Haunted by a strange green world: ‘Our days were a joy and our paths through flowers’
There’s a painting in the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery that I can’t say I exactly liked as a child, but it fascinated me and has haunted me a little ever since.
The opposite of page-turners
Recently, I’ve been thinking about the page-turner’s brooding sibling – what might be termed the chapter-jammer, perhaps, the leaf-stopper, the mind seizer, or more literally, the corner folder.
Growing up in a city that was never there
Where hauntology may see the progressive mind mourning a future state that hasn’t come to pass and hiraeth feels loss for a place or time once known, sehnsucht and anemoia, represent something more tricksy, even dangerous, more like a desire for a version of the past that has slipped away, or never really existed at all.
Books found and books lost: another year of reading
Two thoughts, or questions, struck me recently as I reflected on the books I’ve read during 2018. The first was, where do all these books come from? I don’t mean in a literal sense; from a shop or library, but where did I hear about them? I often wonder this about authors in end-of-year-round-ups of…
Richly Evocative 