Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Jonathan Humble
Imagine The Future
a celebration of poetic creativity supporting the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain 1951 Hello Poetry World! Here for your information is the press release concerning the next project happening over at the Dirigible Balloon (just in case news of the resources that have become available to schools worldwide gets overlooked in the hurly burly of poetry news dissemination) Dirigible Balloon Poetry Update Imagine the Future As editor of the poetry website The Dirigible Balloon, I’m...
“Sky Surfing: Adventures in a Poetry Balloon” edited by Jonathan Humble (Yorkshire Times Publishing) - book review
The Dirigible Balloon website is a curation of poetry for children and “Sky Surfing” is the second anthology of poems from the website with illustrations, as the opening stanza from “An Owl, A Pussycat and a Balloon,” by Val Harris demonstrates, “An Owl and a Pussycat looked up at the sky. Flying looks fun, shall we give it a try?
Sky Surfing: Excellent Adventures in a Poetry Balloon
The Dirigible Balloon is in the process of producing a new anthology of poems for children. Last year, Cumbria Life did a wonderful piece in their excellent magazine to help publicise our previous book of poems, Chasing Clouds (publicity photo below here). Here is some information about the DB’s second anthology (due to be published in the autumn) … The Dirigible Balloon website (dirigibleballoon.org) is run for children, schools and poets.
Brilliant Adventures in a Poetry Balloon
Second Anniversary! The second anniversary of the Dirigible Balloon approaches. On August 1st 2023 it will be two years since our website of poems written for children was launched to help plug a publication gap for poets who create within that genre. Twelve wonderful poets (the original Dirigible crew) allowed us to upload three dozen, free-to-view poems on a site safe for a young audience.
The Dirigible Balloon … preparing to launch a new webzine for children’s poetry
The Dirigible Balloon drawn by Em Humble Dirigible Balloon: the name used to describe the newly invented airships in the 18th century. From ideas originating in China, the development of hot-air balloons was carried out by French brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier.
Poem of the Week: 'Paddy Dies' by Stewart Parker (1941-1988)
Steve Whitaker Literary Editor @stevewh16944270 8:17 AM 19th January 2021 arts Paddy Dies Paddy dies: you never knew him. A deaf hunchback in a home for the old. Deafness drew the blind of his soul. Nobody knew him. Nobody knew him. A wild animal in him reared Up one night, I saw his eyes And for three days he disappeared They found him sleeping in a pig-sty. I wonder if sixty years ago He slept tender in a girl’s breasts? He seems to sleep hard now. His bony umbrella collapsed at last.
State Of The Union: Rachel To The Rescue By Elinor Lipman
Steve Whitaker Literary Editor 11:41 AM 28th December 2020 arts Donald J. Trump’s failure to accept the outcome of the most fairly and judiciously executed election in US history might one day be his albatross – his resolute deafness to the clamour of probity is the indignation of a spoilt child who is overfond of wearing the emperor’s new clothes.
Poem Of The Week: 'And Yet' By Jonathan Humble
Steve Whitaker Literary Editor @stevewh16944270 8:28 AM 28th December 2020 arts And Yet Curtains remain drawn, as the day comes with rain like a returning memory. In darkness, early moments rest on heavy eyes, closed to a wave of sickness. In the residue of cracked ashtrays and stale alcohol, sit diary entries of dissolute nights with succubae; a debt of bad shillings that smothers and oppresses.
Poem Of The Week: 'The Magi' By W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
Steve Whitaker Literary Editor 6:02 PM 21st December 2020 arts The Magi Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering side by side, And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more, Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied, The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
Poem Of The Week: 'The Dipper' By Kathleen Jamie
Steve Whitaker Literary Editor 5:52 PM 12th December 2020 arts The Dipper It was winter, near freezing, I'd walked through a forest of firs when I saw issue out of the waterfall a solitary bird. It lit on a damp rock, and, as water swept stupidly on, wrung from its own throat supple, undammable song. It isn't mine to give. I can't coax this bird to my hand that knows the depth of the river yet sings of it on land.
Poem Of The Week: 'Snowdrop' By Ted Hughes
Steve Whitaker Literary Editor 7:20 PM 22nd November 2020 arts Snowdrop Now is the globe shrunk tight Round the mouse’s dulled wintering heart. Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass, Move through an outer darkness Not in their right minds, With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends, Brutal as the stars of this month, Her pale head heavy as metal.
The Safety of Clouds: Fledge By Jonathan Humble
If you studied English Literature at school in the late sixties or early seventies, and you were searching for a way through the woods, it’s very likely that you encountered the figure of Ted Hughes on your journey. The brooding, visceral presence in your mind’s eye, the hand that drove the instructive pen in Poetry in the Making, and the shockingly original natural images of Hawk in the Rain, may even have given you an impetus to write.
Poem Of The Week: 'Everything Is Going To Be All Right' By Derek Mahon
Steve Whitaker Literary Editor 12:59 PM 2nd February 2020 arts Everything Is Going to Be All Right How should I not be glad to contemplate the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window and a high tide reflected on the ceiling? There will be dying, there will be dying, but there is no need to go into that. The poems flow from the hand unbidden and the hidden source is the watchful heart. The sun rises in spite of everything and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
Poem Of The Week: ‘Epitaph On A Tyrant’ By W. H. Auden
Steve Whitaker Literary Editor @stevewh16944270 12:38 PM 30th August 2019 arts There may, or may not, be a new and pressing lesson, here, for readers of Auden’s poetry. That we sometimes fill political vacuums with a less desirable alternative to the recently deposed is a situation arrived at either by systemic inertia, or by an act of collective will, or both; think Weimar Germany and the advent of National Socialism.
‘Everyone Sang’ By Siegfried Sassoon
Poem Of The Week: ‘Everyone Sang’ By Siegfried Sassoon Steve Whitaker, Literary Correspondent If you were to measure our Poem of the Week by the semantically-futile yardstick of ‘Britain’s Most Popular Poems’, then you would almost certainly find Siegfried Sassoon’s homage to unalloyed, joyful relief in the Top Ten. A regular choice of Poetry Please listeners, ‘Everyone Sang’ is as oft quoted as many of Wordsworth.
Another Boy's Story:
Another Boy's Story: Zebra By Ian Humphreys Steve Whitaker, Literary Correspondent To say that it is hard to get a handle on Ian Humphreys’ poetics is not a criticism: the plenitude of his thematic development, the richness of his imagination, of his incendiary use of simile and metaphor, and of his formal acrobatics, are breathtaking in scope, and intractable in examination.
An Anthology Of Silence At Settle
The Ploughshare And The Sword: An Anthology Of Silence At Settle Steve Whitaker, Literary Correspondent When the circumstances of war conspire to confound expectation in brutally unforeseen ways, memory is put to the work of irony. Memory work fills the spaces vacated by the dead, allows the imagination to recreate that which is most meaningful to the aggrieved. A clinging to vestigial remembrance, to the shape and sound of a lost figure, forges a dissonant connection in the name of grief.
Poem Of The Week: 'Incoming' By Jonathan Humble
Curlews. Photo by Burkhard Lüling Incoming. A missile, maybe; an approaching Exocet, or a Super Étendard flashing wildly out of the sun over San Carlos water. There is an observational precision to Jonathan Humble’s neatly-drawn series of couplets which mimics cold military science; the poetics of the contingent and the concrete, the expedience and the murderous nemesis. But Humble’s tone is counter-intuitive - it belies a sense of awe, and of real love of subject.
Road To Cleggan Bay:
Road To Cleggan Bay: The Connemara Cantos - Mike Harding Steve Whitaker, Literary Correspondent A little late in the day, perhaps, but well worth the five years that elapsed between the publication of Mike Harding’s The Connemara Cantos, and the book’s arrival at our offices. It may have turned up out of the blue beyond, but what a collection of poems! That Harding is a polymath is an indicator of a mind given to intellectual curiosity, of not remaining static.
'Digging' By Seamus Heaney
Poem Of The Week: 'Digging' By Seamus Heaney Steve Whitaker, Literary Correspondent Digging Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Jonathan
Contact Jonathan, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack