Marianne Stokes Death and the Maiden 1908 This week’s post is the second focussing on the early influences on the song writing of Van Morrison, this time using "TB Blues" as the point of engagement: it is an edited excerpt from the upcoming book Divining the Earth: Earthing the Divine. One of several key phrases... Continue Reading →
The Devil is in the Detail: a dissection of “Picture This: Butcher Boyz” from Chapter Two of The Spooky Perambulator (the novel that is!)
Today’s blog features the first excerpt from The Spooky Perambulator novel, as I dissect “Picture This: Butcher Boyz” from Chapter Two - with some help/ hindrance from the bold Spooky himself. A beam traverses the roof space, pulling the light down towards the scene below; at first it appears innocuous, a tableaux of thirteen working men... Continue Reading →
Way, Way Back Through the Labyrinth: Van Morrison Haunted on “Cyprus Avenue” and Beyond
This week’s post is an edited excerpt from the upcoming book Divining the Earth: Earthing the Divine: Psychogeographic (and Other) Influences on Poet and Lyricist due to be published on Wyrd Wolf Howl Press in November 2022. The chapter from which the excerpt comes has as its focus Van Morrison’s track “Cyprus Avenue '' and... Continue Reading →
Too hot to breathe today: the dark spirit of paranoia that possesses “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” by The Mountain Goats
Some years ago, when I was still involved in the teaching malarky, a student put forth the proposition that John Darnielle would be a suitable subject for a talk as part of a Lyrical Poetics program I was running under the auspices of Camena: The Poetry Society. To my embarrassment I knew little or nothing... Continue Reading →
Television go to my head as Marquee Moon rises over Belfast
This week's post has been retrieved from the ether archives, where it had languished for quite some time. In fact it was first published by Spooky on the 21st of August 2015 at 4:30pm on Spooky Wood's Echo Location; a blog which had the following as its typically full-blown description: Welcome, fellow travellers through the... Continue Reading →
Magically Prophetic Words: The Prescience of Sylvia Plath in “The Manor Garden”
The first poets who made any sort of impact on me, primarily because the dark sensibilities which informed their deliciously dark writing resonated with my increasingly rampant gothic outlook, were Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath. I cannot recall if my English teacher chose the two poets for us to study, I was fortunate that my... Continue Reading →
Spooky investigates the weirdness of “Boys of Bedlam”: Part II – “Tom O’Bedlam”
In this week’s post, the second based on the eldritch air "Boys of Bedlam", Spooky interrogates the strange conversation between Mad Maudlin and Tom o' Bedlam contained in the eponymous lyrics, and performs a forensic examination of Steeleye Span's musical accompaniment to discover what makes it as weird as the lyric. Cover of Tom o'Bedlam... Continue Reading →
Spooky investigates the weirdness of “Boys of Bedlam”: Part I
In Chapter Fifteen of The Spooky Perambulator, oblique references are made to several folk songs: one of these is ‘Boys Of Bedlam’. In what follows, Spooky explores this particular song, creating as usual a weird web of connections and strange synchronicities.
The Spooky Perambulator 