Copyright Poetry and the Media

Before I moved my Web log to Blogger, I would occasionally put up some poetry, sometimes because it said something eloquent or just reflected the mood of the seasons. However, the web site that I mainly used to get the text from, started to become overwhelmed by advertising. Not only that, but pop ups that you could not close made using the site bloody annoying.

While it is true that I could have used other sites, as I always obtained permission from the copyright owner before using the poems, as I do with the occasional image I use, ensuring I had permission became really difficult. So I stopped posting them.

However, the other day I came upon another Blogger blog that I thought I would share.

Poem of the Week

And another site that I found

Poem of the Day

Reading poetry is one of the things that I personally do to keep myself grounded. As more and more of the mainstream media becomes more obsessed with the cult of celebrity and wastes more time stalking people like Brittany Spears while she has a nervous breakdown in public, than reporting the real news, I find that I have to work harder to discover what's really happening in the world. And much of it is depressing. However, reading some poetry and or getting out into the natural world really helps me from falling into despair.

Anyway, I hope that some of you folks enjoy the sites too.

In Praise of Radio Four Journalism

Yesterday, on Thursday, I had to make changes to my plans as I needed to go shopping. The previous Evening I had to get a take away from the Chinese, as I had run out of stuff to make a proper meal.

Therefore, I got the opportunity to listen to the radio in the morning. As my regular reader will know, I love to listen to the intelligent speech radio we have here in the UK, particularly Radio Four.

There are time though when some of the programmes and the news reports make for uncomfortable listening. A year ago there was such a report about a woman in Eastern Congo, who had been brutalised by an armed rebel group the Interahamwe. That original report made me feel physically bilious. So yesterday morning when they introduced that the reporter had returned to DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) to reinterview the woman in that report, I knew that it was not going to be a pleasant or light hearted experience.

I will not go in to the details here, but here is a link where you can listen to both the original report and the one from yesterday.

The Today Web Page

One of the aspects of organisations like the BBC that I appreciate is the willingness to tell the difficult story and to tell it well. Further, this quality only really happens in the considered thoughtful reports rather than the instant reaction pieces of live television news.

The story stuck in my head as I went round the supermarket, and I was going to write this posting yesterday when I got back. However, when I returned, I put the radio on and there was another programme that I never miss, Crossing Continents. As this is available as a podcast, I now never miss hearing the broadcast.

Yesterdays programme was about the illegal logging of Russian timber for export to China. Not only that but, the impact of our buying of goods from China is fuelling this.

The Crossing Continents Web Page

While the two stories are very different, they actually carry a common thread, that of the way we in the West ignore what happens in the rest of the world.

Am I glad that here we have the BBC to prick our consciousness and remind us that we share a common humanity.