Category: Articles
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Three Haiku (Written in Kyoto, Japan)
[First published in Monkey Kettle magazine, no. 24, 2006.] Portugese song voice Sweet, controlled, but free and light Heard in a night street ………. Transparent rain fell This memory of quite a day One time together ………. A woman’s laughter Whore, princess or girl: the same Evoultion’s poem
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The other driver of the bus
Traveling back from a freezing water-logged day of touch football in Hirakata today, (as the old English phrase goes) I had ‘occasion for thought.’ Watching a strange young man on the bus reminded me that I’ve noticed a high proportion of mentally disabled people in Japan, when compared to other countries I’ve…
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Happy
Your own sun pearl is happy It is deliverance Happy is walking and dropping from nowhere It is weightless Happy is not over there Happy is just about to know you It’s the hand that sayeth go thou go thou And happy is driving through it Recognizing Happy is no one’s measly mantra…
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Sade – Lovers Rock
[This CD review was first published in Kansai Scene magazine.] It’s been some time since we heard from Sade – eight years in fact, so this release is almost a comeback for her. Our waiting has not been in vain. This return proves her to be much more than a passenger from the 1980’s.…
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Music of the Millennium – Various Artists
[This CD review was first published in Kansai Scene magazine.] Compilations of these kinds usually get me a bit twitchy. The idea of taking a relatively wide range of “hits” from the past thirty five years and throwing them together in this way seems like a blatant marketing ploy. However, if you’re like my…
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Vicente Amigo – La Cuidad de las Ideas
[A version of this CD review was first published in Kansai Scene magazine.] If you’re like me and you think that the term “ethnic music” is insultingly broad, you might also still believe that it’s possible to find good sounds in this same section of your local music shop. One example of this is Vicente…
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The Zanzibar Zone
[First published in Japan’s Kansai Scene magazine, unknown month, 2000.] A small island off the coast of Tanzania in central-eastern Africa, Zanzibar has a colourful history as a stop-off along the slave and spice trades of past centuries. Kansai Scene writer Brett Hetherington attempts to see how modern day realities have met the past. Arriving…
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Prose Poem 28
[Photo: Pedro Duarte] How to fill the hours? The hours and minutes that cluster around demanding to be entered, insisting to be used or abused or taken downtown to be trod into the cracks in the pavement, only returning with intent to malinger, or linger, or finger the night. The hours where only the…
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Japan’s untouchables
[A version of this article was first published in Kansai Scene magazine, 2002] THE PLIGHT OF THE BURAKU PEOPLE In Japan there is a minority people who have been outcasts for more than 200 years, yet they remain little-known in the rest of the world. KS contributing writer Brett Hetherington spoke with *Kohei, of the…
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OTRA VIDA (Note To Self)
[First published at Milton Keynes library, England 2006.] [Image: Hans] So you’ve got this meat of the mouth urge To write to write to self-ignite You hear something that’s never been said An idea given birth to and raised in your head You just think somebody’s got to hear you They can’t live…
