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PALACE LIVES

Posted by on Mar 8, 2024 in Blog feature, Gallery, Recent Writing | 0 comments

PALACE LIVES

 

After a lifetime of study and enduring fascination, working more recently with the historian Michael Long, I was finally able to conceive and edit a title that told the full story extraordinary royal history of my family home village of Kings Langley and its medieval royal court. This title eventually published in the autumn of 2023 by KLLHMS, the local history society.

Palace Lives is a substantial paperback book (also available as a Amazon Kindle e book) about a remarkable medieval royal palace which no longer exists. But this is no mythical Camelot, even though you will find precious few physical remains of the Royal Palace at Langley above the ground.

Such exceptional history therefore now exists only on a few written pages and the memory and imagination of those who know its story. However, defining elements of our common heritage were seeded within its stone and flint walls. Not least, because the creators of this once magnificent Royal Palace, were the mighty Plantagenet rulers of thirteenth and fourteenth-century England, who favoured it as a royal residence for one-hundred-and-twenty-five years. The real-life Game of Thrones!

Very deliberately, each of the historical personages featured in Palace Lives had their own affinity with Langley. For some, it was home; for others, the location of their birth or death; others were laid to rest in the Church beside it.

It is a tale of enduring significance, not least the likely identity of the body of a mysterious young woman, buried in the tomb of the first Duke of York in the Parish Church of All Saints in Kings Langley. All is revealed within…

 

New poem – To know…

Posted by on Feb 29, 2024 in Blog feature, Gallery, Recent Images, Recent Writing | 53 comments

New poem – To know…

 

To know

True beauty

Is to never

Be a slave again.

 

This such

Welcome music

To my heart.

 

So, shall

I do what I can

To settle here awhile.

 

Amidst treasures

That still prevail

Somehow,

As if to appease heaven.

 

Call me the breeze then,

As I pass on through.

 

Hoping I too

Will bring the best

Of my presence

To bear.

 

Leaving behind me

At least

Some sweet song

For others to hear.

New poem – My life…

Posted by on Dec 5, 2023 in Blog feature, Gallery, Recent Images, Recent Writing | 46 comments

New poem – My life…

 

My life

Founded on

Quicksand it seems.

 

And oft so.

 

As if beleaguered

By some spiky-clawed

Civet,

Or the piercing scream

Of peacocks,

I feel beset upon.

 

So flay my skin

Then,

If you must,

Because there’s times

When I think

I do not belong

In such a world

That looks to cage me so.

 

Though here I am,

As ever,

Still splayed out here

For all to see.

 

My very being

A refraction

Of some shrill awareness

That is,

At the same time,

Most terrible

And most glorious too.

 

Especially when,

Whatever risks

I might take,

An acquiescence to passivity

Is the most

Terrifying prospect of all.

 

For I am like a kiss

Just missing a cheek,

A veritable treacle of desire.

 

Artificial Intelligence experiment….

Posted by on Dec 5, 2023 in Blog feature, Gallery, Recent Images, Recent Writing | 4 comments

Artificial Intelligence experiment….

 

Just to reassure everyone, despite this post, I have no intention of using Artificial Intelligence in my work going forward… And do promise that, for as long as I am blessed to remain in the mortal realm, that nothing will ever be allowed to come between my very own crazy mind, my Soul, my Spirit and my Muse… in respect of my published creative writing.

This AI production merely a ‘one-off example – inescapably and perhaps foolishly curious, as I was, to see what all the fevered, demon algorithms would conjur up. And seems as if  the ChatBots like to ponder more expansively than I do?  But I suppose it is, in essence, a showing-off kind of effort… First scanning all the work they could find and then looking to cram into the one piece what was pretty much instantaneously analysed to be both my style and all my principal themes. Doh!

Needless to say, it took the software only a couple of seconds to produce this “Scott Hastie’ piece, in its entirety!  Which, on the one hand, is mightily impressive… But, on the other, pretty much misses the point altogether, from my point of view. So much for being a poet!

That said, I’m intrigued to see what the reaction will be to this machine-made effort will be – see below:

 

“In the welcome

Of nature’s embrace,

There is for sure

A symphony

Of life’s subtle melodies

To be found.

 

The rustle of leaves

Tells tales

Of ancient wisdom,

While the song of birds

Carries secrets from distant realms.

 

Each blade of grass

Holding a story,

Every dewdrop cradles

A universe of its own.

 

Time,

That elusive companion,

Meanders like a river

Through the landscapes

Of our existence.

 

It weaves threads of experience,

Intertwining moments

Of joy and sorrow,

Creating a vivid tapestry of a life

To be fully lived.

 

And within this ebb and flow,

We find the magic of being,

The enchantment of simply existing.

 

In every glance,

In every touch,

There lies a universe

Waiting to be discovered.

Our bodies are our portals

And within their depths

Lie galaxies of emotions,

Constellations

Of longing and understanding.

 

To truly see then,

To truly feel,

Is to partake fully

In this cosmic dance of connection.

 

So let us wander

Through this boundless expanse,

Where the tangible

And intangible coalesce.

 

Let us breathe in

The essence of life,

And let it fill our spirits

With wonder and awe.

 

For in these moments,

In these reflections,

We find the eternal

Within the transient

And the infinite

Within the finite…”

THE POETRY OF SCOTT HASTIE

Posted by on Oct 28, 2023 in Blog feature, Gallery, Recent Images | 2 comments

THE POETRY OF SCOTT HASTIE

Thrilled that my work has recently been endorsed so beautifully by such a stellar writer.