Ian on Sunday

Not long ago, in one of his endlessly interesting and instructive ‘So It Go’ columns, Dave Martins lamented the lack of recognition given to our heroes and heroines.

It makes no sense trying to measure the joy which our grandchildren Jacob and Zoey give to my wife and I.

Christmas is about the unique drama of a miraculous birth intended to save all mankind.

I regret I write with grimness in this festive season. Perhaps it is good to remember that for countless millions in the world this is, as T S Eliot reminded us in the greatest poem ever written about the birth of Christ, “Just the worst time of the year.”

Nothing can compare with the beauty and warmth of life at home.

A great part of Brazil has been in the grip of one of the worst droughts in its history: reservoirs running dry, water strictly rationed, particularly in Sao Paulo.

We should beware the over-mighty state. A state that gathers all powers to itself drains initiative away from where it does most good ‒ at the local level, at the level of the small group, the family, the individual.

For God’s sake, what is going on? Remember: A young Pakistani girl is shot in the head for trying to educate herself and others like her.

Reading is a good friend, whether the wind blows good or ill.

The list is long in Guyana of problems needing solution and the list isn’t shortening.

Do you find, as I do, that as time passes you accommodate a vast sludge of useless information which remains stored in the brain for no purpose whatsoever?

Many companies in Japan have a special room for their employees which is called, in free translation from the Japanese, a “letting off steam and bile” room.

I have been thinking of my father. Since he died in 1995 at the age of 89 I have not written very much about him.

I have been looking at a great deal of cricket lately from across the world: Test cricket ‒ the Ashes, India versus Sri Lanka ‒ and ODIs and Twenty/20 cricket from all over.

Even in the worst of times – and who can doubt that the daily, brutal, unstoppable exploits of uncaught criminals have made this time one of widening and deepening fear and frustration – reading comes to the rescue by revealing other worlds of experience where cruelty and mindlessness and man’s inhumanity to man do not continually have the upper hand.

It is described how Confucius when asked by one of his disciples what he would do if he were given his own territory to govern the Master replied that he would first and above all “rectify the names” ‒ that is, make words correspond to reality.

I have been re-reading, slowly and with renewed love and admiration, all of Martin Carter’s poems.

At the ripe old age of eighty-two, when one is fully aware that it is time to make sense of what has happened in one’s life, I am convinced about two major things.

We are richer by far in having a varied media as part of the life of the community.

Good poetry holds its truth and relevance throughout the ages. It may retail the facts and thinking of its own era, but part if it will always express what is eternally true and recognizable.