Clare Bryden

@devonchurchland.bsky.social ?

Opinion | Trump’s Nobel peace prize campaign is the least important part of the Gaza deal If the ceasefire holds, the administration deserves much credit. But the fixation on Trump getting a prize distracts from things that actually matter.

Trump took office with a Israel-Hamas ceasefire in place, then announced a vision for Gaza as a US-owned resort, with most Palestinians living there gone. Israel restarted military ops in March and imposed famine. Thousands of dead Palestinians later, the Trump admin helped broker another ceasefire.

Ha! (Sob)
This is my favourite thing so far today

Lines of Javascript code overlaid onto a fine blue cloudy sky

I made "Dress for overcast" 8 years ago, one of the many hacks of Taroko Gorge by @docmofo.bsky.social

clarebryden.co.uk/coding/mozfr...

#ALD25 #Random #Poetry #Javascript #Weather

"Selling my soul for a low GI roll" - Clare Bryden The internet knows me better than I know myself... maybe.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!!

Here's a poem illustrating how far we've come in computing and its applications since her time clarebryden.co.uk/selling-my-s...

Thanks @ampliconpress.bsky.social for publishing it in ionosphere

#ALD25 @adalovelaceday.bsky.social #STEM #Technology #IT #Poetry #UKPoets

The Magic Pudding - Wikipedia

Reminds me of a book I enjoyed as a child en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mag...

@nationaltrust.org.uk tell me, do you blett your medlars?

Dry waterfall with tree

Screenshot of website including a photo of the waterfall with a bit more water in it!

Cleddon Falls not quite living up to its billing!
#WaterfallWednesday #WyeValley #Wales

Apple tree

Citizen science in #Cotehele orchard

"Uplift" - Clare Bryden Acknowledging something of the darkness at the lightest time of year might remind of the possibility of finding light at the darkest time.

...and as the nights draw in, a different interpretation of #Play for #NationalPoetryDay2025, published in the lovely Thimble Literary Magazine

clarebryden.co.uk/uplift/

A poem framed by two trees and a person reading in a hammock. “Let’s do something nice today” - - for David & Sue and all the others Let’s see a Mozart opera with post-performance chat, or watch a splendid sweary film and then go home and splat. We’ll patronise that café with the GIANT fresh cream teas, visit bluebell woods in spring and hug some well-loved trees, try catharsis in a chanting crowd no matter win or lose, snuggle in a sunny nook and write some (near) haikus, swing in dappled shade and read awhile and snooze awhile and read awhile and snooze awhile— Let’s talk big ideas and books over a bodged-together brunch, or find a pub with proper beer, have fish and chips for lunch, wander off the beaten track, watch a gameshow for the craic, let’s do something nice today and cut ourselves some slack! Clare Bryden

Something fun for #NationalPoetryDay2025 on its theme of #Play

"Article 13" - Clare Bryden My small, raw offering for Jyothi, Sue, and the other peaceful protestors arrested on 9 August 2025 under Article 13, and for environmental campaigners willing to risk the same. Respect. This what it ...

Tweaked a bit, corrected spelling of Jyothi's name, and now on my website at clarebryden.co.uk/article-13/

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

- Reinhold Niebuhr, "Children of Light and Children of Darkness"

#Quote #ForTheDay #ForTheYear

Likewise!

...and overtook a family of primary school age kids leaving the venue singing the @doughnuteconomics.bsky.social song #LeaveNoOneInTheHole

Amazing show by @kateraworth.bsky.social on Saturday evening @greenbeltfestival.bsky.social involving some incredible young people volunteering their talents, and #TeachingBrianEnoBeatboxing

Eighty years since #VJDay, two moving ceremonies in #Exeter today… First, the minute’s silence at #ExeterCathedral Green War Memorial at midday, then the commemoration event in Northernhay Gardens this afternoon.

Your poem was brilliant @clarebryden.bsky.social.

#WeWillRememberThem #VJDay80

The Imperial War Museum holds photographs of the liberated PoWs in Burma—harrowing

www.google.com/search?q=bur...

#NeverAgain #NoMoreWar #Peace #Justice
#VJ80 #VJDay #VJDay80 #VPDay #WW2 #FEPOW

"VJ Day 2025" - Clare Bryden "hear the hundreds of thousands of shadows / prophesying / an unpeopled future"

“And there will be no release for captives released
     to stumble their way back
          to an indeterminate existence...”

#NeverAgain #NoMoreWar #Peace #Justice
clarebryden.co.uk/vj-day-2025/
#Poem #Poetry for #VJ80 #VJDay #VJDay80 #VPDay #WW2 #FEPOW

Thanks John! Saw you later in the Cathedral but didn't spot you up in Northernhay

Sometimes the scientist starts writing poetry when they've grown up another 30 years, sometimes about science. Given that the more one knows, the more one knows one doesn't know, I'm expecting wreckage from all directions 💫

Interesting angle - "the poem offers itself as a powerful document of what happens to communities, to social groups – to sociability itself – when watching, informing and being informed on become the norms of human interaction."

#Poetry #Poem #Keats

www.aber.ac.uk/en/news/arch...

Letter of the day (in the Times)

522 When I first met Magna Carta I wept— for it was a weekend in Salisbury March 2014 and after annexing Crimea unmarked Russian soldiers were stirring up the Donbas in eastern Ukraine but in the UK there was peace and habeas corpus and access to Justice or Right by the Law of the land and it was in gratitude I wept. This weekend I wept— for Millicent Fawcett from her plinth in Parliament Square had witnessed 522 peaceful protestors carted off by the Met for the crime of free speech by means of placards in contravention of Article 13 of the Terrorism Act. Unlucky for some. Unlucky for the 50% over 60 or 70 or 80 years old and the 50% years from claiming their pensions. Unlucky for the roll call of the principled Sir former government advisor and the professor of poetry emerita and the son of a Holocaust survivor. Unlucky for the 2.1 starving millions disproportionately penned in Gaza. From her grave Hannah Arendt proclaims the banality of evil is again on the rise. The Met and soldiers and spies were only following orders. © Clare Bryden, 10 August 2025

My small offering, for Jyoti and the other peaceful protestors arrested under #Article13 of the #TACT2000, and for environmental campaigners willing to risk the same. Respect. This what it is coming to.

#Poetry #Poem

Numbers (522/532) and individuals taken from www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Mary Oliver Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? — The Summer Day Ian Adams I laugh. I had tried to read the river. But the river read me, asking How will you live your mayfly life? — A Wild Swim with Mayflies Carol Ann Duffy What will you do now with the gift of your left life? — Snow

It's never too late to start —

Quotes brought to mind by one of the threads in this morning's sermon — with @mrjohnharvey.bsky.social at @exetercathedral.bsky.social

#Poetry #Poetry #MaryOliver #Life

Hiroshima’s fading legacy: the race to secure survivors’ memories amid a new era of nuclear brinkmanship Eighty years on from the destruction of the city, registered survivors of the blast - known as hibakusha – have fallen below 100,000

"a small number of hibakusha – survivors of the atomic bombings – [are] still able to recall the horrors they witnessed"
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

#NeverAgain #NoMoreHiroshimas #NoMoreNagasakis #MAD #Disarmament #Peace

The Central Murder Jesus' crucifixion and nuclear holocaust

Dale Aukerman “The Central Murder” was one inspiration for this poem - in “Bread & Wine” published by @plough.bsky.social and on @sojo.net‬ sojo.net/magazine/mar...
Powerful writing, and where I first found out about Urakami Cathedral #Nagasaki

#NeverAgain #NoMoreNagasakis #MAD #Disarmament #Peace

Alt text limited to 2,000 characters. Read the notes on this poem at https://clarebryden.co.uk/vj-day-2025/ VJ Day 2025 for Caroline and Michael And there was a great light, and their clothes became dazzling white and the appearance of their faces changed. And there was a cloud overshadowing them and they were terrified as they entered it. And they kept silent. - - - Behold the man! A shadow etched into a wall still. Stand to face his hypocentre. See the seared civilian flesh on his right hand and hear the hundreds of thousands of shadows prophesying an unpeopled future. Some have tried to lift their voices but what voices can be lifted when they have been silenced? Little boy and little girl fat man and thin woman— we the billions exist in spooked oblivion. Once a year or perhaps one day a decade our shadows tell us it is time to pay attention to the remnant on his left hand crying out crying for the rule of law and justice and peace! peace! peace! But they too have been silenced. There has been no peace no peace no peace for the shadows who cannot submit to such a hollow victory. Their broken hearts cannot be bound up. They were emptied out way back. Nor will the blinded recover their sight when the forces of evil must be unleashed to combat the forces of evil. And there will be no release for captives released to stumble their way back to an indeterminate existence remarking in their silence that war makes no heroes— heroes know only the shame shadowing them for pity’s sake! Where the bells of Urakami tolled a thousand penitents making their confession will be cindered again and again and again until— Be still. Listen. © Clare Bryden, 27 April 2025

“Where the bells of Urakami tolled
     a thousand penitents making their confession
          will be cindered again and again and again until—“

#NeverAgain #NoMoreNagasakis #Lakenheath #MAD #Disarmament #Peace
#Poem #Poetry for #VJ80 #VJDay #VJDay80 #VPDay #WW2

Hiroshima anniversary: mayor says Ukraine and Middle East crises show world ignoring nuclear ‘tragedies’ On 80th anniversary of atomic bombing, Kazumi Matsui urges younger people to recognise ‘inhumane’ consequences of nuclear weapons as a deterrent

Kazumi Matsui, mayor of Hiroshima
“we, the people, must never give up. Instead, we must work even harder to build civil society consensus that nuclear weapons must be abolished for a genuinely peaceful world.”

#NeverAgain #NoMoreHiroshimas #Disarmament #Peace
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

What Happened at...? - Series 1: What Happened at Hiroshima On the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Jordan Dunbar hears from the only people who have ever experienced and survived a nuclear explosion.

The human cost of nuclear warfare

#NeverAgain #NoMoreHiroshimas #Lakenheath #MAD #Disarmament #Peace
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...