Hope

These are working notes for a book to be published in early 2019. Please contact us with any questions about the evolving book.

In 2013, poet Niall O'Sullivan's The Mundane Comedy used Dante's terza rima to document a year of his life, detailing big current events, intimate everyday happenings and "the tired rope bridge of opinion that naturally forms between the two".  Touching and amusing in turns, O'Sullivan's poem is well worth dipping into on any day of his - or your - year. However, my ambition is somewhat different: firstly I have deliberately gone for the indefinite article and title my work A Divine Comedy, as while Dante (and who knows, if he is picked up by the right publisher, perhaps O'Sullivan too is for the ages.

Halcyon curates the most significant hope-related content from carefully selected sources. Please contact us if you'd like our help with hope-related challenges.

Please see below selected recent ageing-related change.

See also:

• Halcyon Ageing Headlines
• What's Changing? - Demographics

December 2018

T.S. Eliot died over 50 years ago now. His legacy remains profound and his poetry moves me deeply.

In 2016 I had the privilege of visiting his final resting place, East Coker.

I read or listen to the peerless Little Gidding at least once a quarter, sometimes more often, and almost every line entrances, as if peering through a veil at something once known, but half-forgotten because not looked-for.

Is it possible to appreciate fully Dante’s work without understanding the man himself and the society in which he lived? A recent book attempted to shed new light on what some have called the greatest of all European poems.

See also:

Inspiring the world for 50 years and counting...more than half a century since Dr King spoke, and still as powerful and relevant as ever...

In a tribute programme from the BBC, global figures celebrated the legacy of Dr King by reading the words of "I Have a Dream".

Of Mice and Men - redux?  Chastening and often stunning images of the impact that global recession can have in our day and age might suggest so, yet the blooming sunflower might suggest too that hope springs eternal or, as Roy Harper puts it so lyrically, "through all destruction flies new dawn".

Man such sunflowers constantly emerge, displaying a wide variety of proposed "antidotes to the pessimism of the post-crisis world". If you'd like to hear constructive suggestions for our way ahead economically, you could also listen to the following podcasts: