If All the World Were…

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This beautiful, moving picture book tells the story of the treasured memories that a child has of hergrandfather...Thepoetic language that Coelho uses is perfectly complemented by wonderful illustrations in the text by AlisonColpoys', Reading Zone If all the world were dreams, I would mix my bright Grandad feelings and paint them over sad places." Shifters report feeling more connected to the world and less focussed on their individual identity. Pixabay/Pexels What a wonderful idea and what a wonderful book! A young child shows us what it’s like going through the seasons with Granddad. It seems Granddad might be from India or thereabouts, but we don’t really know that either. You can see the pictures on the wall and figure out what you can. But really, who cares? This is universal.

Super Mario settings provide the headings: Yoshi’s Island, Donut Plains, Forest of Illusion, Chocolate Island and so on. There are also references to bridges, Venetian canals, mines and labyrinths, as if to give illness the gravity of a mythological hero’s journey. Meanwhile, the title repeats the first line of “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh, which, as a rebuttal to Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” eschews romanticism in favor of realism about change and mortality. Sexton wanted to include both views. (He discusses his inspirations in detail in this Irish Times article.) What a fascinating collection to read alongside Vuong’s Time is a Mother; in both books, the authors attempt to come to terms with the loss of their mum (each from cancer), through ingenious and inventive use of the carefully chosen terms and techniques of their poetry. Nuclear weapons are enormously destructive devices capable of leveling entire cities and, in the case of an all-out nuclear exchange, ending human civilization. But what would happen if all the world’s nukes were launched at once? The YouTube channel Kurzgesagt followed this thought experiment to its apocalyptic conclusion. It’s not pretty. ✈︎ Don’t miss our best-in-class military news. Join our squadron. If All the World Were... is a beautiful picture book focusing on the close relationship a granddaughter has with her grandfather. Through the change of seasons, we witness the special times they shared, as well as wishes the granddaughter has ("If all the world were springtime, I would replant my grandad's birthdays so that he would never get old").This poetry collection piece together a memoir of Stephen Sexton's younger years, structured around his obsession with Super Mario World. I had anticipated this to be a fun anthology, due to the brightly coloured cover and the gaming elements the synopsis hinted at. It was far from that and all the more poignant because of it.

While it took me a while to grasp the way that Sexton writes, I was soon completely enamoured and hooked by his writing and sped through the whole of the book on a short one-hour flight from Glasgow to London. The poems within the book each take their title from a different world or setting within the Super Mario Universe such as Yoshi’s Island. Each poem takes us through the journey of Sexton growing up and delving into the world of video games as a way of escaping the illness that is taking his mother’s body. The rhinoceroses dodder like a basso obstinato / in the valleys between mountains in their scooped-out eroded cirques. / If there is magic in their horns they seem indifferent to it / trudging along instead upon the khaki-coloured mountain path. / I want to call them dinosaurs but that’s not even kind of close: / those hundreds of millions of years that supercontinent makes break. / In Queensland there was that fossil showing a dinosaur stampede: / hundreds of sharp little talons but no sign of what had spooked them. / Thousands and thousands and thousands of lifetimes ago / these glyphs are all they’ve left behind. One clear night not so long ago / we all stood out in the garden wondering up at the comet / whose memory is very long who we hope still remembers us.” This wonderful selection of poetry caught my eye a few months ago while I was browsing the shelves looking for something new to add to my collection. I saw the pixelated Super Mario coin on the cover and was immediately intrigued by the thought of the merging of poetry and video games (two of my loves, even though one of them is quite recent). I was not disappointed. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.These are the days of no letters her signature starved with jitters / in the few half hours she’s awake to make arrangements: no flowers / or no more than is natural for a swift discreet funeral / and burial with her parents tea and sandwiches afterwards. / She sleeps the undertaker leaves the fountain leaks in the courtyard. / My head is heavier than stone. I read yesterday’s newspapers / not either asleep or awake let me please die is what she says. / It’s me I’m here is what I say but I am not since she is not. / Then she says I want to go home once more for one once more one night / and I say you can’t go home now she says I know not now after.” I will myself to contain it (I thought this was SUCH a beautiful line about learning to deal with/manage grief about the death of a parent) I’ve been looking forward to this collection for months, having admired Stephen Sexton’s work since I first heard him read from his pamphlet, Oils. I was not disappointed! This is an imaginative, moving and fresh narrative poem. The title, If All the World and Love Were Young, comes from a pastoral poem by Walter Raleigh, while the poems themselves follow the structure of Super Mario World, each section named after a level of the game. This collision of lyric tradition and innovative, modern references is a defining element of Sexton’s work. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

Without trees, formerly forested areas would become drier and more prone to extreme droughts. When rain did come, flooding would be disastrous. Massive erosion would impact oceans, smothering coral reefs and other marine habitats. Islands stripped of trees would lose their barriers to the ocean, and many would be washed away. “Removing trees means losing huge amounts of land to the ocean,” says Thomas Crowther, a global systems ecologist at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and lead author of the 2015 Nature study.

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As a gamer (so so sorry), this didn’t in any way chime with my own experiences of ecstasy or melancholy or even mindless escape into the digital world – it felt like a series of cryptic level synopses in clunky prose. I want my monument to be composed of light you might say / so you can see it friend not things themselves but the seeing of them / the light stopping on them tree I adore you I adore you world”