Sideways Station: Recent Episodes
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I don’t think I am the only person to have thought once or twice that it would be nice to have a name like the ones you hear in Westerns: Soaring Eagle, say, or Jumping Raccoon. In one film, of which I remember nothing else, one of the characters said that Native American children were…
I have begun to add readings of poems to my YouTube channel (sidewaysstation). For the time being there are five, but I’ll be adding more over time.
I’ve been recording poems for a while in a new section of the site entitled “Poems read aloud“. Click on the link to go to the index (also on the second line of the main menu at the top of the page).
I was listening to an interesting podcast called 99 percent invisible. I got distracted at some point and lost the thread, but a few minutes later my mind was reeled in again when I heard the words “the distance a shout carries in the city“. The voice continued to read what seemed to be a…
Siren song My city with its uphill loves, my Genoa all full of sea and steps and, rising from the harbour, whirlpools of living life all the way up to reach the ridges of the sheet-metal roofs, now with what forcefulness inside me, here where each word has turned to lead, does it quiver…
Listen to the poem here Two moods of darkness Darkness has its swings of mood. It also has long arms and countless fingers. Those nights your worries start to make the floorboards creak; first one, then several, then all (and if you have no floorboards they bring their own) then darkness slowly tries to…
Every time I board an Alitalia plane to fly to Rome, where I live, I wonder who thought it would be a good idea to name the in-flight magazine after Ulysses, a person who took all of ten years to make it home.
At the conferences I work at as a simultaneous interpreter, the audience can listen to a translation in one of the available languages through headphones connected to a receiver. The receiver has a volume control and a channel selection system. Sometimes, people who are not used to these things find them hard to use. They…
One of the best things of the French Revolution, in my opinion, are the beautiful new names which were assigned to the months of the year. I especially like misty Brumaire, frosty Frimaire and fruity Fructidor. Rainy Pluviôse is quite nice too. Compare our tired names, particularly September, October, November and December. These just mean…
Here is a link to Chapter 7 of my book Vinylia. The chapter is mostly about an artificial language called Dervish and the attempts of a woman called Confucia Wang to bring it under control. Dervish is invented in order to overcome the unavoidable misunderstandings and ambiguities in drafting treaties and conventions using natural languages…