Saturday, May 24, 2025
Blog Page 577

Oxford SU given award for work on democracy

Rachel Cordery
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Oxford SU given award for work on democracy

The Oxford Student Union has been awarded an NUS Quality Student Award following a two-day assessment.

The Awards are an annual celebration of the work which Union’s undertake each day.

A representative from the National Union of Students (NUS) and an independent assessor visited the Oxford to review twelve elements of the SU, including leadership, engagement, and government.

The Quality Assessment Team decided to give the Oxford SU with a ‘good’ Quality Students’ Union and an award for their work over the past year, especially their “ground breaking work on Democracy”.

Meeting with Oxford SU staff, University Staff, and students, the panel was impressed by the work on Student Council, and the clear and easy Governance.

The creation of Projects, which enable students to deliver real change in a number of individual areas, also impressed the assessors.

Student Projects allow students to start their own projects which matter to them. The SU helps students to kick start their projects by piecing together a project proposal document with a budget and plan. Support from the Student Engagement staff team continues throughout the process.

Ryan Bird, CEO, at Oxford SU said: “I am so proud of what we have achieved so far this year, with the support of the SU staff team, students and volunteers. I am grateful for their continued hard work. The SU has built a reputation of providing strong services to our students and is committed to ensuring all students have a voice on issues that matter to them.”

“We will continue to strive to reach and engage more students in our life-changing work, from campaigning on access to education to improving access to libraries for students with disabilities to helping tackle climate change.”

Ex-University employee pleads guilty to US murder

Rachel Cordery
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Ex-University employee pleads guilty to US murder

A former Oxford University employee accused of fatally stabbing a man in Chicago has pleaded guilty, it was announced on Thursday.

Andrew Warren, who was a treasury assistant at Somerville College at the time of the murder, attacked his victim while he was sleeping, according to a plea agreement released by the court.

Warren also agreed to give evidence against his co-defendant, Wyndham Lathem, in exchange for a lesser sentence of 45 years.

The pair were charged with first-degree murder for the killing of Trenton Cornell-Duranleau. A hair stylist from Michigan, his body was found with his throat slit and 70 stab wounds in July 2017.

A nationwide manhunt was launched for Warren and the former Northwestern Professor, Wyndham Lathem, who lived in the apartment and was identified as Cornell-Duranleau’s boyfriend.

After the body of Mr Cornell-Duranleau was found, Warren was suspended and subsequently fired from his job at Somerville College.

Natosha Toller, an assistant state attorne in Chicago, described the plan as a sexual fantasy. Warren and Lathem began communicating online in the month before the murder.

Abandoning the original plan to commit suicide following the murder, the pair fled Chicago and headed to California, stopping at a public library in which they made large donations in Cornell-Duranleau’s name.

Warren eventually handed himself in after eight days on the run in San Francisco, and Lathem gave himself up in Oakland.

Somerville College has been contacted for a comment.

Councils raise concerns over Oxford-Cambridge Expressway plans

Luke Dunne
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Councils raise concerns over Oxford-Cambridge Expressway plans

With Highways England in line to open a consultation on the proposed ‘expressway’ between Oxford and Cambridge, two Oxfordshire councils have signaled their opposition to the plans.

South Oxfordshire and The Vale of White Horse district councils have voted to oppose the plan. Comment given by the South Oxfordshire council highlighted the potential damage done to the area. 

The council’s leader, Sue Cooper, said: “It will bring more traffic, create a major source of air and noise pollution, destroy farmland and habitats and increase CO2 emissions, all of which are incompatible with the recent Climate Emergency declared by this council in April.”

The two proposed routes for the road will take it either into the Vale or South Oxfordshire. 

The development is intended to link Oxford and Cambridge via Milton Keynes, both as a way to provide an outer orbital route around London and to stimulate development in the corridor between Oxford and Cambridge. There are plans to build new towns along the route when it is completed. 

In addition to the council’s objections, groups have raised concerns previously. The public consultation comes as the result of a motion by Oxford County Council criticising Highways England for their failure to engage with local people when planning the route. The consultation motion passed by 49 votes to 5. 

The Campaign to Protect Rural England has also criticised the route, which is to pass through the greenbelt, as unnecessary and likely to lead to the expansion of Oxford. 

Current estimates of the cost range between £3 to £4.5 billion. 

All Souls professor appointed to Supreme Court

Rachel Cordery
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All Souls professor appointed to Supreme Court

Professor Andrew Burrows, a fellow of All Souls College, has been appointed to the Supreme Court.

A Barrister and Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple, Professor Burrows is Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford. He will join the Supreme Court on 2nd June 2020.

An alumnus of both Brasenose College, Oxford, and Harvard University, his work focuses on private law.

Burrows is the main editor of the compendium English Private Law which produces textbooks on English contract law and the legal treatise A Restatement of the English law of Unjust Enrichment.

Popular amongst judges, Baroness Hale said in her 2017 Hamlyn Lecture at the University of Exeter: “there are few, if any, legal scholars whose writings are more frequently cited in our courts.”

Queen Elizabeth made four new appointments on the advice of outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May, including Lord Hamblen, Lord Leggatt, and Lord Reed, a Scottish judge, who will become the next president of the Supreme Court.

Succeeding Baroness Hale, Lord Reed has sat in the Supreme Court since 2012 and served as deputy president for the past year.

While Lord Hamblen and Lord Leggatt already sit in the appeal court, Professor Burrows has sat as a part time Deputy High Court Judge for more than 20 years and he was a Law Commissioner for England and Wales.

Ruskin College accused of ‘victimising’ trade union reps

Ben van der Merwe and Luke Dunne
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Ruskin College accused of ‘victimising’ trade union reps

Ruskin College have been accused of ‘victimising’ trade union representatives after a University and College Union (UCU) branch officer was fired in mysterious circumstances, and four others are due to be made redundant.

Dr Lee Humber was suspended from his position as a lecturer in health and social care in April, just two days after organising a vote of no confidence in the college’s principal, Paul Di Felice. After months in limbo, Humber was fired last week, prompting outrage from the UCU. Ruskin College denies that the dismissal was related to Dr Humber’s trade union activity.

Speaking to Cherwell, Dr Humber praised “the absolutely fantastic amount of support I got from colleagues in the UCU, from the union leadership and from the thousands of other trade unionists who wrote their support and invited me to address their branch and union meetings.”

“It was clear from the very start that trade unionists and many, many others understood that this as an attack on me as a trade union officer, on our UCU branch and on the national union generally.”

Ruskin College did not respond to a request for comment.

The adult learning institution, which is affiliated to Oxford University, has been embroiled in an official dispute with UCU over its treatment of staff. The college, which has traditionally maintained strong links to the trade union movement, has recently moved to scrap trade union courses and to casualise teaching contracts in a bid to stem falling student numbers.

These proposals led to a vote of no confidence in the college’s Principal in April, which was passed “unanimously” by Ruskin College’s UCU branch.

Two days after organizing the vote, Dr Humber was suspended from his post as a lecturer in health and social care. The Ruskin UCU branch said at the time: “We believe that Lee is being victimised in order to intimidate us as a union branch. This is utterly disgraceful behaviour from the management of a college with such deep roots in the trade union and labour movement.”

The campaign to reinstate Dr Humber has attracted the support of ten union leaders and the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. In a statement following Dr Humber’s suspension, Ruskin UCU said: “We believe that Lee is being victimised in order to intimidate us as a union branch. This is utterly disgraceful behaviour from the management of a college with such deep roots in the trade union and labour movement.”

UCU have criticized the college’s restructuring proposals on the grounds that falling student numbers are a result of poor management rather than staffing costs or course content. Ruskin College received a 90% student satisfaction rating for the quality of its teaching in 2018, but just 35% for the quality of its management – the lowest in the country. No data is available for 2019.

In a separate incident, the Ruskin Students’ Union was forced to relocate its May ball to a local pub after what it described as “poor, bureaucratic management” of their budget by the college.

The college’s business development plan has resulted in a pivot away from secure, long-term contracts towards the hiring of temporary and insecure agency staff. In 2018, the college spent 19% of staffing costs on contracted workers, compared to just 5% in 2015. These changes saw Ruskin College placed on UCU’s “list of shame” for academic institutions undermining staff pay and job security through casualisation.

In that time, the number of in-house staff has fallen from 75 to 55. Ruskin UCU allege that more than 80 staff, disproportionately women, have left during that period, including three entire senior administrative and recruitment teams.

The union allege that this high turnover is the result of a “climate of uncertainty, stress and fear” created by the Principal. The text of the no-confidence motion passed by the group states: “A large number of women have stated in exit interviews that they are leaving directly because of the Principal.”

The branch also accused the college of failing to carry out stress risk assessments for staff, in violation of their legal duties.

Last week, Ruskin College’s management outlined a further phase of restructuring to take place before the new academic year, including the discontinuation of four of the college’s six higher education courses in a bid to make the college less reliant on trade union teaching for its income. All five employees due to lose their posts as part of these changes are UCU Branch Committee members, which has led to accusations that union activists are being targeted.

Ruskin UCU says that staff and students were not consulted on the move to shrink the college’s higher education programme. In a statement, the union said: “We firmly believe the college is being wound down for merger. This will see multi million pound assets, prime Oxford real estate and working-class resources built up over 120 years given free to the private sector.”

In a statement, Ruskin College said: “Disciplinary investigations are internal staff disciplinary matters which are entirely unconnected with any trade union activity of those involved. It would be wrong for any institution to seek to discipline or suspend a member of staff as a result of their union activity; the notion that Ruskin College, the home of trade union education for more than 100 years, would do so is absolutely inconceivable. 

“Trade union membership at Ruskin is actively encouraged among the staff and there are currently four unions well-represented in College. Contrary to claims, the vote of no confidence in March was not unanimous, even among UCU members, and was supported by less than 20% of staff. Ruskin College remains the largest provider of trade union training in the UK with up to 3,000 reps trained each year.”

Speaking to Cherwell, Dr Humber said: “Everywhere in the country I went to speak to people and address meetings support was fantastically genuine and warm. Of course, coupled with this positive end of proceedings were – initially at least – feelings of anxiety.

“I worried about how I was going to support my family, whether the stress the dispute bought on me would infect my young kids, about what would happen in the future. Thankfully, due to the great resilience of my family, itself underpinned by the incredible depth and breadth of support we received, we’ve all grown out of it and we’re facing the future with great optimism.”

Asked how he was informed of his dismissal, Dr Humber said: “A simple letter. It was the 43rd letter they’d sent me (in the first 50 days of my suspension) arriving on the Friday as so many of their meant-to-be intimidating communiques had. It was no surprise to any of us.

“They made various allegations all of which we refuted in great detail in a 14-page document we sent to the disciplinary hearing. They’ve dismissed our refutation. We’ve now appealed against this decision and they’ll turn that down too.

“Then, at last, we’ll be out of the Alice in Wonderland world of Ruskin-based disciplinary procedure, where they’ve consistently made up policy and process to suit their own ends, and on into the world of ACAS and Employment Tribunals where there are real rules by which both parties in this dispute must abide.”

“A Kind of Dirty Poetry”

Charlotte Hall
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“A Kind of Dirty Poetry”

It smells of earth. In the expectant gloom and chatter, the smell penetrates everything; muddies thoughts, muffles voices, buries conversations in a layer of murky suspense. It’s soon obvious why; as the lights come on, and the audience settles down, all that is visible is a circle of soil, surrounded by a thick tangle of cables and industrial electronics. Silence falls.
A man steps into the light, through the cabling. He’s dressed simply but in contrast to the rawness of his environment, there’s a magnetizing humanness about him.
“Look around!” he cries. (Like sheep, we look.) “Everything’s rigid, hard, dark. – What lies beneath it all?” – and then he transforms, before our very eyes, into someone completely different.

The play hasn’t happened yet.

But the vivaciousness with which Saul Barrett and Joshua Silverlock, two students taking on the Edinburgh Fringe, describe their reinvention of Woyzeck draws me into another world. That world, originally outlined in Buechner’s unfinished script, has been adapted and re-claimed by Saul and Joshua’s independently founded production company Missing Cat in a project that has taken them almost a year to complete. Despite the dark tone of the play, described by Saul as “humanity laid bare in its dirtiest form searching for sanity and the sanitary,” the two of them are positively beaming. Knee-deep in rehearsals, the “juicy part” of preparations, with the finish line in sight, they can’t help being excited. The energy is infectious – and it’s clear why the two of them have teamed up; they regularly finish each other’s sentences, bouncing off one another in sparkling creativity, even during this brief conversation.

But the road hasn’t always been easy. Joshua, director and producer, describes how he has “only recently felt the other hats come on.” He’s been pre-occupied with financial and organisational decisions, including a crowd-funding campaign and, he says with a hint of self-consciousness, “I guess, creating a brand.” Figuring out how to present themselves on social media, advertise and encourage donations has taken up most of the past year – and only with their first production meeting in the Royal Court last month have creative decisions started to take the foreground. “I actually found the meeting quite emotional,” Saul says, turning to his director “It went from me texting you from a bus one day going ‘should we give this thing a go?’ and you going ‘yeah, let’s do it!’ to suddenly being something that is shared – something that is no longer just yours.”

Now the two are heading a team of around ten people – and they stress the importance of choosing your group wisely. Paying their team professionally isn’t an option, so they depend on their teams’ dedication. “It’s a double-edged thing,” they explain “you rely a lot on goodwill and friendship – which is sometimes tenuous because it doesn’t give you much leverage as an entrepreneurial organizer – but there’s also a really lovely spirit that we’ve brought with us in recruiting people from all over the place.”

The team work together closely, but the idea for the project germinated with Saul and Joshua. Both were fascinated by the “very rich, very bare-bones” nature of the play and language – “not colloquial, not Shakespeare – a kind of dirty poetry” – but realised they had never seen a good production. “It’s quite a simple archetypal plot – it’s kind of Othello: one man trying to provide for his family, she commits an act of infidelity and he takes revenge. It’s not that. It’s not the plot. There’s something almost inarticulable about the atmosphere of it and the world and these beautiful little strangenesses.” Determined to do the text justice, they decided to give it a go.

Their version collapses the play’s 14 characters into 3 actors. Two take the roles of the main characters, while the third transforms into different people through on-stage transitions. In fact, much of what would usually occur ‘behind-the-scenes’ is incorporated into the performance; including an on-stage sound desk operated by characters who aren’t immediately involved in the scene. “Our production is a primal, visceral and incredibly involving experience for the audience, which lays bare the mechanics of theatre while also pulling you into the world of the characters.”

I wonder how this works exactly, since Brecht, for instance, often revealed theses ‘mechanics’ to alienate, rather than involve his audience. Joshua disagrees with “the corollary of alienating the audience being that they don’t believe in the same way.” Historically, he argues, “theatre has tried to reduce the leap of the imagination as much as possible so that what you’re watching is real” i.e. through realistic costumes and sets, but “you’re never going to completely reduce it and just by making it smaller, you actually magnify the cracks. In some ways it’s easier to believe in a punch and judy show.” Instead, keeping true to Buechner’s sketch-like implications of a wider system, a larger world beyond the lines, Missing Cat wants to “give the audience the crumbs with which to feed their own imaginations,” to make the “audiences active in completing the picture – instead of being talked down to.”

When I ask about Fringe, their jaws simultaneously tighten. “By any kind of logical thinking we should just not go to the Fringe,” there’s a glint in Joshua’s eye as he says this, which makes it clear he’s only half-joking “it’s so far away, so pointlessly expensive, so clogged… I started this as if there’s a but – I don’t think there’s a but.”
“But you want people to see it.” Saul breaks in. London venues are even more expensive, and don’t give you the opportunity to put on 15 shows in a row – it’s a learning experience for young performers. “It does feel like a rite of passage,” Joshua concedes “getting that Fringe Ox blood on your face.”

Fringe does mean some limitations, however. Since it consists of one space catering to so many different productions, with little storage space, it’s difficult to create original sets. “What you get is this really great stuff going on, but in this really homogenous environment.” Much of the design for Missing Cat’s production is driven by the urge to change this and push the boundaries as far as they can; bringing their own technical kit and re-inventing the black box, so they can make Woyzeck stand out visually, too.

“The venue basically hate us” Joshua says with a hint of a smile “but they’ll love us when we get there – if everything goes to plan.”

Catch Missing Cat’s premier at New River Studios, London on the 26th, 27th and 28th of this month, or at the Fringe during 2-10th and 12-17th of August!

Photo credits: Max Longmuir

Does Taylor need to calm down?

Jenna Colaco
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Does Taylor need to calm down?

With the current political uncertainty of Brexit, a massive question-mark over the future leadership of the United Kingdom and the US general election coming up next year, it is fair to say that politics takes up time out of our day-to-day lives– whether we want it to or not. However, what is unclear is what the place of influential public figures in the media, such as musician Taylor Swift, is in political advocacy.

During the lead-up to the 2018 US midterm elections, Taylor Swift sparked controversy with a social media post incentivising young people to register to vote. The post expressed her own preferences for candidates Phil Bredesen for the Senate and Jim Cooper for the House of Representatives and gave reasons why she was not supporting Martha Blackburn, a Republican running for the Senate in Swift’s home-state of Tennessee. The post became a controversial issue as it raised a very pertinent question: should musicians keep their political views and music separate?

Swift, as the winner of various prestigious music awards including multiple Grammy, MTV Music and Billboard Music Awards, is clearly an influential public figure. From an essay she wrote for Elle in March, it seems that Swift intends to make better use of this influence to increase voter participation in elections. Swift revealed that her new album, due to be released in 2020, the year of the next US general election, will have ‘political undertones’. This very powerfully demonstrates that Swift is not an artist that believes she has to keep her political views separate from her music. In fact, it shows she is willing to use her music as a political tool. In a 2012 interview for Time, Swift said: ‘…I don’t talk about politics because it might influence other people. And I don’t think that I know enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for.’ Thus, Swift is revoking her previous stance on making her political views public and using her platform to influence her massive social media following comprised of around 119 million on Instagram alone. 

However, Swift is not the first artist to use her platform to bring attention to political issues through art. The 20th and 21st centuries are full of examples where art was politicised to bring attention to the struggle and suffering of people around them. The 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Bob Dylan, was commended for his poetic expressions in the American song tradition. However, part of Dylan’s power as a musician came from using his music to spread messages. Dylan was inspired by the changing political environment in the US during the 1960s. It was a time of great political activism with many people campaigning for Civil Rights for all as well as protesting US involvement in Vietnam. His song The Times Are a-Changin’ was intended to capture the rapid change going on in America and encourage people not to get left behind by the change. The opening lines are ‘Come gather ’round, people/ Wherever you roam/ And admit that the waters/ Around you have grown’. The water acts as a metaphor for rising change, threatening to drown the people who don’t ‘start swimmin’. Dylan is not inspiring political protest, he is singing to encourage people to accept the change that is happening whether they like it or not. He appeals to politicians in particular to move with the times, ‘Come senators, congressmen/ Please heed the call/ Don’t stand in the doorway/ Don’t block up the hall’. Whilst Dylan’s political message is very different to Swift’s, his message of the acceptance of change is one that is fundamental even over fifty years later. His song was brought to life again in the 2018 by Jennifer Hudson and the D.C. choir as part of the March for Our Lives rally in Washington D.C. The rally was led by Parkland students affected by a school shooting and it demanded an end to gun violence in America. ‘The Times Are a-Changin’ took a different subject but carried the same meaning it did in the 60s, a plea for people and politicians to accept the issues of a changing world. 

Whilst it is clear that Taylor Swift has done nothing that other artists have not done before her and will probably continue to do after her, it still begs the question whether an artist should lend their artistic works and platforms to politics. I firmly believe that they should, predominantly because they are people with opinions and I think they deserve the right to share what they feel. As a secondary, but also key reason, I believe that young people today have become very disillusioned with politics and incentivising them to have their say in politics is a difficult job. Using the influence of music and other art forms should be a tool to encourage young people to register to vote and research candidates who represent their views. As long as public figures express their opinions and don’t encourage the spread of propaganda and fake-news, I believe there is real merit in figures such as Swift speaking about politics and I look forward to her new album. 

Bodleian celebrates 50th anniversary of Moon landing

Charlotte Moberly
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Bodleian celebrates 50th anniversary of Moon landing

This Saturday, the Bodleian Libraries is holding an event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing.

The Lunar Activity Day, which will be held in Blackwell Hall, is intended to be a family-friendly event involving arts and crafts, object handling and live performances.

There will also be talks from academics on themes such as ‘The Origin of the Moon’,  ‘Art in Outer Space’, ‘Contested Meanings of Lunacy in Nineteenth Century Asylums’ and ‘The Moon is Feminist Art’.

A team of academics from the Rothermere American Institute, the Department of Physics, and the Oxford Internet Institute’s Cabinet team have created a display about the moon landings, which will be in the Proscholium of the Old Bodleian Library until 15 September.

The exhibit explores ‘humanity’s fascination with all things lunar’ through selected items from the Bodleian collections.

Dr Karen Patricia Heath, who organised the event, said: “This is going to be a fantastic interactive event for all the family, as we celebrate 50 years since the Moon landing. From meteorite handling and 3D printing to live music and talks from Oxford University experts, there will be something for everyone.”

What this World Cup will mean for the future of women’s football

Lucy Tansley
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What this World Cup will mean for the future of women’s football

With the World Cup now long behind us, the promise of a new era for female representation in the sport beckons. The USA’s victory over the Netherlands in the final was a well-deserved outcome, and despite England’s chances for a World Cup victory being dashed by the eventual winners in the semi-finals, hope for a new attitude to the women’s game remains.

The viewing figures for the tournament surpassed any previous competition; England’s victory over Norway to progress to the semi-final attracted a peak audience of 7.6 million viewers. By contrast, the men’s Cricket World Cup, which took place at the same time, received an average viewing audience of 550,000; despite the tradition of cricket as a typical summer sport, and the fact that the world cup was held in Britain, the tournament has apparently failed to capture the public’s imagination in the same way which women’s football, usually underrepresented in the media, has.

As part of the BBC’s announcement last year to broadcast 1,000 more hours of sport every year, the increase of coverage of women’s sport is crucial. Where women’s football is concerned, it has truly been a case of out of sight, out of mind, and this tournament has thrown it into the limelight as never before. Having the World Cup on free-to-air television, with key matches playing on BBC1 at peak time-slots, raises the profile of the sport and allows it to reach even the most sceptical viewer. The stands themselves were largely full, with big matches such as the host nation France’s quarter-final against the USA yielding a packed stadium, and thousands of English fans taking the trip across the Channel to support their team.

What this tournament will mean for the future of the sport is an exciting prospect. Back in October of 2018, UEFA pledged to increase funding for women’s football by 50%, and asserted their aim to increase participation to 60 million by 2026; improving the accessibility of football for girls is a crucial step in widening the reach of the sport, and more funding for clubs at grassroots level will be key in dispelling the stigma around the women’s game. Most importantly however, this world cup will have succeeded in giving girls new role models, to have them aspiring to be the next Megan Rapinoe or Lucy Bronze, not merely a female Cristiano Ronaldo.

The matches in the latter stages of the tournament demonstrated the quality on show in women’s football; Ellen White’s elegant tap into the goal to put England 1-1 with the USA in their semi-final match was as thrilling a moment as one could hope for in a closely fought match which was reminiscent of the World Cup-fever from last summer. The USA have traditionally been the dominant force in women’s “soccer” – perhaps unexpectedly, given the somewhat sub-standard status of their men’s side – but this world cup has demonstrated the rise of the European force in the sport, increasing the global appeal of women’s football further still.

Will the publicity of this tournament – the global viewing audience of which is estimated to have been around 1 billion – increase awareness for the campaign for equal pay between genders in football? Hopefully, and England manager Phil Neville has been vocal about the change that needs to happen, revealing that the women’s team have to fly economy class to tournaments, where the men usually take a private plane. A Sporting Intelligence survey discovered last year that the salary of the 1,693 players in the top seven women’s football leagues in the world was roughly equal to the salary of a single male player, Neymar. Such stark figures will hopefully draw attention to the need for change, and if this competition has done anything, it has brought women’s football into mainstream consciousness and given a spectacle to rival last year’s summer in Russia.

Why Read Poetry?

Jenny Scoones
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Why Read Poetry?

It’s easy to be intimidated by poetry. Often it withholds as much as it gives, leaves obscure as much as it reveals. And there is so much of it. So many different kinds. Poetry. Not one definable thing, but rather a way of seeing things. None of which has to be poetry proper. An evening can be poetic. A person. A face and the secrets it holds. A face, much like a poem in what it withholds and what it gives up, when it is vulnerable and when defensive. Difficult, even. – So why read poetry?   

Poetry can be read in the world around us, not just as the words on a page. Poetry is in religion. Poetry is in pop music, in lyrics and in films; the words we keep with us, day after day, because they are the words that see us through. The words, I love you. The words, I love you too. Because poetry is a love offering, and a way of reading the world. Poetry is accepting inconclusion, to know that you cannot know and have faith none the less.

But where to begin? And how? How to read a poem? And poems, the plural, one after the other, like songs on a playlist; or like lovers, one in an evening and another the next? Or the same one, night after night, because you will never know them fully. Can never know anyone fully. A Poem as a lover you return to again and again under the same twilit sky, each night hoping to come closer to them, and each dawn watching them draw ever further away. And it still being worth it. Each night, tracing their shape on your tongue. Printed there, an indelible impression, forgotten come the morning, known only in glimpses until you return, inevitably, to their arms again.

And some versions of their shape not known at all. You can never know another person entirely. Who they are when you are no longer there. Just as there will always be a reading that has escaped you, a possible version of that poem you have failed to bring to life. As with people and what we bring out in them. As with love and who it does or doesn’t make us. Because failure is essential to poetry. The acceptance of what cannot be read. Or what cannot be read today but one day will be. How meaning can come only with time. Words relevant only when you know enough to not need them anymore, or know too much and so needing them hurts. But the hurt is good, makes the other times worth-while, makes the loving and the touching purposeful and pure. Poetry as recognising that love is all there is or ever will be. Larkin wasn’t so sure, but that he wrote as much means I am.

It takes effort, beginning a book. And a book of poetry more so than fiction. Because whereas with fiction the initial displacement of landing in the terrain of another’s mind wears off once things like character, situation, and plot have been established, in a book of poems each page is a new landscape to explore. A new country with a new language to decipher, a new climate to which to adjust. This disjunct can be jarring, confusing and alienating. But whoever learnt a language in a day? Whoever packed for all weather? Each poem is a new face you let in. Let see you as much as you see it. And together you decipher your language. Sometimes it doesn’t speak back. Sometimes you can only run away. But sometimes it meets you on the borderline, between breath and page, a hand stretched out to your own, and your are taken in, embraced.

And it will always be worth that embrace. The embrace that tells you, look! Look upon this world and see! The faces, the bodies, the trees! The memories, the loss, and the longing! How to read the world. How to make each breath count. An embrace you practice each night, with a hundred lovers but the hope is always the same. A hundred lovers but it doesn’t matter when the hope is always the same. Of finding beneath their skin, any skin, the answer. Of finding in a word your God. If only for a moment, finding absolution, and clinging to it as you cling to life itself.

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