...at Hanakapiai Beach, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai where a sign warns, do not go near the water, unseen currents have killed-what follows is a tally in chalk on the board and you can see the most recent death toll by counting the tally. As of August 2014 there were 83 tally marks.More

Letters From Quotidia Episode 20 Counting Game

Seamus Heaney, shaken by the events of 9/11, wrote Anything Can Happen based on Ode 34 of Book 1. Anything can happen, the tallest towers/Be overturned, those in high places daunted,/Those overlooked regarded./ He talks of Fortune as a bird of prey tearing the crest off one,/Setting it down bleeding on the next. More

Letters From Quotidia Episode 67 Anything Can Happen

Arriving in Aussie in August 1972, I found that I fit right in- a bit of an indictment really, in the light of what Ronald Conway had to say in his book The Great Australian Stupor, where he painted the Australian male as a completely inadequate father, selfish husband and incompetent lover, who took refuge from his inadequacies at the pub. Ouch! More

Letters From Quotidia Episode 66 The Long Weekend

...then I spotted a student politician from Queen’s University, Belfast, with whom I had been in disputation at an earlier student conference, not sloping off, as I was, but running towards the police lines and, indeed, hopping into the Black Maria, without law-and-order assistance. More

Letters From Quotidia Episode 65 Homebase

Stephen Foster died much too soon at age 37. The wowsers of the time were smug, characterising him as a “drunkard” who wrote songs about “pathetic people”. Well, he’s remembered and revered 150 years after his death while his mean-spirited critics have sunk into well-deserved oblivion. More

Letters From Quotidia Postcards edition 16

...the golden record affixed to the space-craft does not include details of human atrocities but instead images of the beauty and variety of life on earth as well as our cultural treasures. From the world of classical music, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and Blind Willie Johnston and Chuck Berry from the realm of popular music. Incredibly, EMI refused permission to have the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun included because of copyright concerns! More

Letters From Quotidia Episode 64 Whatever Comes

...the silence was eloquent: he was a turncoat, a lundy. The latter word is a Northern Irish colloquialism which is derived from the name of the governor of Derry in the 18th century, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Lundy, who was suspected of Catholic sympathies by the Protestant community. More

Letters From Quotidia Episode 63 Hold Me Love Me

MacNiece rejected the armchair activism of his contemporaries for a more wry take on the world that I responded to immediately when I read his poem, Bagpipe Music, It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,/Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension. More

Letters From Quotidia Episode 62 Desolation Row 1984

The American Sara Teasdale who composed clear, elegant verse wrote a poem entitled The Answer early in the 20th Century.  Again, you will have to search for the question, but it may be a tad uncomfortable, particularly if you are a male...More

Letters From Quotidia Episode 61 The Answer

But here I am, just before 6 o'clock am, on Sunday, April 25th, 2021, at the end of my driveway, observing the request of the organisers of Anzac Day not to gather in public, to mark the occasion- as we did in 2020. Why? Because COVID persists just about everywhere on this planet. More

Letters From Quotidia ANZAC Day Special 2021