After two days and nights of thaw the green fields emerge into the light. A mild Westerly wind knocks and shakes everything free of snow.

Gilbert White, (born 1720), author of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne kept his journal from 1768 to 1793 when he died. His journals record details of the passing seasons. Without plan or pretension they become poetry.


1779.

Nov. 23. An eclipse of the moon, total but not central.
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I think Henry Kirke White only ever really wrote one poem. That poem ranged restlessly across the landscape of his limited experience always seeking a scene of repose “far from the unquietness of life.” Moments in his poetry find a peace and serenity he never had in life. Reading him feels like keeping him company at this great distance in time, standing with him, looking up at “Orion in his arctic tower.”

His name fades into literary history, yet an attentive reader can still see...

The cold spell continues. Some efforts made to clear the pavements of ice leave piles of slabs like shattered marble. A day’s respite tomorrow with temperatures rising to four or five centigrade! Cold and snowy conditions forecast to continue up to Christmas. I plan to start my own sled-making company: Rosebud Enterprises Ltd.. This promises to be a sound investment opportunity for all Spherians.

I’m coming round to the theory that in the Northern Hemisphere we are beginning to...

Last night I made my own copy of Larkin’s unpublished poem “Dear Jake”. It took a while, pausing, replaying and peering at portions of the typed page as it appeared and was whisked away by the saintly hands of Andrew Motion. An offending word in the poem is censored on the film and bleeped out as the poem is read out; a nice 1950’s touch.

The poem is a companion-piece to “Posterity”, continuing the fun poked by Larkin at his posthumous reputation, and a touching gift to his secretary...

Rather than Parmigianino I think of Self by Marc Quinn: the frozen head cast made from his blood. Every five years he repeats the work, taking the blood from his body over a period of five months. The series becomes a testament of his aging and of his worth. The impression it makes is both innocuous and disturbing. We all have a reaction to blood. Its otherness is there to make us “feel something and think something,” he says, but do we? The eyes of the Self are closed as if trying to get...