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  The Ballad of East & West - A...

  Rudyard Kipling

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  Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai, India on 30th December 1865.   
  As was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5.  The ill-treatment and cruelty by the Portsmouth couple they boarded with Kipling said contributed to the onset of his literary life.  
  At 16 he returned to India to work on a local paper where he was soon contributing and writing.  It also exposed him to the issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.  
  In 1886, his ‘Departmental Ditties’, collection of verse appeared in print followed by 39 short stories for his newspaper over only 8 months.  These were then published as ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, shortly after his 22nd birthday.  
  He continued his prolific pace of writing before being dismissed in a dispute and, taking his pay-off and the profits from the sale of some publishing rights, decided to return to London, travelling via Rangoon, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States, all the while writing articles, and arriving at Liverpool in October 1889. 
  Over the next two years he saw further works published as books and in magazines, as well as a nervous breakdown for which he was prescribed a sea voyage, to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India.  
  Happier times came with marriage to Caroline Starr Balestier in January 1892.  The honeymoon began in Vermont and ended in Yokahama where they heard their bank had failed.  They returned to Vermont and settled.  Caroline was now pregnant and he was planning the ‘Jungle Books’.  
  A failed arbitration between the US and England resulted in an argument between Caroline’s brother and Kipling, and then his arrest.  At the hearing he was mortified by the exposure of his private life and after settling the matter they returned to England and life in Torquay.  ‘Kim’ was published in 1902, and ‘Just So Stories for Little Children’, a year later.  
  In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature with the citation “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterise the creations of this world-famous author”.   
  When the Great War erupted, he scorned those who refused conscription.  His son enlisted and was killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, at 18, an exploding shell had ripped his face apart.  This death inspired Kipling’s writing thereafter, but the tragedy broke his life and by 1930 his prolific pen had almost ceased. 
  Rudyard Kipling died on 18th January 1936 from a perforated duodenal ulcer.  He was 70.  His ashes are buried at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

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  Gothic Poetry

  Rachel Lawson

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  Gothic Poetry by poet and short story writer Rachel LawsonLost In The Shadows Of The Past 
  I am lost and forgotten as a living being, 
  Lost in the grim dark shadows of death, 
  I live in legend and as a vague memory of life, 
  I am as I was but am nothing but dust and bone, 
  A mere curiosity of a life lived, a requiem. 
  Lost in the shadows of the past, forgotten to time

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  Meister Eckhart's Book of...

  Meister Eckhart, Jon M. Sweeney,...

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  “Within each of us is a divine treasure, and if we hope to discover it we need to go deep into the heart of who we are.”—Meister Eckhart Meister Eckhart has been a huge influence on spirituality for more than 800  years, including to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, D. T. Suzuki, Rudolf Steiner, and Matthew Fox—all crediting Eckhart as being an important influence on their thought.   This book of Meister Eckhart meditations is for people seeking the “wayless way.” It is not for those looking for a simple path. Many people in our time still go looking for a straight path toward a defined goal, without detours, led by a guide who tells them what to do and what not to do. They would be uncomfortable with Meister Eckhart—a Christian mystic from the century of Rumi and Francis of Assisi—who said to “take leave of God for the sake of God.” And, “Learn not to love in order that you may learn to love.” And, “All things are equal and alike in God and are God.”   These fresh, stunning renderings of his writings in poetic form bring life to one of the great spiritual voices of any age. They reveal what it means to love God and find meaning in darkness. In a culture that craved light—and what culture does not?—Eckhart dared to imagine that the darkness is what matters most. Not darkness in general, but your darkness, because it is the one thing you know something about, and without facing your darkness, you’ll never know what it means to desire the light. You’ll never even imagine what light is about. Only when you are in the darkness, Meister says, do you have even the possibility of seeing the light.

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  The Meat Kings! (Inc) of...

  Hannah Doran

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  'You think the world owes you something and it doesn't. You don't inherit your chance, you earn it. And I'm earning it. I take my shots, and it's not our fault you keep missing yours.'
  T is the new summer hire at Cafarelli & Sons, an iconic New York butcher, but life in a messy cutting room isn't glamorous. She quickly discovers that no-nonsense boss Paula is fighting to hold her struggling business together. When the season ends, someone's for the chop.
  With the American Dream of a better life hanging in the balance, JD and Billy find themselves pitted against each other, each determined to secure their future. Around them, David and T are drawn into shifting alliances and fractured loyalties. But how far will they go to survive?
  The Meat Kings! (Inc.) of Brooklyn Heights carves into the dark underbelly of America's anti-immigration policies and the brutal sacrifices that drive the pursuit of prosperity.
  Winner of the 2024 Papatango New Writing Prize from a record-breaking 1,589 submissions, Hannah Doran's searing play was first performed at Park Theatre, London, in 2025, directed by Papatango's Artistic Director George Turvey. Previous Prize discoveries have won Olivier, Critics' Circle and OffWestEnd Awards and received productions in thirty-three countries.

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  Here and There - Poetry of rural...

  Roderick MacDonald

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  In this song-like collection of 50 short poems inspired by rural Prince Edward Island, Canada, Roderick MacDonald elevates the commonplace and simple in entertaining and thoughtful verse. 
  Through his poetry MacDonald invites the listener to accompany him on a gentle walk through the changing seasons on his beloved island. His words evoke the beach: sand under foot, lapping waves, and spectacular sunsets anointing old, abandoned lighthouses. He celebrates the harvests of both land and ocean. With him we tread red-dirt roads past fields of barley and tiny fishing harbours. We feel the island’s rhythms and glimpse its treasures: soaring eagles, shimmering lakes, and crackling campfires at end of the day…. 
  Listen now and be transported!

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  A Spring Harvest - Edited by JRR...

  Geoffrey Bache Smith, Charles...

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  The poems of this book were written at very various times, one (“Wind over the Sea”) I believe even as early as 1910, but the order in which they are here given is not chronological beyond the fact that the third part contains only poems written after the outbreak of the war. Of these some were written in England (at Oxford in particular), some in Wales and very many during a year in France from November 1915 to December 1916, which was broken by one leave in the middle of May. “The Burial of Sophocles,” which is here placed at the end, was begun before the war and continued at odd times and in various circumstances afterwards; the final version was sent me from the trenches. Beyond these few facts no prelude and no envoi is needed other than those here printed as their author left them. J. R. R. T.

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