Peter Kenny
-
Goodbye unfair banking
Banks have been responding in interesting ways to their unpopularity. This of course was brought about by a series of largely self-inflicted wounds: the credit crunch, computer lapses, PPI and investments mis-selling, indefensible banker bonuses and so on. And the last couple of weeks we have the spectacle of HSBC money laundering in Switzerland. Banks…
-
A Cancer Landscape
“The disbelief, the grief, the doubt, the flung out, the anger, the banter, the bargaining…” Personal experience enabled English artist Michele Angelo Petrone (1963-2007) reach out to others fighting disease. Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease at the age of 30, Petrone became artist in residence at several schools and cancer centres, and created his own arts in health foundation.…
-
Visiting the Brontës
The importance of the author’s intentions in reading a novel or poem has been a hotly-argued subject. What became known as ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ (after a essay by Monroe Beardsley and W.K. Wimsatt) suggested that the author’s thinking about their own work was irrelevant. Instead a novel, for example, should stand on its own two feet…
-
Peder Balke at The National Gallery, London
I knew nothing about Peder Balke (1804-87) before my pal Bob suggested we go to see the exhibition at the National Gallery (on till April 12 2015). I learned that the Norwegian had made extensive trips around the coast, and then revisited some of the scenes in his imagination, such as North Cape, repeatedly for…
-
When a ghost looked at me
People don’t want to talk about ghosts. One night at university I was staying with my girlfriend. She had just fallen asleep but I was still wide awake. After a while I noticed the figure standing in front of the wardrobe. It was a young woman looking at herself in the wardrobe mirror and when I propped myself up…
-
11 London – nimble new healthcare communications agency
So I’ll be looking forward to spending a lot of my time this year freelancing in my capacity as Peter Kenny The Writer Ltd with these guys 11 London – nimble new healthcare communications agency.
-
Time travelling with Sue Rose
Recently I heard Sue Rose reading, and had a sense of recognition and that I shared some of her preoccupations. I love the way poetry gives you access to most interesting parts of people’s minds. For me, reading poetry is a way of feeling less alone in the world. One particular poem Sue read was called…
-
How McDonald’s is losing the plot with Fresh Fruit Fridays
For cynical marketers a sustainability benefit is easy to find, and all kinds of organisations try to crowbar their product into what I call Green territory. However reluctantly an environment-threatening ingredient is removed, for example, you can soon be claiming your product is ‘now even greener’. While this very morning I heard a radio execution promoting Free…
-
A stocktake
Thanks to hefting a sack of wet sand just before New Year, January was a trapped nerve. Weeks of sleepless and painful nights left me groggy. In one fanboy moment I tweeted (it seemed right) Pascale Petit about her fabulous poem Ortolan about her father eating a songbird. She told me that it was written after a sleepless night in Paris. I…
-
‘Clameur’ on Spotify
I downloaded Spotify, to which we now have a premium account. I first signed up to it years ago, but in the interim it has evolved into a thing of wonder. It’s good to use. Though some of my searches resulted in nothing, there is an unimaginable wealth of stuff on there. Slightly to my surprise I found…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 