Senryū
Senryū (川柳) is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 morae (or on, often translated as syllables, but see the article on…
In Our Time – Emily Dickinson
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Emily Dickinson, arguably the most startling and original poet in America in the C19th. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her…
Electronic: From Kraftwerk to The Chemical Brothers
Detroit electronic music legend, Jeff Mills, speaks to sound designer - Yuri Suzuki, about his early inspirations with techno music, reawakening the genre, and how technology can impact modern music.…
BBC Radio 4 – In Our Time, The Romantics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideals, exponents and legacy of Romanticism. In the space of a few years around the start of the nineteenth century the Romantic period gave…
Syphilis, sex and fear: How the French disease conquered the world
It got its name in the mid 16th century from a poem by a Renaissance scholar: its eponymous hero Syphilus, a shepherd, enrages the Sun God and is infected as…
The South African Art Collective That Imagined the End of Apartheid
In 1978, Serote and Thamsanqa (Thami) Mnyele founded the Medu Art Ensemble, an art collective that advocated for an end to the South African apartheid government through creative expression —…
Artists Demand Removal of Their Works From Aichi Trienniale in Open Letter
The exhibition After ‘Freedom of Expression?’ was meant to probe Japan’s history of art censoring and celebrate artworks that had been previously excluded from museums in Japan. It was shuttered…
Buried Alive!
Being buried alive was one of the most common phobias of the Victorian era. Fear of premature interment in a coffin inspired the creation of the London Association for the…
Subversive, queer and terrifyingly relevant: six reasons why Moby-Dick is the novel for our times
But it is Moby-Dick’s premonitory brilliance that continues to make it relevant. Melville predicts mass extinction and climate breakdown, and foresees a drowned planet from which the whale would “spout…
Russia’s Last Czar, Nicholas II, Had a Massive Dragon Tattoo
In 1891, several years before he became Czar, Nicholas traveled to Japan. It was a difficult trip for the royal, in which he was the victim of a failed assassination…