Summer Garden

The smallest of pleasures can be found here,

within the high redbrick walls which square

a miniature kingdom, a secret garden hidden

within a tessellation of neighbouring gardens.



There is no quiet quite like it, suffuse as it is

with the twittering of unnamed English birds,

the droning of lawnmowers and light aircraft,

the staccato laughs of children playing war.



This peace is suburban, as the breeze brings

the odours of late spring flowers, tinged by

the compost’s sweetly rotten wafts festering

in the heat of the first hot days of summer.



I can smell the withering vegetable peelings,

the weeds and limp cuttings, the mouldering

cardboard, the eggs shells and used teabags.

It is the redolence of decay under all things.



Sitting on veneered furniture, the gravel lawn

neat and manicured, I read and bathe in a sun

unusually hot for this time of year. Nothing of

the outside world can impinge upon existence.



Before me the neighbour’s apple tree is twisted,

bent by the labours of its fruit, and the terraced

houses behind it are in rows as mirror images,

ad infinitum as they curve towards the horizon.



Our neighbours look down avariciously from

the second floor windows like Rapunzel gazing

at the witch’s grove. And I, the witch, shrivel in

their sight, pretend to ignore their prying eyes.



I have spent a lifetime in gardens such as these,

buffeted by the safety of this realm unpeopled,

shying from the bullying insistence of a world

whose abeyance is by a false, temporary guard.

Marina and the Diamonds – I’m Not A Robot, Video

Gnostic

What strikes between the pen and page,

between neurons firing action potentials,

those vast electrical charges that gauge

the measure between words, and offers us

the insight allowing for imagistic totems.



What spark within causes the questions

marking this long, laborious human quest

from time’s beginning? A spark of flint

once bringing into light the first fires of

primitive man, who howled at the moon?



Who planted this vast spark, which some

call spirit, this gust of life’s quick breath,

starting up the first heart, the chicken

or perhaps the egg? In the dark hour of

our brief history, how did it come to be?



Does this spark, between pen and page,

also cause the myriad stars to glitter in

the black firmament, on which all of our

origins are anchored? Does this account

for a poet’s fascination with their light?



Does this spark also account for his lack

of belonging in this world, who looks at

stars for answers and thus feels no place

within a prison, material, lush and green,

seductive, but a curse of all that is finite?



Could this spark lead to the knowledge

of a self known wholly and completely,

in a pledge of inquisition by the scalpel

of his own pen, to see his form in a mirror

of poems written within its celestial light?



I see only that I must be receptive to it,

to perhaps allay my fears of a sea quiet,

black, and eternal waiting for me in death,

a hard light of stars put into infant limbs,

causing me to write my own immortality.

Julian Baggini – Atheism; A Very Short Introduction, Review

Over the last few weeks I have been reading books which have centred on theology and religion, perhaps causing the very few constant readers of this website to worry if I have gone over to the dark side. They need not fear, especially as I have balanced such reading with two texts that sit at the opposite end of the spectrum. The first of which is philosopher Julian Baggini’s excellent text for OUP’s ‘A Very Short Introduction’ series on Atheism. I chose to read this book as a precursor to Richard Dawkin’s controversial text, The God Delusion (2006), a book I have started twice but had to put down as I was unable to commit the time to reading it. Knowing Dawkin’s penchant for being hot-headed, a little arrogant, and inflexible, I thought it would be a good idea to temper his book with something a little more considered, balanced, and which puts the case for atheism rather than being a book against religion – a very important distinction in the case of these two texts.

As with most of the introductory texts in this series, it summarises all current thinking on the subject but it is also an excellent jumping off point into other texts which might interest the reader, and indeed Baggini provides an essential list of ‘references and further reading’ for those who wish to find out more. For me, this text helped articulate specific points about atheism which I knew intuitively but which I perhaps could not quite articulate myself. Baggini argues the case that atheism, rather than being in opposition to theism, is actually grounded in rationalism and naturalism which is traced back to the ancient Greeks. It is a way of describing the natural (not supernatural) world in which we live in rational, scientific terms without the need to countenance the idea of a man made god or the solaces of organised religion. He states brilliantly why it is possible to have good, meaningful lives without needing the church to instruct on goodness or meaning. He also argues for a secular society, not an anti-religious one, which perhaps marks it in direct opposite to Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion, something I think is crucial.

Official Website of OUP: A Very Short Introduction

Operator Please – Gloves, Review

(3.5/5) Australian band Operator Please exploded onto the music scene in 2007 with their primary coloured punk in the form of the nonsensical It’s Just A Song About Ping Pong, sounding like a deranged mash-up of The Ting Tings and the Plasticines. Their debut album, Yes Yes Vindictive won them a legion of fans internationally and now they are back to prove they aren’t one hit wonders with their sophomore album Gloves. Since 2007 the band have grown up considerably, and their sound has grown up with them. Gone are the punky pop moments of Yes Yes Vindictive and in their place are sturdier songs still with their signature jangling guitars but now embracing an electro-crossover that seems to be the dominating sound of the past two years. In the case of Gloves, it’s just a shame that Dragonette got there first, especially as it sounds like lead singer Amandah Wilkinson has been listening to Fixin to Thrill so much so that she has started to adopt Martina Sorbara’s distinctive sinuous purr.

Volcanic is perhaps the closest thing to their first album, a ferocious, hand-clapping anthem with a huge chorus as Wilkinson drawls “I’m just a little bit tired, I’m just a little bored” over shimmering guitars. It is brilliant and deserves to be a future single. Loops is a big rock number with stadium-sized drums and whirring bass synths taking them right back into Dragonette territory but the eighties-influenced chorus just about saves this song from sounding derivative. Jealous uses Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun as its template, all ska-guitars and synths before descending into the catchy-as-hell disco chorus. The album at this point loses steam, with Losing Patience covering very much the same territory as the early part of the album and album closer Like Magic just falling short of memorable. As a whole however, Gloves is a decent stab at a solid pop album which should help them to distance themselves from their cartoonish beginnings and force audiences to take them a little bit more seriously.

Buy Operator Please – Gloves

Sylvia Plath – Collected Children’s Stories, Review

Sylvia Plath is often, mistakenly in my view, thought of as a depressed poet who wrote dark, bleak, terrifying poetry and little else. It is often a cause for extreme irritation when asked what poets I like only to receive puzzled, disapproving looks when I mention Plath. I tend to avoid these types of people at all costs. As those familiar with Plath’s larger canon will know, Plath tried her hand at many different literary forms of the less bleak, brighter variety – magazine short stories for Mademoiselle, fashion articles, and later in life children’s stories. It is no surprise Plath would dabble in the art of children’s literature, having two young children herself who would have exposed her to children’s books of that particular era, but also her husband Ted Hughes had already had some success in the genre with titles such as Meet My Folks! (1961) and How the Whale Became (1963) before he went onto further success with The Iron Man (1968) which was turned into a hugely successful animated film ten years ago. Although Plath may have written many children’s stories during her lifetime, only three have been published and presented in a collected volume by Faber.

The Bed Book, The It-Doesn’t-Matter Suit, and Mrs Cherry’s Kitchen are delightful, imaginative tales from a poet who shows amazing potential in children’s literature, even if at times there are lapses of style or moments of stylistic awkwardness. The Bed Book is an amusing poem about the different kinds of magical beds a child would love to sleep in, and there are shades of the rhymes Roald Dahl would later go on to write. Some of Plath’s sophisticated style from her later poetry crops up here which sometimes pulls the reader up from the nursery-rhyme like rhythms, but this is only a minor criticism.The It-Doesn’t-Matter-Suit is a charming story and perhaps the strongest of the three. A suit mysteriously arrives at the Nix family’s house and each one takes turns trying it on to find out who it should belong to. The story is clearly influenced by her maternal grandparents who were of Austrian descent and she even uses her dead father’s name, Otto, for one of the characters. Mrs Cherry’s Kitchen, published in this collection for the first time, illustrates how deeply ingrained the fifties American housewife ideal was on her psyche, as the story centres on Mrs Cherry’s wonderful kitchen full of the latest appliances.

Although these stories are aimed at children, there is much for adults to enjoy here. They illustrate a writer with a vast imagination who wished to conquer every writing medium available to her. They also reveal the kinds of preoccupations Plath wrote about most famously in her poetry and her only novel, The Bell Jar (1963), providing a thematic consistency across all her work regardless of audience, as well as offering an insight into the historical context in which she was writing.

Faber Website

Eds. Kassar, Meyer, Wurst – The Gospel of Judas, Review

After recently reading Philip Pullman’s brilliant account of Jesus in his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, I wanted to explore other theological texts which might add to my greater understanding of the nature of organised religion and the potential for alternative views of the bible. Before people get too worried, I am an atheist and have been since I was sixteen. My atheism came into being at the very same time as my realisation of my own mortality, and both were a shock to me. The more I learned about the bible (specifically the Old Testament) and its views on homosexuality, on sex, on the subjugation of women, its views of abortion etc. I felt I had to reject it. Subsequently, the idea of a god many claimed to be benevolent but who believed us all to be sinners unworthy of his love seemed out of keeping with my own views of the world and the manner of humanity. From that point on (dramatically tearing up the white bible I had been bought for my communion) I went it alone.

I still do not believe in god, but as I get older I find myself searching for answers and looking to alternative doctrines to answer those questions people often turn to faith for. In the absence of faith, one must look to other sources such as psychology, philosophy, and physics to try to find a framework with which to contextualise one’s existence. Now, although I am an atheist, I am also someone who has been indoctrinated in the teachings of the Christian church when I was young. Reading Pullman’s book reminded me of how indelible those biblical stories have been on my upbringing, due to the Church of England primary schooling I had (my secondary school was non-denominational but did teach religious studies) and four years singing in an Anglican church choir. As much as I want to reject religion, I have to accept I am child of Christianity and this is not something easily shucked off. This is best illustrated by the embarrassing story of when I took my Religious Studies SATs in the third year of senior school and despite my best efforts I managed to score one hundred percent (for which I received much scorn).



So this is puts me in an interesting position – I am an atheist who is fascinated by theology. This is one of the reasons why I enjoyed Pullman’s recent book and His Dark Materials series, and it is also the reason why I picked up the Gnostic text The Gospel of Judas. Gnosticism is a branch of early Christianity stamped out by the Orthodox Church in the third and fourth century and it intrigues me greatly. Now before you say anything, I am indeed a fan of both Madonna and Tori Amos but despite their own interest (Kabbalah in Madonna’s case is a Jewish variation of Gnosticism, while Amos’s interest in the Gnostic Gospels is well documented) this has only had a minor effect on me. I am attracted to Gnosticism because it is a viable alternative to the Orthodox Christian views and its interpretations on biblical stories provide someone like me, well-acquainted with these stories, an alternative way of perceiving them.




The Gospel of Judas is one of many Gnostic texts unearthed in the last century (the most famous are the documents found at Nag Hammadi which form The Gnostic Gospels) and it is a fascinating read. I have always been drawn to Judas as a figure in the bible because his portrayal has always niggled me. Here is a man, one of the twelve disciples, who is devoted to Jesus and yet betrays him for thirty pieces of silver (either because money is his weakness or because he is possessed by Satan). As a result, when Jesus is arrested (with that infamous kiss) Judas is left guilt-ridden and returns the blood money to the priests who called for Jesus’ arrest before hanging himself. The story is very seductive and as a result Judas and his kiss have been absorbed into our own cultural fabric. However, I have always felt there has never been a sufficient explanation in the bible for this behaviour and, much like Mary Magdalene, it seems to me his character has been purposely maligned by the Orthodox Church to suit their theory of Christ’s crucifixion which must atone for our sins and the salvation of all humanity.



The Gospel of Judas refutes these claims; Judas is the most exalted of the disciples and recognises Jesus, not as the son of the evil demiurge we call god, but of a higher, superior realm which stands apart from heaven. The other disciples do not understand this, and so Jesus confers upon him the secret knowledge giving him immortality. Jesus requests that Judas betray him so he can leave the material realm he so despises and return to the Invisible Spirit who is the true benevolent god. In this sense, the traditional view of Judas’ story is turned on its head; he is divine, a good spirit who sets a chain of events in sequence so Jesus might return to his spiritual home. It is an interesting take on the story and fits the Gnostic view of spirituality. I am intrigued by this idea of the monotheistic god being disregarded as false, that there is a spark of the divine in humanity which allows those privy to enlightenment (merely knowing the self and rejecting the material world) to return an untroubled, eternal resting place (whatever form this may take).



Whatever the reader’s religious perspective, The Gospel of Judas allows for alternative narratives which can illuminate and discredit traditionally held beliefs. It allows an atheist like me, interested in the historical context and writing of what many call the greatest book man ever created, to consider different possibilities than those I have been indoctrinated with. Although the gospel is short, the book comes with four excellent essays which consider the meaning of the text as well as contextualising its history within other Gnostic texts and Christianity as a whole. There is also a thrilling account of the discovery of the codex which gives an astonishing insight into the task presented by scholars and conservationists when faced with the almost hopeless case of preserving a fragile but important document. For those worried I have seen the light should not be so, as I tempering my reading with two books on atheism – one by Julian Baggini and Richard Dawkin’s controversial The God Delusion.

Official Website of National Geographic’s Lost Gospel

Kylie Minogue – All the Lovers, Premiere

Kylie Minogue premieres her big comeback single All the Lovers, produced by Jim Elliott and remixed by Stuart Price, from her forthcoming Aphrodite album. I have to say it’s not quite the huge pop song I was expecting – it’s a little lack lustre and the chorus doesn’t quite take off in the way that, say, I Believe In You, does. It doesn’t bode well for the album – this would be the second dud in a row after 2007’s equally lack lustre X – and if it doesn’t deliver Kylie Minogue might want to think about retiring or finding something else she’s good at (but anyone who has actually sat through a film with Kylie in it know she should stay well clear of acting). With Madonna on indefinite hiatus and Kylie not sufficiently filling her place, one has to ask, is the era of our beloved eighties pop divas finally over?

My Blog Posts Become Podcasts with Odiogo

Thanks to new service Odiogo all of my blog posts are available as podcasts. This amazing service converts text from individual blog posts and creates an audio file and does so within minutes. Unlike other services, the audio is seamless and doesn’t posses the awkward, hesitant speech many converters suffer from. This means that not only can people subscribe to podcasts and listen to them on their iPods when they don’t have time to read my blog, it also makes my site more accessible to visually impaired users. What is staggering is this service is free and anyone who owns a blog can add it to their site. It also means I don’t have to produce podcasts (which are time consuming and somewhat daunting to put together) for those listeners who prefer to listen to content rather than read it. Although at this moment only the first ten posts are available, Odiogo tag all posts which are converted over time.

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Official Website of Odiogo

Florence and the Machine – Cosmic Love, Video

The record company behind Florence and the Machine are hell-bent on exploiting the commercial potential of the album to the full (I mean, who doesn’t own this album by now?) Not content with releasing six singles in the past year (Kiss With A Fist, Dog Days Are Over – released twice, Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up),
Drumming Song, You’ve Got the Love – released twice, and Hurricane Drunk) we now have Cosmic Love to take us through to the next album which I hope, for Florence Welch’s sake, is around the corner to stop every song from being whored out. I have to say however that Cosmic Love is one of my favourite songs from the album, even if it is all a bit too Bat For Lashes, and the video looks like Welch is finally getting the production budget she has always craved. She’s even wearing an LED dress – yes, how Imogen Heap of her. (Courtesy of Xolondon)