Among the incurables (and other poems)
Mercurius explores the wonderful worlds of Scott Harney, Kythe Heller, Oksana Sabuzhko, and Peter Balakian. Essential reading for our times.
September is for making chutney
This chutney is a religious experience. It will define the word chutney for you. Thick, spicy, aromatic, sweet and rich in umami, it can be eaten with bacon, eggs, salad, cheese, steak, sandwiches, cold meats, pâté, and more. The only limit is your imagination.
What is movement?
Creation’s favourite: the birds that serenade the fleeing stars, the Pamplemousse dawn, draped in sheets of pink and red across the sky…
Tales from Dublin Pubs: Molloy's of Talbot Street
This is one of Dublin’s few remaining early-houses and was once owned by two chuckle brothers from the West of Ireland who used their pub as a snare and knew how to set it.
The Good Life in a crisis-ridden age
All forms of society-building sprawl out of some kind of positive, moral principle. I will try to illustrate this point using four popular models as examples: the American Dream, the Close-knit Religious Community, the Buddhist Monastery and the Mediterranean Lifestyle.
Cultural Slavery
As a British Asian who arrived in England at the age of seven, I have asked myself, where do I belong? It is not easy to answer this question, even for those who never leave their place of birth. Where you live, and the culture that surrounds you, will affect you. It will shape your opinions and thinking, until you are also part of the cultural identity of that place.
A reminder from plants
They spoke as one entangled web, threading remains of an abandoned building. Their green veins had dismantled every wall but one.
Puneña No 2 for solo cello by Alberto Ginastera
One of the most important composers of the 20th century, Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) embraced both old and new in the creation of an original style rooted in Argentine folk and popular music while incorporating increasingly modernist techniques.
Memories of bygone homes
I have lived in London nearly four years now; the time has passed like a heartbeat. A blink. It’s only when I go “home” that I realise how much time has passed. Returning to my hometown is strange. Mostly the same with a few things moved around and fewer people I know: a gallery of memories, myself a ghost, stirred by sights or smells. New memories in this realm don’t feel possible.
Transform your mind: go home
Home is not a place but a feeling of connection. We merely attach that feeling to places and people. But external circumstances change throughout our lives. It is therefore easy to end up homeless, with no place of emotional warmth to run to, a cold and lost state. Having to run anywhere is the source of the problem. Home is not somewhere else
Home
Although travel is exciting, home comforts are hard to beat. My daily morning ritual involves making coffee, feeding the starving cat, opening the balcony doors, sitting down to read or write a poem. The repetition of these tiny acts have brought a sense of calm and purpose to my life.
Tales from Dublin pubs: Clarke's City Arms of Prussia Street
We visited one sweltering summer’s day (admittedly with drink already taken) and found a pleasant exterior with a medieval door and lots of squared windows. On first entering it seemed silent and serene. Light was blissful and motes of dust spun basking in its beams. One can imagine how we were lulled and unprepared for what was soon to come.
Detras del cielo (behind the sky)
A song of growth and revival. Presented to the public for the first time by Mercurius Magazine.
Self-growth
Self-growth. Digital print. 2020. Victor Manzanal.
The ocean gives us all we have
Water, flowing everywhere, touching all it finds: cleaning, carving, healing, seamlessly connected drops, wearing down even the hardest rocks, grinding, softening, world-shaping, water.
Our Oceanic Life
The highest currency of change is song. The ocean, for all her perils and charms, breathes her music into us. Her manifold realities are fraught with songful dreams and dangers.
The sea has as many colours as beauty has moods
Three photographs of the sea. 2020. Thomas Helm.
Say morning, and a bird trills on a doorstep outside a kitchen
Today we are going to meet a great poet, Shara McCallum. I first met her at the 2017 Miami Book Fair. She had recently published her book: Madwoman.
Valse Triste
Valse Triste. Solo work for archtop guitar written and played by David Braid.
The Ego versus Death
It’s been there since birth, that little voice inside me, singing, or shouting, or wailing, me first, me first, me first. The rudimentary mantra of existence.
The never-ending quest…
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