Can you hear me, the Untier of Knots?

‘What did it feel like, assuming that a trash can could feel, to be a receptacle for every bit of garbage that came your way? Did it choke on each piece of refuse that came flying into it or did it take an austere pride in its silent self-abnegation?’

— Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God

‘We, at least, are not loyal men: we confess to having more respect and honour for the raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any, even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers, adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England.’

— James Connolly, ‘Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee’

‘Why do our lot never admit failure? Never. It might be better for us if we did.’

— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

‘We died in militant silence / We are true battalions.’

— Napo Masheane, ‘We Have Been Here Before’

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one has just contradicted oneself.’

— Graham Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought

A billowy cloudiness of flesh at a wound-point in water.

‘Complication, tension, imbalance, selfishness: these are not just obstacles within the work-of-two, but central to its potential.’

—  Season Butler

‘Forgive me. Sometimes the Lord needs dirty workers 😉 ‘

— Shuhuda Sadaqat

‘The poem can be conceived as an object between poet and reader which is both a means of communication and a barrier to communication.’

— Peter Riley, ‘The Creative Moment of the Poem’