I have recently become associated with the research centre ‘Representations of Home in Literatures and Cultures in English’ at the University of Lisbon – which is a joy as well as an honour. Colleagues have accepted my proposal to undertake a study of great personal interest to me. Through this I am also linked to the medical humanities programme – again, a truly helpful connection.
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Some prose pieces
BlogWith the time afforded by enforced leisure during the pandemic, I tried my hand at some creative non-fiction. Here’s an extract from an essay, ‘Creative Frailty: some thoughts on global catastrophe, the gift economy and the third age‘, which appeared in the online journal Axon in 2020:
… it is impossible to know what the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic will be, especially on the environment, as humans urgently re-build their societies and economies. Because there is evidence that the chain of virus transmission involved bats, pangolins and ‘wet markets’, there will no doubt be talk about the need to remake our relationship with animals; but whether and how far this will translate into large-scale action on behalf of the world’s fauna and flora is doubtful. What is clear is that the climate crisis and its associated harms are primarily a political catastrophe: anthropogenic climate change and other environmental damage have been known about, reported on and campaigned against for at least four decades. The current scale and pace of destruction and the despair it trails in its wake have been brought about because governments and big business have so far taken little or no action proportionate to the need. What to do? I have no answers beyond the obvious, that a sea-change is needed in our politics and economics as well as in our policies…
News: publications and prizes
Blog, News, PoetryI have an article, ‘Writing Oneself Home’, published here, which arose out of a panel discussion in which I participated in spring 2023.
I also have a chapter in Chris Brown and Graham Handscomb’s book, The Ideas-Informed Society: Why We Need It and How to Make It Happen, published by Emerald Publishing in September 2023. My chapter is called ‘A little conceptual housekeeping: ideas and their contexts’.
Poetry in translation
Blog, PoetryI’ve recently finished a book of English translations of the renowned Portuguese poet and feminist activist Maria Teresa Horta: called Point of Honour, it’s published by Two Rivers Press.
During the project I was interviewed by Theo Kwek about the challenges and pleasures of translation.
Point of Honour was launched at a conference in Lisbon to celebrate Horta’s life and work – I wrote about the conference here.
I’m now beginning to translate the work of another Portuguese poet, Luís Quintais: a couple of translated poems appeared in Poetry Review a couple of years ago.