When I met the ‘you’ of this poem in 2011 and began to write poetry again, she told me of an encounter years before when, during a period of sadness in her life, she had travelled to the north coast of Cornwall and, from a cliff top, saw a grey seal with whom she performed … Continue reading South Winds
Author: Simon Elmer
10 Questions About Gaza
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. — W. H. Auden 1. What is a Jew? ‘Their barbaric acts are acts of evil. There are not two sides to these events. There is no question of balance. I stand with Israel. We stand … Continue reading 10 Questions About Gaza
Woke, Racism and the Great Reset
Among the many things the last three-and-a-half-years of cowardice and complicity have demonstrated is that the West, as an idea, is now dead. If it continues to haunt the world, it is only as an interdependent financial sector rapidly reaching the day of its reckoning, military alliances against whatever bogeyman the US identifies for ‘liberation’ … Continue reading Woke, Racism and the Great Reset
The Great Reset: Biopolitics for Stakeholder Capitalism
The Great Reset: Biopolitics for Stakeholder Capitalism — October 2023 by Simon Elmer Hardback: £32.00 Paperback: £20.00 E-book: £10.00 (please specify that you are paying for a copy of this book, and check your junkmail for the return email with the e-book) Look Inside Description When the restrictions under which we lived for two years … Continue reading The Great Reset: Biopolitics for Stakeholder Capitalism
Fight and Flight: Poems, 2012-2023
Fight and Flight: Poems 2012-2023 — 29 August, 2023 by Simon Elmer Paperback £15.00 Hardback (forthcoming) Look Inside ‘A luminescent and transporting first volume. Its range, depth and nuance — formally, thematically, cognitively and emotionally — are exceptional. It’s a work I’ll find myself returning to. And quoting!’ — Steve Venright, author of The Least … Continue reading Fight and Flight: Poems, 2012-2023
London Loves
Night, when the constellation of crane lights Rises in the West, and the thrum and hammer Of a perennially dug-up road Begins its bedtime prayers; in the glare Of diodes in car lights and council blocks, From which the orange haze of street lamps Offers something almost like relief; When the last smokers from the … Continue reading London Loves
What is a Woman? Response to Jacqueline Rose
The week after I published my article, ‘Trans Rights and the Order of Speech’ in Off-Guardian, The New Statesman published two articles by, respectively, the biologist, Richard Dawkins, ‘Why biological sex matters’ and the feminist, Jacqueline Rose, ‘The gender binary is false’. I don’t know Rose personally, but her 1986 book, Sexuality in the Field … Continue reading What is a Woman? Response to Jacqueline Rose
Trans Rights and the Order of Speech: Part Two
Part One of this article can be read here. 3. The Misogyny of ‘Trans’ Let’s begin with a question few have the courage to pose and fewer still dare to answer honestly. Why is it always male transvestites who demand access to women’s toilets, men who want to compete in women’s sports, and male rapists … Continue reading Trans Rights and the Order of Speech: Part Two
Trans Rights and the Order of Speech: Part One
‘There is a new word in Newspeak’, said Syme, ‘I don’t know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.’ — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four, … Continue reading Trans Rights and the Order of Speech: Part One
Defending Freedom for the Future
Der Zauberlehrling (1797) is the title of a famous ballad by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a re-telling of an ancient Egyptian myth that was later put to music by the French composer, Paul Dukas, in his orchestral scherzo L’Apprenti sorcier (1897). The latter was chosen for the title of a text published in 1938 by … Continue reading Defending Freedom for the Future
Simon Elmer 