile. I will store it with those humorous…
Liz Mc Skeane’s novel, Canticle, was my most compelling read of 2019. It immersed me in the struggle between creativity, research and corrupt institutions. Set in Madrid in 1616, in the shadow of the Inquisition, Canticle (Turas Press ISBN 978-0-9957916-3-3) has searing…
NO SMALL TALK is a group of writers who have come together out of concern for the level of division and increasing hostility that has crept into the rhetoric around Brexit. We want to generate links between writers and artists…
When the writer, Louise Kennedy, referred to Hireath, the Welsh word for longing for home, my friend the poet, Winifred Mc Nulty, challenged me to open up my “Heimat Coffer” to a wider public. Louise and Winifred were both reading…
La voix mixte, a Berlin Choir, celebrates its 30th anniversary with works from Ernst Pepping, Philip Glass, Sade Bartling among others. The link will also take you to a special composition performed at the launch of my novel Bone and…
“It seems unfair that on a day when everyone is coming out on strike to protest against Climate Change, writers need to be louder, wiser and more articulate than ever. But we do. Speak out on September 20th. Use your…
Death threats and attacks on writers for getting it wrong on gender identity or race (see below) is all part of what Toni Morrison described as “othering”. “Othering” is about making the “other” less than me. It is choosing to build…
Toni Morrison speaks volumes in one paragraph on global migration which connects intimately to me as the territorial border through Ulster threatens to cut through my hybrid Irish-British-European identity. Encouraged by her words, I claim a cross-border culture of belonging in…
Toni Morrison stretched my consciousness across continents of pain like no other writer. The recent gift of her essay, The Origin of Others, spells it out for us. We not born racist: racism is taught. She reminds us of how…
@victorinapress launched a Spanish translation of My Beautiful Imperial, Rhiannon Lewis’s novel, in the Chilean embassy in London last week. It adds an extra dimension to #diversity in its depiction of how a seafaring Welshman is caught up in the Chilean…