En route, our writer stumbles across four wandering Moldavian jazz musicians
Trigger warning: this column may contain material offensive on grounds of racism, sizeism and elitism. In the universities of today, wise academics preface every lecture with trigger warnings, in case something they say should cause offence to the kind of student whose quickness to take offence is the only quick thing about him. Or should I say “about him or her”, so as not to privilege the male gender?
This column is keen not to offend, so I am treading carefully when I say that the December issue of Poetry, the famous magazine edited in Chicago, features two poems by Jaap Blonk. At first I thought that Spike Milligan might still be alive, but on second thoughts I realised that, in Blonk’s language, my own name might mean No Parking and that he might be in possession of an immense talent. What would count would be his poems, to which I turned with my non-judgmental receptivity set to the maximum.
Related: Clive James: ‘Steven Seagal restores himself through aikido training. I have tried it and it works’
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