How so?
Mother thought I was destined to be a priest. Mother cannot work out how becoming a poet is the natural way forward for me. Sure, I have my faith. But I refuse to accept that the Bible is, how does the vicar put it every week? “The incontrovertible will of God!” I refuse to allow religion to dictate my faith. All religion does is to eat away at my faith because no one wants to read in between the lines. I mean, come on! Think!! Until two centuries ago the people could not read the Bible because it was in Latin and the Church did everything it could to prevent its translation into English. And William Tyndale paid with his life in the most gruesome way for giving us the Bible in English. So, John, that is why I’ve upset the Applecart!

An Architect’s Plan Drawing of the Mersey Dock Estate depicting the Present and Future Plan of Liverpool Docks 1930.
My home embraced the Trafalgar Dock, Victoria Dock to the east, Princes Half Dock and Princes Dock to the west, my own dock being the East Waterloo Dock Basin and overlooking the West Waterloo Dock beyond which, up until its sinking on 7 May 1915, the SS Lusitania of Liverpool had its Permanent Mooring.

Early morning in his studio high above Old Hall Street, Liverpool. The light streams in from the direction of Birkenhead, the reluctant home of his most cherished War Poet, Wilfred Owen. He pauses. God! That all ended in 1918. Yesterday. But actually one hundred and five years.

I will not compromise my faith.
I will not compromise who I am.
I will not turn my back on what I am.

I can love a man. I can love a woman.

And for me this is good.
This IS of Him.

Often his dreams overwhelmed him even in broad daylight, playing themselves out across his sight… an awakening, a jumbled mass of ecstasy, terror, subliminity, nightmare, heavenly, inferno, mushrooms, a man writing his apocolyptic dreams that then become twenty-one chapters holding humankind to ransom, and twenty-one centuries further on, still held to ransom

The Wasteland of the Mind following the oh so temporary Euphoria of the drug-induced coma

Der studentische Dichter Edmund aus Kaiserslautern Deutschland (1899)

© 2023 KTW

The Great War - Western Front, 1916
How do you mean ‘near miss’?
Easy. I almost bought it. Was on artillery spotting. Archie is getting bloody accurate now. We got bounced by an Albatross. Nice looking bird but a tad underpowered. I dropped about 15,000 feet - yeah in your lingo that’s about 4,572 meters.
My Obs stayed curled up ahead of me to give me less drag. Got down to our lines. Made up. Then YOU lads in these trenches decided I must be attacking seeing as I was approaching you all from the Hun lines, a couple of .303 shots right into the cowling hance, all the mess behind me.
Funny thing is, a few feet above the ground, I actually heard a tommie shout out “Oh God in Hell! He’s ours!!!”
These things happen. Thanks for the tod of rum by the way. Sure needed that.
Hey, tell my Obs to leave the party, we’ve got to get back to our squadron which, I think (gesturing with his eyes) is somewhere in that direction… …
No think nothing of it. God Almighty! You guys in these trenches are the heroes!!

Cuyler and Jessica at Portsmouth Harbour. Jess is born and bred Hants, and Cuyler, as the name suggests, is Norwegian. We pronounce his name ‘kiel-ehr’ meaning archer. But here’s the thing. Cuyler and Jess met at Uni in of all places, the local archery club, since when not only can they handle the bow and the long bow, but they have a shelf of very impressive trophies to quietly make their point!

When I shoot an opponent down, I do not want to end a man’s life.

John! Think it through. Use your poetic skill to open up scripture. You have imagination. All people have imagination. But for most, it is kept locked by the ritual walk three times every Sunday, warming the pews whilst the words of the vicar form ice around the hearts of good people and leave them to walk home with ever greater guilt. For goodness sake! Think!! Ever since St John had his dream, every century has insisted that their century is the end. Here we are, nineteen centuries later and we’re still saying it. And they’ll be saying it a hundred years from now, too. Use your poetry to highlight the supremacy of Faith over Religion.

It is 1918 and we know that the war is coming to an end. It is almost November and there is no way that we could go through another winter on the Western front. And I know I speak for all sides of this accursed war.

No, it's only for a week or two...

No. Really. You mustn’t worry. It’s only for a week or two darling.

Yes, but Mimi … … look, I’ve seen your passports. I wasn’t born yesterday! Other girls get posted and have loads of warning. Your postings always seem to happen within an hour. I don’t hear from you, I don’t even know …

Raif … (sealing his lips with the softness of her finger and whispering)... I will be back, yes I do do dangerous work. You do too.

Oh come on Mimi! I’m a veterinary surgeon, not a bloody secret agent!!

Shush, shush. Let’s not fight. We live in the free world. A lot of people don’t Raif. Come on, stop crying.

Two very special young people walked quietly along the tide’s edge as it slowly crept in. Hand in hand, loose, yet a vice-like grip too. And decades later how their grandchildren loved to hear what Gran did in the war.

Heidi is from Urbar in the Rheinland-Phalz in Germany (near Koblenz) and Ludovic is from Antwerp. Their love of the sea and their love of music took them to Glastonbury last week.
What a week! What a joy to see Sir Elton John perform.
They giggle, as their mothers and fathers missed out! Ludovic chuckles. “We giggle that they’re niggled, yeah, right on!”
But seriously, they have some quite amazing keepsakes for their parents who imbued them both with a love for music, the arts and literature from their earliest days.
From Glastonbury they’ve headed down to the tip of Cornwall, the beautiful Sennan Cove where they first met after the pandemic at Falmouth University.
They graduate this year, in July 2023.