September 26−October 2, 2016
Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community –librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types – in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

Moreover, one of my favorite trilogies, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman was almost banned once. The Catholic League campaigned against The Golden Compass / Northern Lights, declaring that it promoted atheism and attacked Christianity…Well, that it did I guess.

On fantasy & how it encourages difficult behavior: Reading Harry Potter books makes children MENTALLY ILL says headmaster who warns letting them become ‘addicted’ to fantasy novels is as bad as feeding them ‘heaps of…

And at the end of the day
The vast array of stars in the night sky
Give sight to the moon holding secret
The meeting of an endless ocean to an endless horizon.
It is here that one can embrace the vastness of the universe
And it is here I shall stay.

This essay is inspired by some of the recent comments in this post. And it made me think: why  people really don’t like poetry? What is it that keeps them away from maybe not writing, but from reading some really exquisite pieces by poets from all around the world?

The usual answer is something like “Poetry is boring”, “I don’t understand it”, “It’s a waste of time”. So I wanted to explore this topic a bit further.

If we look more deeply around us, we can notice that people have very little time to appreciate art in general. This fast paced, consumer oriented society has trained us to want everything now and here. An instant satisfaction, an instant thrill, an instant experience: not allowing our biological system to perceive with all its senses; truly absorb our emotions and simply feel.

Life usually demands of us high level of practicality, logical and…

Kevin Morris writes from familiar, everyday situations in rhyme-led, usually short verses, e.g. in “Dog and Ball” which ends,

“My introspection.
How can I suffer dejection
When I recollect your playful snort
And the ball you caught?”

He poses questions about his readers, in “Composed More or Less in Real-time While Sitting in a Liverpool Garden”

“The wind has dropped now,
And I wonder how
My poem will be understood
By those who would
Try
To find meaning in words that erratically fly
From one who sits listening to a barking dog, who cares not
A jot
For what
I have to say
On this sunny, wind swept day.”

Does Kevin Morris have something to say? There is a small group of poems which touch on the subject of prostitution provoked by a newspaper article that argues that sex workers should not be criminalised but those who pay for the…