Plausible!

Yes.

Back from Gdansk festival, a day before I turn around to be back in the UK. Laundry, catching up with teen, other preparations, admin. Coffee!

Lisping in Numbers: Poems that Count (Professor of Poetry Lecture by A.E Stallings)

Professor of #Poetry Talk by A.E. Stallings @aestallings.bsky.social

'Lisping in Numbers: Poems that Count'
🗓️30 April, 5.30pm
📍Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities

This is a public event and everyone is welcome! Tickets are free but booking is required.

#poetrysky #poetrycommunity #oxford

A.E. Stallings · Poem: ‘The Maze’

The way out is the path back to the start:
Diving back in, we still get lost, and swerve.
A bright toy flag makes gestures at the heart.
We lose sight of it, although we observe,

Diving back in, we still get lost.

‘The Maze’, a poem by @aestallings.bsky.social.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

A.E. Stallings · Poem: ‘The Maze’

A new pome, with thanks to the LRB: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

How Greece evicted Hungary from the political centre Kyriakos Mitsotakis started the process that banished Fidesz to the far-right fringe, beating rather than joining it

Orban’s ouster from mainstream European politics began with a Greek bid to eject his Fidesz party from the broad tent of the centre-right. Greece’s stand against collaboration with the far-right comes from its own experience with Golden Dawn. open.substack.com/pub/johntpsa...

What can be done to save cultural heritage in wartime? As the threat of armed global conflict increases, we mustn’t stop trying to protect archaeological and cultural sites, writes Peter Stone

‘Genocidal intent can be expressed through the destruction of heritage as well as violence against people.’

Peter Stone on the greater emphasis now placed on protecting cultural property in war – in principle, that is.

Thank you!

Just call me the Lady of Vix

Oh my goodness!

OK, today some admin and e-mails. Peacocks subdued after all the Easter excitement, although occasionally a firework sets them off again. Bees droning. Sun peeping out through Sahara dust haze.

China, Greece and Port Geopolitics Greece’s position on the southeast corner of Europe has attracted great-power competition. In 2016, under pressure to privatise assets due to the global financial crisis, the Greek government sold ...

My latest in the IISS magazine Survival on how the US pushed back against a €1bn Chinese investment in Piraeus. US-backed ONEX Shipyards is producing some of the first Greek newbuildings in decades at Elefsis Shipyards. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Ukraine is doing better than you think:

Hydria (Water Vessel) with Medea and Pelias Greek, made in Athens, 510-500 BCE Attributed to the Leagros Group Terracotta From Vulci, Italy The British Museum, purchased from Alexandrine He sino, through james Milingta, 1845,11093 In Greek myth, the hero Jason was offered the throne of the city of lolcus by King Pelias in return for the Golden Fleece. When the king broke his promise, the sorceress Medea took revenge through a gruesome deception. She demonstrated her powers to the daughters of Pelias by cutting up and boiling an old ram in a magic potion, from which the animal emerged youthful. Hoping to do the same for their aging father, his daughters attempted the procedure, cutting him up and putting him in a cauldron. Instead of being rejuvenated, he perished. The vase shows Medea at her cauldron, while Pelias and one of his daughters look on.

UPGRADED YOUR RAM FOR YOU

Even this one is blurry!

They are very hard to photograph! They seem to know it as soon as you lift your phone and sweep off.

Peacock (Indigo Montoya), sneaking past drying Easter Eggs, in search of cat food...

Peacock (Indigo Montoya), sneaking past drying Easter Eggs, in search of cat food...

Photo of Naked Man orchid, which is pink and looks like it is covered in naked men

Too cold yesterday for a swim (even for me), so we took a mountain walk in the bee-loud hills: Jerusalem sage, purple sage, pink and white rock roses, chamomile, poppies, assorted orchids (including my favorite, the Naked Man Orchid), a pair of partridges.

Good Friday Letter I sit here at the table looking outOver the island on Good FridayAs the pine tree heaves into my view,And the sea speaks its synonyms for blue, And below, the little churchWhere later we will follow the bier of ChristThrough the labyrinth of village streetsHolding a yellow candle like a torch (White candles are reserved […]

Good Friday here: www.the-tls.com/literature/o...

Good Friday here--the church bell is tolling, peacocks honking, white-tailed bumblebees busy in the flowering sage.

Waving!

Hearing that the splendid Dame @averilcam.bsky.social has passed. She was an amazing scholar. She will be missed. Please note her memoir and remember to cite her as one of the pivotal founders of the field we now call Late Antiquity. www.brepols.net/products/IS-...

This week in '85: ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ was released as a single in the UK.

Playmobil Poseidon and Trident next to metal trident found near the sea.

Posiedon left me a present--a Trident--by the sea! (Playmobil Poseidon for scale.)

Well, glad to wake up to find nothing has been nuked, I suppose. The bells have begun tolling for Holy Week, and the peacocks are in full squawk, each to each. A blustery day on the sea (no swim today, I think). Droning of bees, tinkle of goat bells.

Registration is now open for our next Professor of #Poetry lecture on 30 April at 5.30pm.

A.E. Stallings @aestallings.bsky.social will talk on 'Lisping in Numbers: Poems that Count'.

All welcome! Tickets are free but booking is required.
schwarzmancentre.ox.ac.uk/spektrix/Cho...

Today I learned that there is a site called Librivox, where books in the public domain have been read aloud by volunteers and you can listen to them for free. There is even an app.
I‘m telling you about it, in case you, too, did not know.
librivox.org
#audiobooks

When the US admits that they killed any “military-aged men” who walked within 3km of a downed pilot they mean any boy lanky enough to be a teenager and any middle-aged man able to walk unaided with a cane got shot in the head for the crime of walking.

First April swim. Swallows have returned to the island and are already sprucing up their nests for their new broods. Riots of daisies, poppies, and apple-sweet-smelling chamomile. And, of course, the squawking of the peacocks in full feather, each to each.