Nigeness

On this day in 1770, the newborn Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised. I imagine he bawled lustily.  Beethoven was the musical hero of my boyh...

Selecting a Reader First, I would have her be beautiful, and walking carefully up on my poetry at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,  her...

 When Tennyson sat his Cambridge entrance examination, it consisted of four subjects – Latin, Greek, Algebra and Natural Theology. Of those,...

One of my birthday presents, and a very welcome one, was Richard Holmes's The Boundless Deep , the first of a projected two-volume biogr...

 It's Emily Dickinson's birthday today (born 1830, in Amherst). She wrote that 'To live is so startling it leaves little time fo...

 R.S. Thomas wrote the justly famous Advent poem 'The Coming' (which has appeared here before) –  'And God held in his hand A sm...

Today Tom Waits and I complete 76 years on this Earth. I've written a song for the occasion – it goes to the tune of 'Seventy-Six Tr...