The impetus for writing this book was an invitation I received in 2017 from Ronald Schuchard, the Director of the London T. S. Eliot Summer School, to give the annual address at Little Gidding, on the fourth of the Four Quartets, which bears that title.
I shall never forget that evening in my life. We had to walk nearly 5 km in the dusk to reach that little, sleepy tribal village at the foot of a hill. I, in the capacity of a facilitator, was with a group of activists working with a forest tribe, the Forest Shepherds.
This launch event for the website you’re looking at took place via Zoom (the new material reality of the pandemic) at 6 pm Indian Standard Time on 11th September 2020.
While self-isolating, a certain man, aged 65 plus, fell in love. A member of the humanist intelligentsia, he lived alone in a small fifth-floor walk up in Moscow and spent his days poring over a set of pre-Revolutionary encyclopedias.
"The thurn was harried from his home / by a bailiff beetle with an acid aura / in a waistcoat grand and red as Rome..."
A year or so ago, I invited the Scottish writer Duncan McLean to come down from the Isle of Orkney where he lives to Dundee where I was hosting a series of literary events we called 'Writers Read.' This was a monthly get-together of students, teachers and anyone who was interested in reading and publishing, held in a convivial cafe where the espresso machine blasted every few minutes...
Zoom is where poetry goes to die. Or where we, dying, go for poetry. Or is it the best available platform for poetry in the age of covidity?
"This lakeside,/this Inner Mongolia,/where the language spoken/is the one you speak..."
