“Self Pity” by D.H. Lawrence

I have to admit that I first encountered this poem in a film, but it has resonated with me ever since. The poem is seemingly simple, yet its comment on the inimitable capacity for humans to feel sorry themselves is quite profound. I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will [...]

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“If on a winter’s night a traveler” by Italo Calvino

In the second year of my Arts degree, I did a unit on postmodernism. I didn’t understand a word of the theory at the time, but one of the books from that course continues to resonate with me for its novelty and its ingenuity is Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a traveler”. Calvino [...]

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“The End of the Affair” by Graham Greene

Sometimes the beginning of a novel can strike you in a way that you can’t quite explain, even to the point that you can remember the exact moment when you read it. The opening of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair crossed my path in the staffroom of Barnhill Community College when a teacher [...]

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