Keith Shorrocks Johnson [ Wellington New Zealand ]

The lynching that Black Chattanooga never forgot takes center stage downtown

By Chris Moody, Washington Post, 12 March, 2021

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — On a recent warm winter afternoon, hundreds of Chattanoogans flocked downtown to stroll along the Walnut Street Bridge, a picturesque walking path that towers over the Tennessee River.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa with LeAnne Howe

In Collaboration with the Embassy of Ireland

Monday, March 15, 2021, 6:30 pm

Virtual Reading 6:30pm-7:30pm ET

TICKETS: $15 (suggested price) to $5 (minimum price)

Buy Tickets

In collaboration with the Embassy of Ireland, the O.B. Hardison Poetry series welcomes poet and writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa to read from her work in both Irish and English.

British troops on the way to Baghdad, 1917.

Time cannot devour this bright circumstance 

FOR NZ POETRY DAY 2020

[It was a thoroughly wonderful late morning today, here on the South Coast - with the brightest of springtime sunshine available to relish brunch at the Scorch-O-Rama cafe.]

Quietly I catch its Presence

The morning is one of the most glorious:

The sunlight is making surfaces shine

Transmuting their forms to treasures

Such that presence and beauty align.

International Women's Day

That there may be a Deep Human Ancestral Homology of Myth, concerning the Male and the Female Counterparts of Life and Death, is undeniable to many of us.

New Zealand is tailoring its vaccination strategy for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, moving away from its prior plans that relied on various manufacturers and products.

At Quilter's Bookshop having Coffee 

With maturity comes freedom?

Rubbish.

With an absence of choice

Have I ceased to be a man?

Reading Antony Burgess on morality

In the New Yorker,

I wrestled with predestination -

Nowt so queer as a clockwork orange.

As far as I could tell, things you think are OK –

Action makes it predestined.

I squeezed a glance at the twenty-or-so blonde

Bending over a second-hand book,

Wellington all the way – black and grey –

But great legs, dark tights.

No Separation

When sun has set and night has come

The road not taken leaves no trace

Of journeys once so near begun

All thought to part now left in place.

But all roads cross and come to ground

As dark paths shift and circle back

There is no loss there is no found

Thorns and flowers will edge each track.

And deep within the wily wood

Other lanes will branch in offering

Promises which are best withstood

Though such is neither bad nor good.