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Monthly Archives: March 2012

theASHtray, vol.9

Read, watch and listen: climate-change, Maldivian politics, Jon Shenk, Mohammed Nasheed, Radiohead, Start the Week, Anne McElvoy, Geoff Dyer, Paul Farley, Andrei Tarkovsky, Tristram Shandy, Werner Herzog, Liz Mermin, large hadron colliders, Scott Waugh, Mouse McCoy, Act of Valor, Navy Seals, John McCain, Facebook, blockbusters, Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma, pianos, Clementi, Mozart, Telemann, and […]

Shower

Pale mole on my chest: damp, three dark hairs angle down like an old leaf-rake.

On the 27th draft translation of Basho’s ‘Sound of Water’

Master, due respect: No-one cares about the pond. Or the frog. ……………(Plop.) ……………………(Splash!)

Epitaph for Whitman

…………Here lies a man who sucked all the marrow out of life ………………..– …even if (as is so often true) …he probably should not have.

theASHtray, vol.8

This week starring Stanley Donwood, Radiohead, Vincent Van Gogh, The Wind-Up Merchant, Ric Jerrom, Oscar Wilde, Tony Hawks, Ireland, fridges, Guinness, extras, Tom Crean, Antarctic exploration, Felicity Aston, product placement, Land Rovers, Mark Ronson, Newsnight, the Olympics, Michaelangelo, and an infantile joke about muff-diving. — For theartsdesk

After Miss Julie

Patrick Marber’s post-war update of Strindberg’s (regular) Miss Julie, reviewed. — For theartsdesk

Pleasure

The brisk humiliation of a girl who hits on you, whom you had once hit on and were rejected.

Golding the lily

Review of Arena’s The Dreams of William Golding. — For theartsdesk

theASHtray, vol.7

From the arts desk at the end of the universe, reflections on Douglas Adams, Erwin Schrödinger, Joseph Kony, YouTube, Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry, Bilbo Baggins, Saul Zaentz, trademark and copyright law, Lewis Hyde, Amy Winehouse, Florence Welch, Queens of the Stone Age, MUSE, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, and the many and various meanings of Liff. […]

Poetry exercises: 2

Valéry: a literal translation A poem is never finished; it is only