https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/international-literature-showcase/sara-maitland/

Oh, lidded kettle boil me water fast
I cannot live without your heated blast
Your spout is small but perfect for its use
And, as your lid is hinged. it can’t get lost

An electric kettle made by Russell Hobbs
A teapot with a spout and lid with knob
Are what the Britons need in times of storm
If crisis comes, we need tea hot,not warm

I don’t object to diverse kettle brands.
We had a coal fire once with kettle stand.
Its metal black from soot and burned by coke
We made our neighbours tea which seemed to smoke.

Ah,kettle ,instrument of civil life
We cannot boil our water on a knife

Random apples

Fall silently

On unknown Newtons

The present is friction.

The future is fiction.

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/sep/10/creativity-unconscious-process-incubation?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Are you a bad enough parent? We’ve heard of good enough mothers through the work of Dr DW Winnicot, but surely mothers need to be bad as well and fathers do but how bad do they need to be?

Murdering their children will be too bad, but never disagreeing with them will be too good

Be bad enough to others to make sure you are respecting your own boundaries you know it makes sense and you read it here first in a similar manner you need your baby to be bad enough because if the baby is too good she will be ignored and made use of by unkind parents

Everybody needs to be a little bit bad enough to preserve their own self while living in this curious unequal society

I had a heart attack but when I got to the hospital the doctor said

It’s not bad enough but you can come back if you die

I went to the dentist but he didn’t do anything because he said my teeth were not bad enough. An abscess has formed on the bottom of one of my teeth but he said it’s not big enough 

I wanted a hip replacement replacement but the surgeon said it’s not bad enough

Come back when you can’t  crawl

I was very depressed so I was sent to see a psychiatrist and he said it’s not bad enough yet wait till you can’t eat sleep speak read or write.

So I decided to go to hell but when I got there Satan said you’re not bad enough. Go away and commit some sins..

So I went to heaven and it’s really lovely but you have to die first

I had a ready meal in the fridge but it looks as if it’s a gone bad that my husband said  it’s not bad enough to throw  away so we ate it and were sick. But we were not sick enough to go to a and e especially at the North Middlesex University Hospital

I promise you that when I am the prime minister I will deport two million asylum seekers in the first month.

And after that it will go up exponentially so I will deport 4 million in the second month eight million in the third month in 16 million in the fourth month

If I continue in the same way how long will it take to completely empty the country?.

After that I will start with the illegal immigrants such as all those descended from the Normans .

Keep Britain empty especially from deserving asylum receivers.

Don’t waste your vote

The Unconscious Self Has More Answers Than We Think | by Thomas Oppong | Mystic Minds | Medium https://share.google/tiIF4dHRFVbUgXT5v

Soul making is a phrase from Keats.{ link to article by Jeffrey C. Johnson in Paris Review]

We saw Wolf Hall on TV recently and it is so wonderful.I am just writing down a few  of my thoughts not  about that but about Anne Boleyn… I meant it to be funny but I could n’t manage that after seeing the play.

ANNE BOLEYN

Anne Boleyn withheld to win
As Henry lusted in his sin.

Once a virgin,sweet Madonna;
Henry turned in rage on her.

She bore him but one living child,
For her quips,she was reviled.

Henry knew not the fault was his
It seems the king had syphilis.

Or Anne was rhesus negative
then just her first born child would live.

We women make our worst mistake
When power for love we wrongly take

Our strength lasts but till we submit.
We need less love and far more wit.

Whatever lusty men may say,
their “love” dies when they get their way.

And they will take their wife by force
As cannons pound on oaken doors.

As for women,we must not
Promise gold we have not got.

Conception is a game of chance;
We come to be by happenstance.

we sin in pride in promising
What only God or Nature bring.

We deceive and trick and charm
At last our hearts bang in alarm

The man who begged upon his knees
Chops off our heads when we displease.

For Emperors and Kings and Lords
Wield fearful power by the sword.

Yet when for judgement they shall stand
How will point the knowing hand?

And just like us they’ll ashen be
When true majesty they see.

Into dust and crumbled ruin
they will go by their own doings.

Each day create with grace your soul.
Cracked shall be the golden bowl.

Keats wrote this extract below [read all by clicking on soul above[ and he died when aged  only 25 years:

I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!

w

https://mitchteemley.com/2025/09/05/confession-i-am-addicted-to-animals/

At the very edge of human sight
Places we don’t go, till in despair
Love is waiting like a golden light

The world in panic, will the virus bite
Noone ever said this world is fair
At the very edge of human sight

Is there really danger of such might,
Where our hidden fears emerged dark ,bare?
Love is fading where’s the sun, the light?

Panic like a virus can ignite
Responses that are worse than germs out there
At the very rim of human sight

Our defences that are usually adroit
Now lie like dead young soldiers unrepaired
Love is fading to a weaker light

The still,small voice is quieter than a bird
The storm is passing by, will it be heard?
At the very edge of human sight
Love is dying,looks like candlelight

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/01/poem-of-the-week-solitude-by-peter-mcdonald

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/08/choosing-friends-friendship-breakdown?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Neuroscientists have shown that our brain does not reveal to us the world as it is, but rather as possible interpretations of what is going on around us, drawn from our past experience. Since no two people ever have exactly the same experience, no two people ever see anything in exactly the same way.

https://8c5f96364816ee70cc203e6a4a773430.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html

Where is that light which once consoled me?

That held me and  brought love into my heart

Why am I in this darkness without you?

And from all human contact feel apart?

Now I’m old, I’m crippled and ignored.

Ignored by Man but also split from God

Where can I find my comfort in this life?

Shall I give up and wait for death instead?

Where can I find my peace from all this strife?

In despair I lie all day in bed

We cannot force the holy and the good

But wait in silence and  in taut despair

How to make such darkness home to light?

Confused  and lost, where is my love tonight?

I am a gleaming aubergine
in an oval dish
My purple skin is polished
Like BBC English.

I await my fate for I am ripe
My seeds fulfil my wish
Soon,soon the knife will cut me up
As corn in fields is threshed.

I’d rather lie in Egypt’s soil
By birds and insects bit
But here I am in England
Where irony is wit.

After cutting comes the salt
As in a bowl I sit
For I am moist like lady’s parts
As poets have much writ.

Moussaka is my destiny
And as you bite and chew
I shall be what Jesus was
And give my grace to you

I am fried in olive oil
To give me flavour ripe.
Dried in cloth and placed in pot
Atop the meat I ride.

My colour brings all eyes to me
As I lie in a heap.
Some like carrot heads so bright
Royal purple is my state.

So better than a lamb I am
For a sacrifice.
I am proud and gleam like gold
As Caesar-like I’m knifed.

My seeds through sewers deep shall pass
And somewhere come to grief.
I shall grow again and be
Portrayed by a leaf.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/dfd2d8fa-a97d-4cc4-91c1-1f83bbb82f5d?shareToken=0b1821b11f4de0d5ad603f715143a7e7

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/25/poem-of-the-week-new-republic-by-michal-rubin

https://lithub.com/nature-is-not-going-to-cure-you-on-raynor-winns-fabricated-memoir/

Literature and lies and other strange things

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/24/gwyneth-lewis-why-i-wrote-nightshade-mother-emotional-abuse?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Art by author

Virtuosity,

,….being very charitable.

Precocity,,,going mad before most of us do

Animosity,,,. ,…kindness to animals

Ferocity,,.,,having iron teeth and using them.

Democracy,,…. demons running a country.

Humorisity,,,….getting a degree in Yankee jokes

Criminology,,,, understanding criminals

Religiosity,,,.misinterpreting love.

Tasmania,,…going mad in the sunshine.

Curiosity,,,.a desire to heal the sick

Originality,….

The desire to make a fresh start in life.

A mirage–a mirror that tells your age

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/04/humor-and-poetry

Extract:

In 1993, I took a left turn one day out of my MFA program and found myself at the National Poetry Slam in San Francisco. There I discovered several poets who were funny for the sake of being funny. Particularly Hal Sirowitz from New York (“don’t stick your arm out the window, mother said” and Matt Cook from Milwaukee (“it was easy to write the Great American Novel, back when there were only five American novels”) Both poets initially delighted me and confounded me: There are no similes, a voice in my head said. What would Tom Lux (my first teacher) say? the voice continued. Despite my resistance, I believe those poets gave me a kind of permission to explore humor a little more vigorously in my second book, The Forgiveness Parade (1998), for “I thought the word loin and the word lion were the same thing. I thought celibate was a kind of fish”. Perhaps in that book there were places where I was too vigorous in my pursuit: looking back there are a few poems that are just a little too jokey somehow, a little one-dimensional.

I am becoming aware of how some humor can set a roadblock for the poetic speaker, making it impossible for the speaker to get back to a serious place. And how some other (less frequent) uses of humor can leave that door open. I want to leave that door open

I saw the dust motes singing in soft air
The yellow grey, the light where nothing’s clear
The silent chorus hurts me as I stare

The heart feels unprotected, as if bare
Only when we’re lonely are we here
I saw the dust motes dancing in soft air

The little things we don’t see till we care
The eyes that signal bring to birth our fear
The silent chorus gabbles as I stare

The Essex fields are huge like mass despair
Yet summer poppies bright make them so dear
I saw the dust motes dancing on fresh air

Life is like a vehicle we steer
Yet unseen hands in wisdom change the gear
I heard the dust motes singing in soft air
The small still chorus tells me what to dare

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/05/in-a-culture-obsessed-with-positive-thinking-can-letting-it-go-be-a-radical-act?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

When you’re trying to do a very hard Su doku puzzle or even an easy one it’s very tempting to make a big effort to try a very hard to do it.

But in fact this is the wrong approach. Yes you have to read all the information and you have to know what you meant to do to solve the problem but tensing your muscles and trying hard will not help you to do it

The mind is much bigger than we think and once we’ve got the general information the mind itself will be pondering over the problem and will come up with answers

So why don’t we do this normally? I suppose we don’t like to rely on something or someone else we want to feel we’ve done it all by ourselves but we’re never really by ourselves because we’ve always got to the deeper parts of the mind the part that produces dreams and the remembers things and learns things that you didn’t know that you were learning

I think the French used to call this part of the mind

L’autre moi.

The other me.

But this is not talked about at school or even at university. It could be that fear of being dependent on another person when your parents were harsh or punitive may  make you want you to rely only on yourself.

It is true that you have to cultivate your garden in other words you’ve got to know something about the problem and I’ve done the necessary reading and preperation or even talk to someone about it

But after that you’ve got to rely on your un conscious mind.

Some people may have a closer relationship where their unconscious than others do

I have read this approach helps in sport for example playing tennis is described in the book

A life of one’s own’ by Marion Milner’ so

If you’re interested in art you might like that book also or just generally well worth reading

Relaxation is the most important skill or should we call it a skill when it should come naturally to us?

Western society values efforts and hard work and of course there’s always a certain amount of that in any situation like running a home for example but even that can be done in a more relaxed manner then we think.

My grandad was a coal miner for 50 years starting at the age of 14 and I don’t know what he would have said about relaxing at work but he  was very proud of himself. He brought up six children alone as well and he used to work nights. But it did have some bad consequences like my mother always had problem sleeping. Especially when she was left in the same situation after 11 years of marriage.

The other factor is that tension is one way that we control our feelings and if we let go of the tension we may hear some interesting idea coming from unconscious mind but we might also feel some feelings that we don’t want to feel because we’re frightened of them sometimes with good cause.

When I was at school I was trying to solve a mathematical problem with no luck until I went to bed. When I closed my eyes I saw the numbers I had been trying to deal with rearranging themselves into a new pattern and suddenly I saw the solution. It was a mystical experience.

It doesn’t mean that if you are relaxed you will never suffer pain again you may not suffer the same kind of pain that you did when you were trying to do your homework when you were 15 years old but there is always pain and suffering in different degrees from not being able to have the clothes that you want when you’re a teenager to suddenly realizing a person you thought was a friend is actually someone who doesn’t like you but you’ll never been able to see it before.

Then there’s marriage and it’s problems: life is never easy for most of us. We can’t envy the royal family either.

I had to phone the Guardian customer services today. I told them that white I’ve been ill have found it’s helpful to do su doku puzzles

But I cannot do the medium one today!

I asked him if anyone else complained and he said no so maybe it’s just me that’s my brain has done too many and is refusing to to cooperate now.

Oh dear will I have to read Principia Mathematica again? Well to say again is really telling a lie because I never read it before.

Bertrand Russell said his brain never felt the same after he wrote that book and in a way I wish he had not written it because it’s all based on an error.

Quite what this errorv is I cannot tell you. But there’s something in it at least to a contradiction and you know that we cannot have contradictions in mathematics

What about in theology can we have contradictions there?

Belief in God has been difficult for many because we used to think God was omnipotent and good but if that is the case why do we have evil in the world?

I know that some people like the nuns who educated me would say it’s to prove that you have willpower so that you can resist evil

In itself bitvseems very bad. If God created this world and caused a lot of suffering to see whether we would have the will power to refrain from causing more suffering or even to help those who are suffering it just doesn’t seem to make sense to me I cannot accept it as a theological argument

But then if God is not all powerful and all good is he really God?

If you were to study mathematics and especially numbers you would find that you very soon get into very complicated territory so that very few people could understand it and if this is true of numbers how much more is it true of people and the whole world it may be beyond our comprehension.

Well not maybe but certainly definitely it is beyond our comprehension but I’m not sure where to go from there

There is suffering inherent in the fact that our bodies are made of flesh and can be wounded and damaged either by accident or by evil or by illness etc

So there is going to be emotional pain and grief cause by the suffering of our loved ones including their death.

It’s particularly severe when children die either by illness or even worse in war.

One are my schoolmates died at the age of 15.

The suffering of her parents was very severe not to mention her brother and sister but they did not question God

I still remember her father reading out

The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away

Blessed be the name of the Lord

That’s been in my mind ever since