Werner Herzog Talks about nature, art, and filmmaking. This has got to be podcast of the year. His advice to budding filmmakers read, read, read great literature. The book he wants to highlight: JA Baker’s great classic of English nature writing The Peregrine. Herzog finds here writing of a calibre that has not appeared since theContinue reading “Two Psychogeography Podcasts”
Author Archives: urthonamag
A ramble in South Cambs
Coton, pronounced with the first 0 long as in Seb Coe, is the nearest village to Cambridge on the west side. Beyond the village wide, lazy cornfields open out, glowing in the morning heat at this sultry end of July. After a mile or so a small wood closes in: amber shades frettingsContinue reading “A ramble in South Cambs”
A Berkshire Wood in Spring
The Berkshire Downs, not open country but deep woodland scaling the hillside. Just after rain, wandering through the heavy feast of rain soaked boughs, green shadows dripping all around me, festering silence, rich but a little sinister. Solitary dog walkers loom out of the stillness, a black labrador bounds up, then disappears into the resinyContinue reading “A Berkshire Wood in Spring”
Geoffrey Hill on Larkin
Geoffrey Hill’s valedictory lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry is powerful final plea to maintain standards in literature. His hectoring, pungently oratorical style has to be heard to be believed. He is irreplaceable. Listen to it here: Oxford lecture
New Collection from Buddhist Poet
The Solitude of Small Doors, Ananda (Stephen Parr) Wolf at the Door, Bristol 2015, £11.52, pb, 250 pp (To order go to Lulu.com and search for Stephen Parr Reviewed by Ratnagarbha Ananda’s major new collection, The Solitude of Small Doors has a distilled reflectiveness about it. We get the feeling that this is the fruit of aContinue reading “New Collection from Buddhist Poet”
The new Gnosticism
A Fascinating article by Henry Gould about a new group of American poets who call themselves the New gnostics. It appeared in Coldfront magazine in May 2014. The New Gnosticism
A quest for contours in East Anglia
It was spring and I wanted to climb a hill, but not too far away. Too much driving, surely, equals alienation. Best to stay within a day’s journey on horse or camel back. Let the crabbed soul come along for the ride. No more than one hour’s drive then. I would give in to contourContinue reading “A quest for contours in East Anglia”
Petrarch, Sonnets in translation
Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374), commonly written in English as Petrarch, was one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch’s rediscovery of Cicero‘s letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Renaissance. His love sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. They were all written to expressContinue reading “Petrarch, Sonnets in translation”
Edward Thomas – master of prose
Edward Thomas has been much celebrated in recent years for the short lived but vital output of his poetry before he headed for the Western front and into memory. The influence of his prose writing – nature writing and literary reviews has been downplayed. This is regrettable.
Just posted in Culture and Society: Ruskin’s Seven Lamps and the power of art
Just posted a talk given by Ratnagarbha on the art critic John Ruskin and his relevance to people who believe in the power of art to transform self and world. Find the talk here: Ruskin’s Seven Lamps
