Arts, Books, Literature, Poetry

Poetic gifts of comfort and joy

POETRY COLLECTIONS

A TIME of “comfort and joy” doesn’t always deliver either, which is why some people (more than one might expect) turn to poetry for consolation and confirmation. You may ask why that is the case. It is because many discover that our longings are universal, and our pain is not unique. A poetry book can be a gift of healing.

Rachel Kelly’s anthology You’ll Never Walk Alone: Poems For Life’s Ups And Downs (published by Yellow Kite), is the perfect guide. A true evangelist for poetry as an aid to emotional wellbeing, the mental health campaigner begins, “Words can be a way to make sense of our feelings”. She divides her choices into the four seasons – representing moods of sadness, hope, joy and reflection. The range is engaging, offering old favourites such as Keats and Derek Walcott, as well as songs and new writers.

Kelly follows each poem with a beautifully concise explanation which will be welcomed by anyone unaccustomed to reading poetry. Fresh delight is also brought to those who encounter familiar poems anew. The whole book is an essential companion.

Padraig O Tuama has a similar idea with his anthology Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems To Open Your World (published by Canongate). His choices are “sometimes exploring common ground, sometimes not”, and are drawn from a very wide range of nationalities and cultures.

Based on the popular podcast of the same name, this collection is more for the experienced poetry lover, although O Tuama’s expansive and deeply personal essays about each poem are very helpful. As he explains, “The poems have become like friends I turn to and return to.”

He doesn’t really structure his choices and most of the poems offered will not be familiar. It is a journey of discovery; an anthology that provides a challenge on every page as well as a wealth of frank autobiographical material from the Irish poet, teacher and theologian.

Either of these books is a gift from all the poets to each individual reader. They reassure us that there is nothing strange in our feelings, and that joy can flicker when you are least expecting it.

Book Review and Synopsis – Berlin by Sinclair McKay (published by Viking, 464pp)

IF THERE was a focal point for the history of the twentieth century, then Berlin was it. The city had a central role in all of the country’s defining conflicts: both World Wars and the Cold War. Its citizens endured, in the words of Sinclair McKay, “an unending series of revolutions, a maelstrom of turmoil and insecurity”. And yet it survives.

It didn’t look that way in 1945 as Allied bombs reduced it to rubble and Soviet soldiers raped, slaughtered and pillaged, exacting revenge on the ordinary people of Hitler’s Germany for their years of complicity.

With unburied bodies strewn through its streets and mass suicides by Berliners who saw no future for themselves, its fate seemed to encapsulate “all the nihilist horror of that sad century – mass death without meaning on an unimaginable scale”.

And then, split in two, it became the pressure point for a new confrontation between Moscow and the West. If the world was going to end with a bang, the first sparks might well be here.

McKay, a stylish and elegant writer, tells all this with great panache and understanding, his research extensive, and his observations profound.

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Climate Change, Government, Science, Technology, United States

Nuclear fusion: A breakthrough that will lead to clean energy?

NUCLEAR FUSION

A REVOLUTIONARY scientific breakthrough is thought to have brought humanity a step closer towards limitless clean energy from nuclear fusion.

Since the 1950s, scientists and researchers have been working tirelessly towards the “holy grail” of creating more energy from nuclear fusion than they put in.

Now US government scientists in California have reportedly done it, by aiming the world’s largest laser at a nuclear target the size of a peppercorn.

The result, from a nuclear reaction reaching three million degrees Celsius, is apparently 2.5 megajoules of energy, from 2.1 megajoules of laser energy.

Nuclear fusion is preferable to nuclear fission, which is currently used to power the planet alongside fossil fuels and renewable power.

That is because nuclear fission splits heavy atoms like uranium or plutonium, to create energy, producing potentially dangerous radioactive waste that must be stored.

Nuclear fusion creates energy by bringing atoms together, instead of splitting them, and has no waste products, making it clean energy.

Unlike coal, the supply is limitless, usually requiring just two materials called deuterium and tritium, which are slightly different versions of hydrogen and found in sea water and mineral springs.

A small cup of this fuel could one day be used to power a house for hundreds of years.

The breakthrough at the federal Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California was achieved using a laser pulse amplified a quadrillion (a million billion) times and split into 192 different pulses.

These enter a hohlraum – a gold container – and hit a tiny capsule of deuterium and tritium, creating shockwaves which produce vast amounts of  energy, in a process called inertial confinement fusion.

Significant engineering challenges remain, including how to cut the cost of nuclear fusion, harness the energy produced, run it through a turbine and get it into the National Grid.

Most experts believe this won’t be possible until 2045, but some say it could be done in a decade and is likely to be achieved using a different type of nuclear fusion called magnetic fusion.

But whether it is using magnets or lasers, the experts agree it is the main hope for escaping the climate crisis.

Sir Robin Grimes, professor of material physics at Imperial College London, said: “This is a key step towards commercial fusion – the technology which will ensure our survival on Earth, providing enough energy, with a low impact on the environment, to hugely reduce our contribution to climate change.”

Jeremy Chittenden, professor of plasma physics at Imperial, said: “If what has been reported is true and more energy has been released than was used to produce the plasma, that is a true breakthrough moment.”

Nuclear fusion, if it can be scaled up and made to run more continuously, could in future be almost zero-carbon.

However, some experts point out that the amount of energy used for the entire system containing the laser means, technically, scientists are unlikely to have yet produced more energy from nuclear fusion than was put into it.

The US energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, made the announcement of a “major scientific breakthrough”.

– Diagrammatic representation of how nuclear fusion works. Source: BBC

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Arts, Books, Culture, Society

Current Affairs: Books of the Year 2022

RECOMMENDED READING

. The Fall of Boris Johnson by Sebastian Payne (Macmillan, 288pp)

WITH ANOTHER PM down this year – and on to the next one! Seasoned Westminster commentator Payne exquisitely and with breathless brilliance captures blow-by-blow the car crash at Downing Street. The narrative shows how Boris was turned from the hero of Brexit, Covid and Ukraine, to almost zero before being stabbed and ruptured in the back, front and side.

Prominent among the fingerprints on the knife are those of a vengeful Dominic Cummings – a warning to other government ministers to never make an enemy of your special adviser. They know where the skeletons are.

Yet, Boris’s worst enemy was (as always) himself – failing to get a grip on Partygate, on leaks, on his private office, on his Chancellor, on Michael Gove and, most of all, on the words that came out of his mouth. He blustered and bent the truth while Rome burned.

Payne does, however, acknowledge his substantial successes – “his actions will have consequences for decades” – but concludes that the most mercurial prime minister in a generation was always likely to come to a premature and sticky end.

. The War on the West by Douglas Murray (HarperCollins, 320pp)

THIS is a passionate plea to end the blame game which attributes all the world’s ills to the West, the very culture – “the goose that has laid some very golden eggs” – that has benefited mankind the most. The author delivers an eloquent and refreshing read.

The outspoken Murray is baffled and angered that it is those living in the West who are its biggest detractors, with their one-sided woke arguments and deliberate distortions of language and history.

Dishonest scholars, hypocrites and those intent on spreading hate and disinformation are undermining reason, democracy, science and progress. “In a demented discourse of their own invention,” he writes, “they have pulled us into a zero-sum discussion that insists the history of the West is one of patriarchal oppression, sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, larceny and much more. An unfair ledger has been created.”

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