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Author Archives: A S H Smyth

From my father’s marginalia on TS Eliot

Friday, September 26, 2014

‘What the devil does this mean?’ – TS Eliot, note in Edmund Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen Pagan spring about to be replaced cf. feathers in Gerontion This a prayer – the old securities will collapse. No guarantee for children on acc. of his piety. Period between death and rebirth. Prefiguring of passion + cross. Calvary. Eliot […]

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NB – To the driver of the ice-cream van

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

If you drive around here one more time while I am listening to Beethoven I swear I will come for you. Yours, etc.

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jus sayin’

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

jus soli jus sanguinis jus poetarum (jus sayin’)

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Eight debut novels

Monday, September 1, 2014

Currently sitting at 12 to 1 for this year’s Booker Prize, first-time novelist Paul Kingsnorth has set the cat among the pigeons through the disarmingly original expedient of submitting his offering in a fictional language. Composed in what Kingsnorth calls the ‘shadow tongue’ of ‘eald anglisc’, The Wake (Unbound 365pp £16.99) explores one angle of […]

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Brilliant idea for a short story, last night:

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Anyone remember what it was?

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O, ye women disporting yourselves upon blankets!

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

O, ye women disporting yourselves upon blankets! Please stop it. I’ve work to do.

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End of the Line

Thursday, July 3, 2014

The Narrow Road to the Deep North By Richard Flanagan (Chatto & Windus 448pp £16.99) ‘We will die, and who will ever understand any of this?’ So asks Colonel Dorrigo Evans, second in command of the Australian Imperial Force’s 2/7th Casualty Clearing Station, slave worker on the Siam–Burma ‘Death Railway’, and redoubtable hero of Richard […]

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Hen-do

Saturday, June 28, 2014

When my fiancée went out to her hen-do (the first one) I stayed at home, watched some rugby, wrote a poem, and did the dishes.

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To the agony aunt at The Lancet

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does my chestbone crack?!

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Fragment (after Sappho)

Monday, June 23, 2014

no more for me the honey or the bee (i.e. thee)

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