It’s been a while – and this blog must perforce cover the autumn of 2021 and now, with the arrival of a light dusting of snow in Hertfordshire, the beginning of December and a true winter.
I haven’t done a lot of writing of late, at least not the kind of drama and poetry that I’m interested in on this website. A period of ill health didn’t help though thankfully that episode is in the past now. Sadly, it meant letting go of a drama project for Corrymeela about the political violence of the 1920 s which I am glad that my friend Andrew Mc Cracken will pick up.
However I have composed a long essay for the counselling course here in St Albans and I’m about to do a review of a recently published book of Ernest Davey’s theological writings. I have also been pleased that the Reclaim the Enlightenment group in Belfast has brought out an edition of my essay on the philosopher Francis Hutcheson, entitled The Secret Chain. Anyone who wants to purchase can contact me using my website. And on that topic, Martyn Todd in Saintfield has been planning for a Francis Hutcheson dimension to their new community centre, as the great philosopher grew up in that area. We have high hopes for grant aid for a short monologue which I would write and which an actor would perform in the new location.
Perhaps most excitingly of all there’s the prospect of a dramatic response to An Illustrated History of Flight that my friends at Bright Umbrella in East Belfast might produce. That’s an inspiring prospect. I do feel, now that the book has been out there in the world for a year that it’s time to place the narratives at the heart of the project in another medium. Trevor Gill feels there is a vital place for theatre that does justice to the kind of Evangelical background that we both shared – a theatre that does not lampoon or castigate that world but draws a sensitive portrait that respects the integrity of the faith in which we were immersed when young.
Oh yes, and I mustn’t forget the craft of poetry. It’s been all about finding a reason to write. Sitting down and deciding to write some poetry may not produce much that is memorable. There has to be a compulsion, some intense and unanswered question that needs answering through the tightly compressed language of verse. That question will come, but not just yet.
Finally, I’m planning some time in the new year for a relaunch of my website that focuses on my newly chosen career-path as a trainee counsellor. I’d like to store my literary material and maintain my blogging but I want to focus on a web presence that will eventually serve as a means to gaining clients but also as a place where I can ruminate on the nature of personal distress and personal healing, and on the society that is a context for so much of that distress. That re-moulded site is where I may review relevant books, plays, films and the like. More of that in the new year!