Culture Articles
Uneven geographies, Nottingham Contemporary, 8 May to 4 July 2010.
At Yearly Meeting both Roy Hattersley and Paul Lacey inspired me as I listened to their lectures about aspects of our unequal world. The following day I went to see Uneven Geographies, an exhibition in which artists from five continents explore experimental ways of depicting globalisation and its human consequences....
The Pump
What is the background to the poem? The poem was triggered by a photo I took of the pump in the yard at Bridport Meeting House. However, the poem isn’t particularly about Bridport: it’s some imagined location with a pump like that. There have been other pumps Iâ€...
In comes the citizen approach
Beyond the Profits System: Possibilities for a Post-Capitalist Era by Harry Shutt. Zed Books. ISBN 978-184813-417-1. £12.99. How are we to get through the current global financial and economic crisis? Harry Shutt, who saw the storm clouds approaching several years ago, offers some radical solutions to the problems...
It’s the economy, clever
The end of money and the future of civilization by Thomas H Greco Jr. Floris Books. ISBN 978-086315-733-2. £12.99. Prosperity without growth by Tim Jackson. Earthscan. ISBN 978-1-84407-894-3. £12.99. Back in the 1970s, an academic called Theodore Roszak roused some of us with fighting talk...
Honouring death through dance
Soul Play is a gentle and intimate dance-theatre duet that explores the moments following a young man’s death. Kate Flatt devised it in response to her own grief upon the death of family members. A secondment at a local hospice as part of a Rayne Choreographic fellowship encouraged this...
Lent talks on BBC Radio 4
Novelist Will Self could be labelled an angry old man. But he has charisma and can certainly put over an argument. The ingenious suggestion he makes in the first BBC Radio 4 Lent talks (24 February) is that we are worshipping art rather than God these days. The churches are empty; the...
The O of Home
The O of Home by Jennifer Kavanagh. O Books. ISBN: 978 1 884694 264 8. £11.99 When I went to Jennifer Kavanagh’s launch of this book at the Quaker Centre I wasn’t sure what to expect. Home – how would I define it? Is it the flat above the Meeting house? Is it a place...
Truth as a crescent moon
I took part in a master class the other day. Me and about a thousand others. In a packed auditorium, we practised the sound of one hand clapping. We pointed our right hand at the stage and concentrated on being fully present in the exact point and moment. We clenched...
The night is full of stars
‘The Night is Full of Stars’ by Friedrich Schmitz-Hertzberg. Sessions of York, Ebor Press Division. ISBN: 978 1 85072 397 4 Price: £9.99 plus £2.50 UK postage & packing. There is something vaguely familiar, and slightly unsettling, about the face on the cover of this book. The eyes, looking at something just behind your left ear,...
Spirit Rising
In 2008 Quakers Uniting in Publications gathered an editorial board of ten young people from different branches of Quakerism and different countries. The board spent a year gathering contributions from around the Quaker world. Then they met in 2009 to select and edit the pieces. Now titled Spirit Rising: Young Quakers Speak,...