antiGuardian - an occasional blog
Like many people of a literary inclination, I read the Guardian with attention and often with advantage. It seems to me that the literary pages are lucid and well-judged, and the finest of their kind...
View ArticleNew Template - an apology to readers
I apologise to my kind readers for the change in the look of Public Poems. The earlier template which I was using had some technical problems, and the new one seems to have solved them (touch wood)....
View ArticleObama's Pennsylvania speech - one of the greatest in history?
Barack Obama's Pennsylvania speech on Tuesday 18 March still continues to reverberate in the Western press. Matthew Norman, writing today in the Independent, heads his article The audacity of treating...
View ArticleObama's Pennsylvania speech - the full text
Here is the full text of Obama's historic Pennsylvania speech of 18 March 2008:"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands...
View ArticleDoes Obama need the Democrats?
Until now, all the assumptions about Obama's aspirations to the presidential nomination have been based on the view that the Democratic party will decide which of the two candidates shall be nominated....
View ArticleReplacement of Borges/di Giovanni translations
Is the replacement of the definitive Borges/di Giovanni English translations of Jorge Luis Borges by the grossly inferior translations of Andrew Hurley perhaps the greatest literary crime of the...
View ArticleMugabe and my South African past
As brief personal background, I was born in South Africa in 1948. My father, Robin Collins, wrote a series of novels under his own name and the nom-de-plume of Robin Cranford. One of these novels, My...
View ArticleDoes Obama need the Democrats? (part 2)
Last month, on 24 March, I posted an article called Does Obama need the Democrats? Perhaps, after Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania win, it deserves another airing.The article proposed that if the...
View ArticleObama's foreign policy triumph
There is a superb article in the Guardian today by Michael Tomasky, the Guardian's American editor, on Obama's powerful counterstrike against the criticism leveled at him by George W Bush. Bush...
View ArticleBorges/di Giovanni republication
In an earlier post last month I outlined the case that the definitive Borges/di Giovanni translations of Borges’ work into English are now largely no longer in print as the result of the actions of...
View ArticleDavid Davis and the emergence of the new politics
It is fascinating to observe the fallout from the resignation yesterday from Parliament by David Davis, the shadow foreign secretary and runner-up to David Cameron in the Conservative leadership...
View ArticleDavid Davis part 2
Following the resignation of David Davis from Parliament over the issue of civil liberties, and his precipitation of a local constituency election, a number of commentators have pointed out that there...
View ArticleObama's refusal of federal funding
Obama's refusal to accept the $85 million standard offer of federal funding for presidential candidates (the first time it has been turned down by a presidential candidate since it was put in place...
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THE SONNETS - a new novel
I apologise for being absent from my blogs for several months. It seems, looking back, I have spent much of this summer revising various texts and proofs of forthcoming publications. This winter is...
View ArticleNorman Thomas di Giovanni - a wonderful new web-site
Norman Thomas di Giovanni, the great translator of Borges into English, was the subject of an earlier post of mine in April this year. He has recently set up a marvellous new web-site called - as one...
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How well will Obama govern?
I have supported Barack Obama in his presidential campaign since I had the opportunity to read both of his published books earlier this year. I agree with the sentiments of Joe Klein, who asked...
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THE SONNETS - again
It's strange, isn't it, how sometimes favourable reviews can disconcert more than unfavourable ones. John Self, the estimable denizen of the celebrated blog Asylum, has just written a...
View ArticleBorges/di Giovanni - an exciting new development
Attention all Borges readers. Borges's great translator and collaborator Norman Thomas di Giovanni has recently posted up on his web-site his translation of Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, one of Borges's...
View ArticleHappy New Year
This is just to wish all those who have read my publicpoems.com blog this year a happy New Year. Obama takes over the presidency of the United States on the 20th January. Throughout his campaign this...
View ArticleBack online
To those who have occasionally read my blog(s), I have been working hard on various writing and other projects over 2009. I have a superstitious fear of talking about unfinished projects, so I won't...
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