lif Shafak says she finds it easier to write sorrow and grief in Turkish, her mother tongue, and comedy and satire in English. The observation lodged with me. If English is hospitable to humour in a way other languages aren't, the question is why — and one answer is that the language carries the structures of British comedy inside its own vocabulary.
I gave a talk at Write The Docs London a few weeks back, to a room full of technical writers. The pitch: most people's relationship with AI stops at the chat box, and for docs work that's leaving a lot on the table.
Every craft form is a new way of seeing. A method of producing new thoughts.
A postcolonial reading of Yeats' "The Realists".
HOPE that you may understand!
What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?— W. B. Yeats, Responsibilities (1914)
I awoke in an atrium hurtling through a dark abyss. The beautiful terrazzo floor, embedded with blue like sapphires, shook beneath my feet, quaking, groaning, screeching.
I own like six nail clippers
and I honestly can’t
find
even one
The Laughter Lines poetry competition was run by Penstricken, a literary magazine. My poem "Sunset" was one of the top three runners up.
Elisa left reception surrounded by light. Seams of it cracked the high-rise towers ahead of her, gilding her retinas. For once, she didn’t mind not knowing where she was headed, starting a new journey with no destination.
To hold hands
is to be in chains.