Words of the week #10

This week's 'words of the week' takes the form of performance poetry. Some of you may have seen Harry Baker performing his poetry at last year's Bestival. His poetry is often funny - see, for example, his take on Ed Sheeran's 'The A Team' - and always lyrically sharp. Here's one of our favourites, 'Paper People':

The Night Sky: Thierry Cohen

Thierry Cohen's Darkened Cities photography project explores the problem of light pollution by photographing cityscapes before a beautiful background of starry night sky. The photographs offer a surreal and haunting look at what pollution and constant artificial lighting has done to our perception of the night sky, by juxtaposing man-made Earth with the vast space beyond us, which can only be photographed in places free from light pollution. These are the skies we don't see. 

See the rest of the photographs here http://thierrycohen.com/pages/work/starlights.html

Words of the week #9

This year sees the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar'. In celebration of this, we're sharing with you one of our favourite Plath poems, 'Morning Song'. 

Morning Song 

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival.  New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety.  We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother 
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses.  I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's.  The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars.  And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.