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Hollow Promise
John Hopper Hollow promise by John Hopper C’est presque au bout du monde, ma barque vagabonde errant au gré de l’onde m’y conduisit un jour. It was almost to the end of the world, my vagabond boat wandering adrift on the...
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Music as Symbol
Orpheus Picture by Giovanni Dall'Orto Music is symbolic of nature in its transitory and ever-changing aspect; it is the relative, but contains an underlying reality, the music of the spheres and of life. An auditory rather than a visual symbol, it...
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Princess Mononoke
Princess Mononoke, Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 environmental fable, is set in a mythologised fourteenth century Japan. Ashitaka, a young prince, battles and kills, Nago, a wild boar demon that is threatening his village. In its death throes, the boar...
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Two Poems
John Hopper paint your life the way is clear paint your world bring it here to this place to this time where your fear where your hope paint my eyes fill my view tell my soul what you knew tell us all show...
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Bogeys!
Monsters of the Id, no longer staying hid And terrors of the night out in broad daylight Mose Allison (1969) Bogeymen, ogres, hungry witches in gingerbread houses, Maurice Sendak's ‘Wild Things’, all the terrors of the night—all...
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Classified Material
Carolus Linnaeus smiles his ethereal smile. Perched above the layered clusters of viridian, awl-like foliage atop the Araucaria heterophylla, he gazes lovingly beyond his invisible feet, tracing the pattern of spreading branches spiralling downwards...
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Seascape
Some songs can take your breath away. Listening to the radio many years ago, I first heard Song to the Siren performed by a group called ‘This Mortal Coil’. I was entranced. The ethereal female voice hovered around the speakers; then sometimes...
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Angela Carter: her view of writing
‘I had a little problem with facts...’[1] Gut reaction I am known in my circle as notoriously foul-mouthed. It’s a familiar paradox—the soft-spoken, middle-aged English gentlewoman who swears like a trooper when roused. I blame my father,...
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Ballard's Drowned World
‘The one hazard facing science fiction, the Trojan Horse being trundled towards its expanding ghetto ... is that faceless creature, literary criticism.’ JG Ballard One of the catastrophe novels Ballard wrote during the 1960s, The Drowned World...
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Only Words
Only Words It's not so much that you should like stories, the real point is that the stories must like you. A sunny midsummer day. There is such a thing sometimes, even in Storyville. Along the hot, dusty streets, narrow dwellings...
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Ephemeral
John Hopper I am near the junction of the Findhorn and the Divie. This particular spot is known as Randolph’s Leap. Thomas Randolph was the 1st Earl of Moray, nephew to Robert the Bruce and a leading commander in Robert’s army. Naturally,...
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Silence still
John Hopper No voice; but oh! the silence sank Like music on my heart. (Coleridge) I need silence to make sense of what surrounds me. The gaps between sounds are borderlands separating yet straddling mountainside and plain, jungle and...
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Natural Reflections
John Hopper Mist forms above the lake's surface. The wind holds its breath. Trees stand still. Not a stir from the reeds and lily pads. Sounds carry with crystal clarity then echo off distant hillsides. From some way off come noises of tractors...