Poetry and prose by Alex Hickman
These notes describe what I learned during a day (23 March 2018) in London spent with the Labour peer Maurice Glasman and the American community organiser Arnie Graf. The day was convened by Maurice Glasman to discuss his Common Good philosophy and to hear Arnie describe how to build powerful community organisations. Maurice Glasman It […]
Read More…Air-side in the Asian Café Bowl Bowl, a mug of creamed coffee and a madelaine for comfort for I am tired and Tokyo’s mass-produced pastry is wonderful, light as air this one, promising little but holding fat almonds sweet as butter. This café is crazy, there are waitresses shouting over tannoy announcements and folk drinking […]
Read More…All afternoon the sea pushes into the land, plating the estuary to cloud swelling the river high enough to salt the skirts of the valley trees. Deeper inland creeps the sea’s fingers, gloving the mud creeks, blunting their sharpness with brimmed water. Crabs scuttle uphill, rafts of sea-weed eddy, a hovering merlin whistles high tide. […]
Read More…
He is paused, boiler-suited against the work to follow, observing the day fail around him. A light strip in the west lends him eyes and when the town’s dark circumference reaches his boots he gathers up his tools – a sack of tree whips, one old spade, and goes roaming. Roaming in the gloaming. He […]
Read More…Broad ford Bradford A water start, Beck-crossing to a city. And go now to the mirror pool, its north sky silver shining pandemonium, sulphur-smelling and skinned with soot and wool thread. The pool reflecting folk laughing, the faces of folk fretting, fighting, folk unheard – folk just turning up. Folk out of danger, Folk looking […]
Read More…Out the front door, turn right pass through the ruined gate between the blooming hawthorns and thistle banks, and the curling track transports you across a meadow. This track, a metal detector once told me while patrolling the meadow, one eye on me the other on history, this track is ancient. They likely pushed the […]
Read More…When her brothers come home from school, all afternoon brag and shoving, she smiles and climbs the narrow stairs to her room to put on her dancing shoes. They are silver with heels too far for her father, she is four, but someone kind gave them to her, and I see they help her win […]
Read More…