last twelve months or so (Oct 2023 . . . Nov 2024)

ANTHONY HIRST was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire in 1945. He was educated at Ashville College Harrogate, and Emmanuel College Cambridge, where he studied theology and English. He had a very varied career as library assistant, furniture maker, building contractor, architectural designer and postman, before returning to university in 1992, obtaining an MA in Byzantine Studies and PhD in Modern Greek Literature at King's College London, after which he was a research fellow at Princeton University and then at Queen's University Belfast, where he was later a lecturer in Byzantine and Modern Greek. He is course director of the International Byzantine Greek Summer School, now hosted by Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of GOD AND THE POETIC EGO: THE APPROPRIATION OF BIBLICAL AND LITURGICAL LANGUAGE IN THE POETRY OF PALAMAS, SIKELIANOS AND ELYTIS (Peter Lang, 2004); editor and translator of THESE SCATTERED ISLES: ALONNISOS AND THE LESSER NORTHERN SPORADES by Kostas Mavrikis (Oxford Maritime Research, 2010); and editor of ALEXANDRIA, REAL AND IMAGINED (with Michael Silk, Ashgate Publishing, 2004), THE IONIAN ISLANDS: ASPECTS OF THEIR HISTORY AND CULTURE (with Patrick Sammon, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). He has re-edited, or "de-edited" as he prefers to say, the Greek text of the main body of Cavafy's poetry for the Oxford World's Classics series (C. P. Cavafy, THE COLLECTED POEMS, Oxford University Press, 2007). He has published many articles on modern Greek literature (especially the poetry of Cavafy). He has three children and six grandchildren and in recent years has lived between Stoke Newington in northeast London and an old farmhouse in Sud Tourraine. His previous volumes of poetry are MEMORIALS, NIGHTSCAPES, ETCETERA: POEMS OF SEVERAL DECADES (Colenso Books, 2020), FLORA AND FAUNA (HOMINIDS INCLUDED) (The Delos Press, 2021), and TWO YEARS AT THE ROAD SIDE (Colenso Books, 2024).

• Introductory Note viiDeadication [sic] ixDates to remember 1Too many voices heard in Rama 2The Judgement of God 3Policing the world 4No holds barred 5You have been warned 6Night landings 8Dream on . . . 9Afterlife 10All just nonsense 12Prose and cons 14Transience 15To put it mildly (for Hamas and Netanyahu) 17False Spring 18A game of words — a world at stake? 20Spring in London and elsewhere 23in real time still counting . . . 24Putin a nutshell or Mac(a)ron(i) all putinesca 25Eyeless in Gaza or The New Old Testament 26Blowing hot and cold (a central heating saga) 8Voie sans issue? 31Anxious concerns 33Knock! Knock! — Who’s there? 34Nature’s infinite variety (small sample) 35Doing God’s Own Work 36Injustice in Genesis 37Academic discourse 39Airport and airborne 40An old green road revisited 42Means to an end 43Late development 44Some creatures great and small 45Air-born and dead 48Blue Planet II  49Declaration of Intent 50The Law updated 51Syncopation 53Da capo al segno 55A sentence 57“till death us do part’” 58Transference 60The Bloated Men 61Ramblings 62Nonversation on a crowded bus 65Flat-earthers all 68“The Descent of Man” 69Index of titles and first lines 71