Meeting Benches World art in all forms

BOKETTO Outside my window it’s never the same, some mornings jasmine slaps the house, some mornings sorrow. There is a word I overheard today, meaning lost, not on a career path or across a floating bridge: Boketto, to stare out windows without purpose. Don’t laugh; it’s been too long since we leaned into the morning: bird friendly coffee and blueberry …

WILLIAM MERRIT CHASE 1/3 – He showed an early interest in art, and was known as an exponent of Impressionism. He was a gifted witness to his era, gathering impressions of late nineteenth-century city life. Its father moved the family to Indianapolis, and employed his son in the family business. William Merritt Chase was born on a November day, and …

ALPHABET STREET “Adore” was my song, Back in ’87. Cool beans, I liked to say, desperately uncool. Except for you. Florida, a dirty hand gesture; the state, pay dirt. Headphones on, I heard, in a word, you were sex, just in time. Who was I kidding? Then, as now, love is too weak to define. Mostly I just ran, not …

IF YOU LOSE YOUR LOVER If you lose your lover, rain hurt you. Blackbirds brood over the sky trees, burn down everywhere brown, rabbits run under car wheels. Should your body cry? To feel such blue and empty bed dont bother. If you lose your lover comb hair go here, or there get another. https://www.amazon.com/Work-Common-Woman-Collected-1964-1977/dp/0895941554?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

CHARLES SIMS 1/3 – The son of a textile manufacturer, he also works as part of the curtains, but soon he joined the South Kensington College of Art (then he was in Paris to further his studies of painting and decorating). Back again to London to join the Royal Academy School, he was expelled in 1895, two years later. In …

Cristina Spătar – Marbella Ey yo, ey yo ven a Marbella, es especial. Ey yo, eu yo, es una aventura, muy sensual. I’m gonna be your only lover, forever stay by your side we’re gonna see the world together, oh oh oh. This night is gonna be your witness, making love on the sand, swear love under moonlight, moonlight. Give …

Joan Aiken was an English writer, specialising in supernatural fiction and children’s alternative history novels. For The Whispering Mountain, she won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, and also an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Night Fall. The first part of Night Fall, covering Meg’s lonely, ill-treated childhood, and her hasty engagement to a domineering prig, never gets out of the …

BELIEVE ME IF ALL THOSE ENDEARING YOUNG CHARMS – Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, which I gaze on so fondly today, were to change by tomorrow, and fleet in my arms, like fairy-gifts fading away. Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art, let thy loveliness fade as it will, and around the dear ruin …

“I have a passion for paint and am compelled to push through boundaries in order to resolve things which I do not fully comprehend. The result is always a surprise and leads on to further discovery.” An exhibition of beautiful paintings by Anne Lever (and poems by Michael Fox), opens shortly at Chester’s Grosvenor Museum (27 Grosvenor Street, Chester), until …

A RED RED ROSE – O, my Luve’s like a red, red rose, that’s newly sprung in June. O, my Luve’s like a melodie, that’s sweetly play’d in tune. As fair as thou, my bonnie lass, so deep in luve am I. And I will love thee still, my dear, till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas …

“Valeria Victrix“, it was the name of the Roman legion XX, the one that was headquartered on the right bank of the River Dee (south of Liverpool). But if you want to observe the Roman foundations of the ancient fortified place, this is not possible, because the walls that still surround Chester were made on precisely those ancient foundations. Visiting …

A DAUGHTER OF EVE – A fool I was to sleep at noon, and wake when night is chilly beneath the comfortless cold moon. A fool to pluck my rose too soon, a fool to snap my lily. My garden-plot I have not kept. Faded and all-forsaken, I weep as I have never wept: Oh it was summer when I …

You’ll have to travel 30 km to the northeast, leaving Stratford-on-Avon behind you, to get to Winchcombe and its sixteenth century castle.  That architectural marvel, it houses the memory of a famous woman, Catherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII. To know where that woman from 1548 rests, you will need to enter the chapel of the castle, where she …