La Piccioletta Barca

Martyrdom subverts death as a source of fear, as something to be dreaded and to be avoided at all costs.

Self-Deceit #6

Jessica Brofsky

She leans over, leaps behind the mirror, her body gone beyond the torso. Projection steals the foreground, something...

Ghost Stories

Sofía Sergi Oliden

There were many words to define me as a young child: shy, creative, quasi-funny, actress and more. But above all ...

A Likely Story

William Frederick Yeames is not a name certain to stir the blood.

Mount Sainte-Victoire (or Cézanne Revisited)

Anca Cristofovici

Athenian people’s markets doing architecture without architects

The most authentic block party I know of is Athens’ laiki agora.

{Foreword in F}

Elizabeth Brogden

An Essay on why Academic Style is the Worst

[The] atrocious academic style was bleeding over. I mean, the PhD dissertation is the world’s worst genre.

Behind Every Word

Evelina Kvartunaite and Micaela Brinsley

The translators of the King James Bible, remarkable for its textual qualities, consciously chose a language that...

War Beyond the Borderlines

To be honest ever since the very beginning, I keep waiting for certain wisdom to arrive...

3. Reflecting on Glass

Aldous Huxley began his career writing for Vogue. Assigned to write about the trivial and the transient was, he said...

2. Marvellous Stones

There is an Old English poem, The Ruin, describing a city, generally believed to be Bath, as it was in the Dark Ages.

3. Seaweed

I started today with a song. Then listened to another song. Now still the same song.

2. Drought and Uncertainty

I’m sleeping at staggered times. It’s less a habit, more a burden I try to convince myself I’m turning into a choice...

1. Cemeteries and Orange Ghosts

The concrete paths of the cemetery. Like paintings on top of the crispy grass, thicker than the width of the car...

3. Shadows and Light

‘Shadows are confused by sunlight,’ is the conclusion of The Conference of the Birds, Jean-Claude Carrière’s...

2. The Birds

Paul Muldoon’s image is striking. The poet looks out of the window at an everyday scene...

3. Out of Time

Curiosity, if not fate, invites us to find our way down. There, in the shadows of our thoughts, lies the feeling that...

2. Going Underground

When we go down into the heart of things what do we find? At first it is very dark. There are voices in the distance...

1. Following the Snail

L’Escargot by Henri Matisse is large and immediately apparent to any Tate Britain visitor...

Come Here - Part Three

On April 10th 2010, Polish President Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria boarded a Soviet-made Tupolev Tu-154...

Part Four: We Must Each of Us Bear Our Own Misfortunes

In Charles Portis’ True Grit, a sentenced man on the gallows says, “I killed the wrong man and that is why I am here…

Part Three: Ultimately All Pretense was Dropped

My favorite scene from a movie is the closer to No Country for Old Men, which is also the last scene in the book.

Part Two: Cowboy Songs

The piano player in the saloon works through a songbook of old standards. On a raucous night...

Part One: What People Say About a Passing Bullet

It sounds like a bad job interview answer, but it’s true: I never realized my weakness was not admitting weakness.

Before

Mulan Fu

One things is the Metaverse. The idea of digital doppelgangers. And also the collective construction of knowledge.

Capaneus

The History of mankind is but Man's continuous expansion over the realm of Nature...

Dante and His Muse

Dante defines poetry as mere creation of beautiful lies, with no value but to embellish...

After the Show by Anton Chekhov

Kotryna Garanasvili

Despite demonstrating Anton Chekhov’s writing at its finest, the story is little researched and largely overlooked...

Why doesn’t he say anything?

The Grand Inquisitor is a short story by Dostoevsky from around 1880...

The Time of My Life

Dying, I lose all sense of time...

The Awakening of Stone Statues

A songbird’s silent flight through the storm...

Sounds Unseen

The door closes on the day...

Cambridge

Whereof one cannot speak...

Turning the other cheek

One of the most spectacular features of Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”...

The Thematic Unity of the Brothers Karamazov

Dostoevsky’s last novel, “The Brothers Karamazov” unites the themes in his works...

The father figure as a key to the interpretation of Dostoevsky

The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, turns 200 on November 11th...

The Value of Retelling the Same Story

Is an influenced idea an idea of one’s own? Does the manifestation of structural similarity imply conceptual affinity...

Reflection on Photographic Portraits

In both stories, the character falls in love with someone they’ve only ever seen on a picture...

On Joaquín Sorolla and Photography

Last month, I received a gift from my friend Simón, who, knowing my predilection for Joaquín Sorolla, sent a postcard...

The Will To Change

The world is in a process of transformation whenever a poet’s fingers inscribe a word...

Each Delicacy And Shade

Places of learning attract poets, both as a source of income and as an environment sympathetic to literary activity...

Coming And Going

Cy Citlallin and Micaela Brinsley

One poet often evokes consideration of another poet...

Mapping in a Transitional Sense

Cynthia Citlallin Delgado Huitrón on navigating maps.

On the Historical Depiction of Madness in American Literature

Few subjects captivated the nineteenth-century mind quite like madness...

On Truth & the Role of the Historian

While the study of history is first and foremost an end in itself, a cultivation of the soul for its own sake...

On Historical Events & Soviet Cinema

In recent decades, films have increasingly been analysed by historians to provide insight into...

The Virtues of Elevator Music: On Eluvium, Ambience, and Transience

Jenna McClelland

The artist is not necessarily one who sculpts the gods, plays a fine series of musical resonances, or paints portraits.

A Note On Correction

From the beauty of an idea, comes the beauty of its parts, and not the other way round.

Sappho's Shadow

Literary fame is generally confined to a small circle of associates. Few writers emerge into public awareness.

Of the origins of songs (or La Lopez Pereyra)

Songs often write themselves. Some rise when, in love, a guitar finds the right hands to tend upon its strings.

Decameron

Eleonora Narbone

Pasolini’s version of Boccaccio’s Decameron is quite a difficult film to categorise.

Coffee

Eleonora Narbone

Many Italians and coffee aficionados will relate to the concept of waking up and putting the moka pot on the stove.

The Variously-Minded Muse in the Ancient Greek Canon

The invocation of the Muse is portrayed in Ancient Greek texts...

The Promise of A Written Potion

I have dreams of writing a novel...

A Manifesto for Private Writings

When I write in my journal I find that I am pulling out thoughts and emotions from within myself...

The Unusual Heartbreak of Endings

I wouldn't be able to list all the kinds of heartbreak even if I tried.

I’ll Call It Madness to be Inspired

For slowly but surely, I came to recognize how I had experienced two of the madnesses...

Poetry Comes From a Place That You Command

An essay rejecting Cohen's claim that poetry is not controlled or commanded by its creator.

Bruno's Line

Reading the pages in which Borges goes over the traditions of time...

Selected notes from the past few years featuring Cohen

Eszter Bencsik

I woke up late. Looked out the small window overhead.

The First Words: Three

The craft of writing is learned through the practice of writing.

The First Words: Two

Writers are the eyes of a society that is blind, the ears of a society that is deaf...

The First Words: One

A line of Robert Frost’s read long ago retains its appeal to me: ‘May something always go unharvested.’

A Chapter in the Book of Existence: Part III

Human nature can be, at times, hypocritical. Throughout the evolution of our species...

A Chapter in the Book of Existence: Part II

Space has always fascinated me. It is both exhaustingly terrifying and magnificently beautiful.

A Chapter in the Book of Existence: Part I

It is a humbling feeling, to stand in the midst of a forest. To be completely surrounded and outnumbered by life.

Lamentation: life, death and everything in between

Whereas in some areas of Greece men can sing about the dead – mainly mythical accounts of the death of local heroes.

The Poppies

There is a time in every child’s life when magic ceases to exist...

A voice from Beyond: The violin solo in the Benedictus of The Missa Solemnis

Beethoven has three large choral works bordering on or in the religious tradition and meant for concert performance.

Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Beethoven’s 5th Symphony

Everybody knows the opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Da-da-da-daaaa.

When the music stops: Beethoven’s 4th and the spirit of Romanticism

When I heard the opening of Beethoven’s 4th Symphony (1807) the first time, I perceived it as utterly mind blowing.

The Phenomenology of the Spirit: Hegel and the ingress of Beethoven's 2. Symphony

What you hear in the opening of the Second Symphony is a long section of rhythms taking over from each other...

Voices - Part III

There are substantive differences between reading a poem and recognizing its allusions...

The Existential Angst of Film Music

There might be something inherently paradoxical about the presence of music in films...

Fellini’s nightmares and 8 ½

By the time Fellini was working on 8 ½, he couldn’t decide what the protagonist did for a living...

My Mother's Death

‍I never really knew my mother. She was born in Berlin in 1922.

Voices - Part II

No, I confess I did not hear any of these voices the first time, or indeed any of the times...

Voices - Part I

Is it just late, or am I beginning to hear voices?

Dancing in the Streets: Part III

After some help from strangers near the peak of their crossing, Neruda says...

Excavating one’s life

In the course of her twenty books, Annie Ernaux has deliberately put the specificity of autobiography and fiction...

Dancing in the Streets: Part II

The streets were quiet, and somehow the Andes looked happy, even without their snow.

Dancing in the Streets: Part I

My wife, Sonia, could never get used to living in Ohio. She said it was the weather, but it was more than that.

The Voice of an Echo

There is a fine line between fiction and reality, and it is here that truth resides.

Icons: The Bridge Between Man And The Divine

The architecture and decoration of the Orthodox Christian church is a reflection of cosmological beliefs.

Zancola

Zoe Fairtlough

The online recipe calls for vanilla extract but no egg yolks, and substitutes half the (cold) milk for double cream

Zen or the Art of Gardening

Cultivating a garden for a prolonged period of time and subsequently ruining it is frustrating.

Tweaking Neurones

The very act of remembering can change memories. Both tucking away an old memory or building a new one...

A Week as Umberto Eco’s Model Reader

I became Umberto Eco’s Model Reader for a week. This was neither an easy decision, nor a simple task.

L’Art de Ponctuer

Poetics of Fragmentation

The readers of Cavafy were limited to the select group who received his poems, privately printed...

The Art of Punctuation

We punctuate a life, as we punctuate a story, or a poem. It’s the art of cutting, pacing, harnessing, detaching...

The Waltz of Missing Words

In France, every new edition of the dictionary Le Petit Larousse removes around five hundred words.

On The Creation Of Biographies

Historians look at the advances on their field by writers from other disciplines as mere fiction or entertainment.

Brief Commentary About The Writing And Reading Of Travel Journals

There’s a moment in which the treasures of life are unveiled before two eyes and an unprepared soul...

The Writer Inside The Writer

It was an irresistible treat to read Virginia’s Woolf Genius and Ink.

Landscapes Within and Without

Writing searches for a homeland. Behind a poem or a story is a landscape, or several if there is a journey. The setting may be in a wild, remote place. Or it may be in a city.. Or it may be an imagined place, like Xanadu.

Meditations From A Restless Night

Stephen R. Minnich

For a restless soul, the night is an endless possibility. A stage upon which experience and imagination collide. How different would be the day if just one thing only changed? If everything changed but only just? Countless are the variations that one might imagine. These poems welcome what arrives when rest is unwelcome and restlessness embraced; when one learns, perhaps, to stand on stage between the infinite collisions, letting each one try itself out.

Ambivalence

Somewhere in between knowing, ambivalence is a feeling that never quite acts like one. It’s more of a filter, that blurs reality until the moment it snaps, cracks under its own ephemerality. Here you’ll find a drive between prose and poetry, effort and surrender, loss and its clarity.

Out of the Woods

Civilisation and Nature often have a difficult relationship. Writing about Nature seeks harmony between town and country.

Follies

Ian Fisher

These three linked short stories anecdote the cosmopolitan fictional Fielder family: Ira, wife Nessa, and son Rónán, from the mid-eighties—which Rónán likes to call B.R.—to summer 2021.

Seoul Metal

Michael Howarth

'Seoul Metal' explores the Mullae Dong district with a series of ten photographs. Visit this neighbourhood in Seoul, with an eclectic mix of metal workshops, artists’ studios, bars and restaurants. Join this loud, boisterous and very industrial trip with Michael Howarth.

All That Glitters is Not Gold

Yvonne Jowell

"All that glitters is not gold” is a three-piece story that examines a woman’s abortion from three overlapping angles. "The danger of the child in your head", “Mozart assassinated” and “Playing your cards right” each explore the pains of an abortion, crumbling relationships and the pursuit of hope.

L'Escargot

Geoffrey Heptonstall returns in the Thread with a collection of essays inspired by Henri Matisse’s L’Escargot. Go down into the labyrinth. You will find a discussion about art, darkness, tragedy and memory with Francois Gilot, Jean-Paul Sartre, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean Cocteau, Horace and Aristotle amongst many other guests.

Come Here, Chodż Tutaj (or, A Tribute to Mother Courage)

Come Here, Chodż Tutaj (or, A Tribute to Mother Courage) is a three-part essay that revolves around the author’s experience in Warsaw in 1980 and 1981 as a twelve-year-old boy, as well as the life of Anna Walentynowicz, the Polish activist who inspired Solidarity. It explores notions of memory, language, history, and labor unions with several literary references along the way.

Way Out in the Old West

Stories of the American West have largely been relegated to the past. Reading about gratuitous, racially-charged violence in a world brimming with gratuitous, racially-charged violence -- most readers are wise to pass. Yet, something gleams in those far-off hills, gems like True Grit, Warlock, and Lonesome Dove. These genre classics remind modern readers the stories we construct about our own pasts are, like the legends of old, more mythology than history.

Digital Truth Serum

Mulan Fu

How does the virtual world control how we perceive ourselves and can animation help us identify how we unknowingly subject ourselves to its terms? Constructed in relation with artist Mulan Fu's visual language of abstraction, this is a record of the development of a work of animation from conception to production. A simulation.

700th Anniversary of the Death of Dante

Seven hundred years ago, Dante Alighieri died in Ravena. Broadly read and criticized, his Comedy has been – and still is – a sea in which many have ventured to find poetry, philosophy, history and religion. Some, moved by the Italian, attempted their own creations inspired by such waters. Here, two essays and a poem intend to be, if nothing else, a compass for an eventual reader to find his way towards Dante´s work.

Animal v. Human

Luke Davies

Two miniature collections of short stories and a short essay on the theme of animals and humans, written by a human.

Dream Journey

Dream Journey is an account of the images that a mind encounters on first waking. It begins with a city walk at night. Before nightfall, there is a strange feeling that the world is neither light nor dark. The noise of the day gives way not to silence, but to the sounds of the night. In the early morning at first light it may seem that the stones come alive. They may appear to move or to speak. Of course it is only the mist of a grey dawn.

Dostoevsky is 200

The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, turns 200 on November 11th. "Dostoevsky is 200” is a quartet of short essays that explores the writer’s understanding of the problems of Russian society and his characterization of human nature. His vision of the human person is so strong and pure that there is much to be learned from reading him.

Through the Lens

Through the Lens offers a reflection on photography, memory and identity through essays and poetry. You can expect to encounter Bioy Casares, Manoel de Oliveira, Joaquín Sorolla, Nacho’s friend Simón, as well as others along the way.

In Constant Motion

This collection of essays investigates the poetic form, the life of poets, familiar streets and places of learning. A journey within the mind, with language and within the world at a moment of transformation. You can expect to meet T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sally Purcell, John Wain, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop and Amanda Gorman along the way...

On History

‘On History’ comprises three critical reflections on the depiction of historical events in cinema, on the role of the historian in the study of history, and on the historical depiction of madness in American literature. Through this collection of essays, join a voyage through history, from the late Stalin and Khrushchev eras, to ‘Hitler’s War,’ and 19th and 20th century America.

Dreamland

Michael Shapland

December 2030. Tom is a young man intent on saving his older brother, who resides in ‘Dreamland’. Dreamland is a drug house for the rich, hidden underneath Soho Square. No man has ever left Dreamland.

The Muses of October

Michael A. Dann

This collection of essays offers a reflection on the decay of empires. From Ancient Greece, to the Roman Empire, to the Aztecs, the story of the fall of ancient civilisations in 'The Muses of October’ provides some insight into contemporary political developments.

Lockdown Meanderings

Eleonora Narbone

'Lockdown Meanderings' offers a critical reflection on some of the effects of the pandemic. This collection of essays and short stories explores the passing of time, the subtle beauty of routines, the importance of storytelling, and the immense joy of seeing people again after lockdown. From Boccacio’s Decameron, to running in Ancona, to the beauty of moka coffee, enjoy a virtual trip to the heart of Italy.

Singing Cicadas

According to Socrates in the Phaedrus, when the Muses were born, song was birthed with them. Some people became so intoxicated with singing that they forgot to eat and drink and so they died. These humans became the Singing Cicadas who sang until they died and then reported to the Muses which humans have honoured them. Chariklia openly admits that she wants the Cicadas to report to the Muses that she has honoured them, so she can give these pieces of writing as offerings.

The First Words

"When the first words were written it became possible…" This trilogy explores the role of writers and literature, as well as the art of writing; these notebooks filled with possibilities, improbabilities and nonsense. A true manifesto that explains why it matters very much how you say what you say, why nobody can tell you how to write and why the true self is the imaged self.

A Chapter in the Book of Existence

This collection of essays offers a reflection of life’s place in space and time through the physical environment of three different settings: Space, the arctic, and the jungle. A Chapter in the Book of Existence seek to express the beautiful, finite nature of our planet as it exists in the universe through the lenses of science, human nature, and exploration.

Celebrating Beethoven

Beethoven was born 250 years ago in December. We do not know his exact birthday, but records show that he was baptized in Bonn on the 17th. 2020 should be a celebration of his intense artistic and unswervingly humanistic musical legacy. “Celebrating Beethoven” looks at four large and well-known works, attempting to identify some ways Beethoven widens his time and his métier into matters relevant to philosophy, romantic spirituality, abstract art and the dawning of modern, personal identity.

On Voices

Join the odyssey through the voices that one hears while deciphering Eliot’s The Waste Land. Are you hearing the voices? What happens when you don’t quite hear the voices that Eliot wants you to hear? What happens when you do begin to hear the voices? What happens when you mistakenly hear the other voices?

Some Notes from Chile

A trip to Chile, exploring its history and present, from Pinochet and the Chicago Boys to O-18 and Covid-19. Notes on political unrest, streets coming to life and creating a new social pact. Interventions by Neruda and references to Bolaño may shine light on the rebellion, or simply provide solace.

In Search of Lost Words

Zoe Fairtlough

A reflection on family legacies and the search for purpose, threaded through with the origins of Italian gelato and the etymology of related words.

On Poetic Creation

Embarking on a journey into the past – from ancient Greece, across the Seine and the Sistine Chapel, to Hollywood and America – this is an exploration of the intricacies of the poetic process, the interaction of poetry with history and philosophy and the uniqueness of different art forms.

On Loss and Solitude

Pamela Mandell

Ruminations on the natural cycles of life and death inspired by the bildungsroman of a life companion. The Noki Trilogy, named after the author’s canine companion, builds on casual conversations in the form of three short stories, stimulating all five senses, and exploring the depth and clarity of the perception of loss.

On Writers and Writing

An investigation of the writer’s challenges in accepting reality, the inevitability of change in order to discover the truth and the life of words independent from their writer. This ensemble of short essays proposes a journey across Santiago de Cuba, San Francisco, Cape Ann, Cambridge and Avignon through diary entries.

On Philosophical Thought

Facundo Rodriguez

An exploration of the abstraction of modern thought and its interaction with shared practice. Featuring Boethius, Ortega y Gasset, Marx, Kant and many more, this series of pieces employs both prose and verse to explore the depths of human nature, and the existential impact of creation.

On Love and Memory

Sonya Wohletz

Some thoughts on modern aesthetics and the realm of the affective. From Otto Dix, to a tale of Gustav Mahler and Gustav Klimt, this four-part historical account cum contemporary journey, spells out the intricacies of love, memory and ritual grief.

On The Self and The Other

Daniel Olivieri

An anatomy of human connections, their joys and disappointments. A compilation of short stories which investigate the value of conversations in the dark, the disappointments of author pictures, the pleasures of TSA inspection, and provide tips on how to avoid the cold desperation of being lonely, while steering clear from the prickly pain of being with other people.

On Poetic Truth

An exploration of the intricacies of a poetic life, including the experience the artfulness of objects and the desire to shake off automated routines. This collection of essays sheds light on how one’s literary inclinations can guide attention, perception and actions, explains why some words stick, and, satisfies the reader’s pursuit of revelations, settling for a moment of modest epiphany.

On The Five Elements

Joude Bazzoun

Contemplations on mother nature and the elements. These three short personifications of nature as a creative and controlling force affecting humans, explore the motherly qualities of the sea, the wind and the rain. Paintings by the artist accompany the texts and offer a visual voyage from the comfort of your home.

On Self-Improvement