Author Archives: johnfield1

In London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd writes that ‘London drives some of its citizens mad. A psychiatric survey in the 1970s revealed that cases of depressive illness were three times higher in the East End than in the rest of the country.’ From 1247, these citizens were contained in the hospital of St Mary ofContinue reading “Almost Lost My Mind – Melissa Lee-Houghton’s Beautiful Girls”

How I willed Waterloo’s departures board to cascade into its flipping and clacking, although it was impossible to tell whether that first flip would herald the main event, or whether it was just an anticlimactic tease. The Solari board never told a straight story, leaving passengers rocking on the balls of their feet as times and places arrived inContinue reading “Please mind the gap – Hannah Silva’s Forms of Protest”

I have now posted for the last time to the 2013 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival blog. Thanks to The Poetry Trust for inviting me to blog and speak at this year’s festival: it was an honour and a privilege.

Yves Marchand’s and Romain Meffre’s photographs of Detroit ended my day at lunchtime. The Sunday supplement they were selling printed a tantalising few, so the day’s mission was to find more. These photos take urban decay to another level, as opulent sparkles are bleared and blackened. The photos reminded me first of Shelley’s Ozymandias, as who atContinue reading “Into Dust – Jean Sprackland’s Sleeping Keys”

The trouble at mill back at UK education HQ’s been widely publicized. Sweeping changes are afoot across the curriculum, and English will not escape. One change that’s caught the attention of the Forward Arts Foundation is the new requirement for students to respond to unseen poetry during their English Literature examination. So, true to theirContinue reading “The Forward Arts Foundation’s Young Judges Competition”

  Here’s the latest instalment of the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival blog.

If you’re accessing the Aldeburgh Festival blog through my personal blog, then I’ll keep posting links to it here. This afternoon we were treated to four exceptional readings by Richie McCaffery, Kim Moore, Shazea Quraishi and Luke Samuel Yates. You can find the post here.

    Last night’s readings by Olivia McCannon, Katha Pollitt and Robin Robertson plumbed the depths and heights of the human experience: proof that a night of poetry will probably produce more laughs, and more tears, than a night out anywhere else. So, if you’ve not dipped a toe into poetry readings before, there areContinue reading “Why spoken word poetry matters”

I’ve been writing little close readings of poems by the poets featuring in the twenty-fifth Aldeburgh Poetry Festival since August, and Alison Brackenbury’s excellent Bath cubes will be my last outing before the festival kicks off on the 8th November. If you’re there, please join the discussion by tweeting using the #APFXXV hashtag. Finally, myContinue reading “Alison Brackenbury’s Bath cubes on the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Blog”

For reasons of economy, our hair was cut in the kitchen with a bowl and scissors. Well, until a slip of my father’s hand nicked my brother’s ear – then we were granted access to a proper barber, who worked from a wooden shed in the heart of the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was Larbert’s FoundryContinue reading “Living Doll – Robin Robertson’s Hill of Doors”