Oh how I love Greenbelt.
guest poem - spiders of misogyny
A few years, at the Greenbelt festival, a woman named Tasha told a story at one of our Tenx9 sessions. It was a fantastic story - full of insight. Since then, we've kept in touch, and I've read a few of Tasha's poems. I read her latest poem 'spiders of misogyny' and asked if I could put it up.
(Audio) Something Understood - In the Shelter of Each Other - BBC Radio 4, May 25, 2014
I presented the Something Understood programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning on the theme of the Irish seanfhocail 'It is in the shelter of each other that the people live" - "ar scáth a chéile a mhaireanns na daoine".
It was produced by the wonderful Rachel Hooper from Falling Tree. The audio and an outline of all the songs played and excerpts read is gathered on the BBC Something Understoodwebpage too, for about another week.
What's the word for not having a word for something?
What's the word for not having a word for something? Links to the wonderful 100 days project of Anjana Lyer. For 100 days, she is putting up an art piece about a word that has no direct translation into English. The project, named "Found in Translation" can be found here.
Mealtimes and the gospel
Visionaries and prophets and wise-women.
“I often hear voices. I realise that drops me in the crazy category but I don’t much care. If you believe, as I do, that the mind wants to heal itself, and that the psyche seeks coherence not disintegration, then it isn’t hard to conclude that the mind will manifest whatever is necessary to work on the job.
We now assume that people who hear voices do terrible things; murderers and psychopaths hear voices, and so do religious fanatics and suicide bombers. But in the past, voices were respectable - desired. The visionary and the prophet, the shaman and the wise-woman. And the poet, obviously. Hearing voices can be a good thing.
Going mad is the beginning of a process. It is not supposed to be the end result.”