by Orna Ross | Jan 13, 2014 | Uncategorized |
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life… I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't...
by Orna Ross | Jan 6, 2014 | POETRY |
I have thoughts but I am not my thoughts. I am one who sees them swirl. What can be seen is not the seer. I have thoughts but my thoughts are not me. I have a body but I am not my body. I am one who makes it move. What can be moved is not the mover. I have a body but...
by Orna Ross | Dec 29, 2013 | Uncategorized |
This is a section from the most remarkable Christmas poem ever written, “For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, by WH Auden. Composed in 1942, the darkest days from the British Allies perspective of World War II, the poem is 1500 lines long (more than...
by Orna Ross | Dec 22, 2013 | POETRY |
It is a poem born out of loneliness and solitude. Kavanagh wrote it after spending another festive season alone in his bachelor flat in Dublin and the poem is infused with nostalgia for rural, farm-family life, recalled through the lens of Christmas. The memories...
by Orna Ross | Dec 15, 2013 | Uncategorized |
The social order is also the topic of the next poem but here gender is the dispossessor. Jesus, like every other human who ever lived was, in the words of the great Adrienne Rich, “of woman born” and Rich's “Translations” speaks of the politics...
by Orna Ross | Dec 13, 2013 | Uncategorized |
Last Week: Go Creative With… Patti Smith Ten Thoughts on creating from Pamela Travers, author of Mary Poppins. The Unknown — our beautiful Anglo-Saxon word, intimate, reverberant, profound, not so much to be understood as stood under while it rains upon us —...
by Orna Ross | Dec 8, 2013 | Uncategorized |
Yeats's near contemporary, TS Eliot, also pictures Christmas through the lens of the magi, though his are more human, more physical, occupying a poem full of the mundane details of travel: snow, lack of decent shelter, cursing camel-men, hostile cities and towns,...
by Orna Ross | Dec 3, 2013 | GO CREATIVE! |
So… sat me down with a soya latte around 11, as is my wont, and the browsing material this morning was The Bookseller's “100 Most Influential People in Publishing”. I was enjoying the read when I suddenly found myself nearly spitting out my coffee....