HARBINGER

And so it goes...this is my final blog of 2019. A year of consistent achievement,innovation and progress seen on my many fronts -some personal,some of wider significance.And at the centre of them all,Wakefield. Google #WakeyLit19 ,checkout all 3 of the articles published by Wakefield Express , go to the #WakeyLit19 facebook page. As a pioneering project on its first test run, it succeeded in proving that its underlying ethos and theory works. Mary Creagh back in May 2019 however wanted nothing to with it.This from her email to me :- "I must admit I felt some surprise when I received your email, given you have made several negative comments about me on Twitter and Facebook. I attach a couple of these but, as we know, there are many more. I hope you understand my apprehension about your request following your comments on social media. Using language like ‘traitor’ ‘shill’ and ‘paranoid delusions’ to attack me on a personal level makes it difficult for us to work together co...

A couple of weeks or so ago, members of the Manchester University Students Union Executive ordered the painting over of a Rudyard Kipling poem in their building that had been put there as part of some recent very expensive renovations. Their official rationale for this impromptu act of philistinism was that Kipling represented white patriarchy and racism.Or something along those lines. Welcome to the alternate cosmic reality that is:- Virtue signalling,socialjustice warriors,safe-spaces,no-platforming; in other words the full unmitigated gamut of contemporary western identity / gender politics intruding into cultural and artistic expression. Poetry was mainstream,controversial and exciting. And so it proved to be again a few days ago,when a largely unknown,unremarkable american poet- manque  was thrust into the glaring headlines of social media when one of his poems got published. I was going to recapitulate at length and had fully intended to do so,but occasionally,very ra...