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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Starting a New Year

Warmest New Year greetings to you! I was privileged to visit many new and interesting places in 2004 and have made valuable new friends; I am truly grateful. I wish you the blessings and fulfillment you want together with the grace and wisdom you need!

I could start the new year with resolutions or with predictions. When it comes to resolutions, I know that the most important for me is one a friend taught me five years ago and which I still struggle with - "follow your heart". Concerning predictions, I remember Paul Saffo saying that futurists who claimed to be able to predict 18 months into the future were fooling either themselves or you, so I'm pretty cautious about doing so - when I'm delivering keynotes I prefer to highlight trends.

Instead maybe I'll try some direct self-improvement! So here are three books from my wish-list that I didn't get for Christmas:

1. "Being Alive" - Neil Astley
   As the head of Bloodaxe Books, Astley has shown that he has the taste and the courage to publish the good stuff the other imprints turn down. His poetry collection "Staying Alive" [US|UK|CA] remains one of my favourite poetry anthologies ever. In the 9/11 aftermath I found it a great source of reflection and insight, and I found in it many poets whose work I'd never encountered before. I'm hoping that this new anthology keeps up the same standard - the world shows no signs of becoming a gentler host.


2. "Wild Geese" - Mary Oliver
   I'm not sure where I first encountered Mary Oliver's poems, but I have been enchanted by them now for several years - you may remember I briefly reviewed "Why I Wake Early" back in June. Oliver has a perspective on the world that combines a positive spirit with an insightful sense of realism. Time and again I find in her work the spark I need to sustain a sense of wonder at life and the world.
   
   This collection appears to be the first attempt by her to create a presence in the UK (it's another Bloodaxe risk-take) and I'm keen to see what's been picked for British consumption. It takes its name from one of her greatest poems:

   You do not have to be good.
   You do not have to walk on your knees
   for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
   You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

   It always amazes me how each english-speaking country I visit has its own reserve of great poetry that it completely overlooked in the rest of the Anglosphere - I picked up an anthology of New Zealand verse for example, full of gems. Hopefully Mary Oliver will get 'discovered' by the British in 2005.


3. "The Earth From The Air" - Yann Arthus-Bertrand
   This book has already been an inspiration just from looking at the photos in the "366 days" version and I've tried to capture some of its magic in my aerial photos this year. I then got to look at the full coffee-table book (and yes, it's almost the size of a small table!) and discovered the original book is completely magical, with insightful commentary accompanying many of the pictures and fold-out spreads throughout the book. I'm looking forward to hours absorbing the perspectives both of the pictures and the accompanying texts.

I just used my Amazon gift voucher to order all three - I'll let you know. So, on with 2005...

posted at 3:53 PM (UK) | |