odespinner

Nathan the Wise, a five Act dramatic poem. I have borrowed the German Library edition (Vol. 12) of this work of the Enlightenment period.  Lessing’s message, conveyed in a simple love story, is that humanity can overcome hatred and the fear of difference. Revealed faiths are part of the same…

On our wedding anniversary I try to pen something romantic and usually my efforts are appreciated by my wife, Clare. At a writing workshop at Queen’s University Belfast recently, there was a man whose life had dealt him some hard knocks and who had been inspired to try his hand…

Does anyone know of a poet called Connor Dallacht? I vaguely remember reading a poem of his when I was in the coffe shop outside Falcarragh – the O’Kanes’s pottery studio on the site of the old rectory. This is a beautiful spot for enjoying good coffee in very pleasant…

   WB Yeats by Augustus John The Lake Isle of Innisfree    I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.…

Marked with D When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven not unlike those he fuelled all his life, I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven and radiant with the sight of his dead wife, light streaming from his mouth to shape her name, ‘not Florence…