Warning: includes expansionist tendancies

Well, the "empire" expands again.

(I use the " " because the idea that I have some kind of blogging empire is bizarre and rather laughable...)

There is now a dedicated blog for my poetry. If you read this blog (I don't think there are many, if any, of you...) and you're interested, pop along to http://duplo-philosophy.blogspot.com to have a read.

For the lucky, lucky readers who haven't been introduced to my poems, let me give a little background.

I rarely talk about this without being pushed. That's not to say that its something I am ashamed of - far from it - its just something I hold rather personally. Over the last few years, I've been writing. Stories, sketched, plays, poetry - whatever occurs, really. I started doing it as a way of expressing myself - and for a while as a strange kind of self-therapy to forget depression. It just became a habit and something that I enjoyed for the sake of doing it, after a while.

My poems and scripts have been used in weird and wonderful places and ways - from church services to magazine space-fillers to being performed as street theatre at a national festival, and I've written things that have then been read in school assemblies (well after I'd left school, I have to add), and even one that made it all the way to the wall of a child's bedroom (no, not Luke's...).

I have read some of the poems in public before, but it really didn't occur to me at first that others might like them. So, all I ask is that if you read them, and you have an opinion about it, please let me know. I've found that more often than not, that poems I don't like are well-received by other people and the poems I do like are usually ones that noone else likes...

The poems themselves aren't anyting particularly complicated or impressively intellectual, and I don't pretend to be another Seamus Heaney or T.S.Eliot... I've been more influenced by poets like John Betjeman, Roger McGough, Harold Pinter, John Hegley and Michael Rosen than anyone else, and I tend to keep to a simple style, without a huge amount of rhyme - I like finding phrasings and sentences that flow nicely and sound good to me. A curious phrase or an interesting fact is more use to me than a metephorical pretext...

Some are quite obviously influenced by my faith, and some are not. Some look closely at emotions, some expressing my thoughts on an event, and some of them are about nothing, really. Some are experiments, some follow distinct patterns, some mimic the styles of others.

If you do decide to have a look: Thank you. I hope you enjoy them, and I hope you'll let me know what you think.

http://duplo-philosophy.blogspot.com

Do the words “Outstanding” and “Contribution” mean anything these days?

Hmm. How do I put this?

I was at a loss for words when I heard this news from last week's Brit Awards:

Outstanding contribution to music: Oasis

WHAT???! WHAT FOR?

FOR NICKING OTHER PEOPLE’S MUSIC AND THEN PROCLAIMING THEMSELVES AS BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE?

FOR LOOKING LIKE A BUNCH OF SHAMBOLIC DRUNK TOSSERS?

FOR NOT SHAVING AND/OR CUTTING THEIR HAIR BECAUSE IT’S “COOL” TO COVER THE HOOD OF YOUR FRAYED AND PEE-STAINED PARKA WITH YOUR MANKY DANDRUFF?

I just don’t get it.

What do people see in them? The attitude is irritating, and isn’t backed up by their back-catalogue. They’re amazingly intolerant of other artists and genres, especially seeing as everyone else has to put up with their own inane shamblings in the media.

I will concede that there are a few good songs in there – Wonderwall (although Ryan Adams’ version showed that the original was a poor version), The Masterplan (although that was a B-side…), Whatever, and Definitely Maybe was a good album… and I have heard very good things about the new album.

I will also nail my colours to the mast. In the whole Oasis vs. Blur contest thingy at the height of “Britpop” (yuck), I was firmly, and still am, fighting the Blur corner. They are infinitely more creative, more experimental, more popular. And yet, it’s Oasis that are honoured.

I assume they have been honoured for making sure people don’t forget how good the Beatles were.

I once heard someone on a tube train telling someone that Oasis were so good because they are what the Beatles would sound like if they were still together now.

I have a feeling that if the Beatles sounded like that, they’d have gladly given up music and gone to work in a fast-food restaurant. Which is what Oasis should have done instead of inflicting themselves on us and getting rich from being idiots that can shout over the squeals of a guitar being assaulted and then fight amongst themselves in the press conference afterwards.

I’d have thought an award for outstanding contribution to music should be given to someone who we couldn’t live without. I think I’d far rather try to survive without them.

Oh God. Please no.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6371239.stm