Books
Podcast
#232: Ted Hughes in Alaska – Human Voices Wake Us
- #232: Ted Hughes in Alaska
- #231: The mythology of the moon
- #230 – The mythology of the bear, and Byron gets apocalyptic
- #229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture
- #228 – What Ted Bundy did on July 14, 1974
- #227 – The Great Fire of London and the destruction of Jerusalem
- #226: The Vitality and terror of cities
- #225 – The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling
- #224: Let's talk about William Blake
- #223 – How to write two novels at the same time, with Charles Dickens
Contact
email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com
Recent Work
The Brazen Head: 4 poems from The Great Year: Four Severed Head Songs
World War Two History, Fall 2025: Essay: “Paris Under the Swastika,” on the many shades of collaborationist activity
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle: Essay: “Thinking About Divine Inspiration“
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle: Essays on the Jewish holidays: Hanukkah (another on its origins), Purim (another on its origins), Passover, Shavuot (another on its origins), The Three Weeks, Tisha B’Av, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, Shabbat
The Basilisk Tree: Story: “The One Who Sang So Well” (podcast version here)
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle: Essay: “Exile in every generation: On Jewish loneliness and longing“
Forgotten Ground Regained: 2 poems from The Great Year: Ymir and Winter
The High Window: Review of The Letters of Seamus Heaney
Ancient History #52: Essay: “The Chariot of the Sun” (on the Trundholm Sun Chariot)
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #14: Review of Alexandra Cuffel’s Shared Saints & Festivals Among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle: Essay: The Wisdom of What We’re Already Doing
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle: Poem: War Song (from The Great Year)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Essay: “America’s environmental poet first met nature here” (on Robinson Jeffers and his Pittsburgh origins)
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #13: Essay: “Our Hearts Melted & Turned to Water: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain“
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #13: Review of Ophira Gamliel’s Judaism in South India, 849-1489
Ritualwell: 3 poems from The Great Year: Miriam, The Water Waited, Ezekiel
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #12: Essay: “The Original Wizard: Merlin in Legend & Literature”
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #12: Review of Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom’s Desert Ascetics of Egypt
Author spotlight at Karwansaray, publishers of Medieval World Culture & Conflict and Ancient History
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #11: Review of Tom Shippey’s Beowulf & the North Before the Vikings
The Basilisk Tree: 1 poem: Merlin
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #10: Review of Andrew Scheil’s study, Beowulf: A Poem
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #9: Essay: “When Translations Were King: How the Gift of a Greek Manuscript Changed Medieval Spain” (A supplement to the essay, with a further history of the Greek medical text in question, is here)
Ancient History #45: Essay: The Woman of Vix (on the Celtic Iron Age burial at Vix)
The Basilisk Tree: 1 poem: Shakespeare (podcast version here)
The Basilisk Tree: 1 poem: Pythagoras (podcast version here)
The Basilisk Tree: Interviewed by Bryan Helton
Ancient History #43: Essay: Putting Osiris to Bed (on “Germinating Osiris” bricks)
The Basilisk Tree: 1 poem: Leonardo (podcast version here)
Amethyst: 1 poem: Viśvakarmān
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #4: Essay: “Living on the Edge: The Life of Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir”
Amethyst: 1 poem: “Jacob”
Jewish Journal: 2 Essays: The Leaky Boat, Walking with God in the World
Jewish Journal: 6 poems: A Ploughed Field, Train, Moses, Bezalel, Abraham’s Father, The Water Waited
The Journal #61: 2 poems from the plague of 1666: The Harvest of 1665, Rich Houses
Londongrip: 1 poem: Caedmon Comes to Singing
Crossways: 1 poem from School of Night: Mr Cassian’s 120th Dream
Amethyst: 2 poems from School of Night: Mr Cassian’s 51st Dream, Mr Cassian’s 54th Dream
Jewish Literary Journal: 1 poem from School of Night: Mr Cassian’s Good Friend, Albert Einstein
Southword #37: 3 poems from School of Night: Mr Cassian, Heavy Judger of Men, Mr Cassian’s Beeping Garage, Mr Cassian Gets Self-Conscious
Isacoustic: 7 poems from School of Night: Mr Cassian’s 105th Dream, Mr Cassian’s 156th Dream, Mr Cassian’s 159th Dream, Mr Cassian Shares the Park with Other Parents, Mr Cassian’s Snotty Eyes, Mr Cassian Flees the Scene of an Accident, Mr Cassian’s Good Friend, the Roman Soldier
Cutthroat #24: 1 story from School of Night: The Frog (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Bold+Italic: 1 story from School of Night: Isis in Old Age
4 Poems from Columbine: The Mother, The Mother at the Salon, The Two of Them, Infatuation
WWII History, April 2019: essay: The Vermehren Betrayal
Renaissance Magazine #120: essay: Monks & Vikings at the Edge of the World
Military Heritage, March 2019: essay: The Battle of Pydna, 168 BC
90.5 WESA: Interview with NPR on Bone Antler Stone
WWII Quarterly, Winter 2019: essay: When the Blitz Came to Bath
Renaissance Magazine #118: essay: The Black Death Comes to Bohemia
The Wisdom Daily: essay: The Loneliness of Isidore of Seville
Voices Behind the Words: interview
Military Heritage, July 2018: essay: The Roman Siege of Jerusalem
WWII History, June 2018: essay: Henry Kissinger’s World War Two
Amethyst: essay: Risking the Sacred
Seattle Book Review: essay: Generous Chance Encounters in Publishing
The Big Windows Review: 1 poem: The Seeress of Vix *Nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award
Amethyst: 2 poems: Esus, Sucellus
Orbis: 2 poems: New Families Arrive in Britain, Bronze Offerings in the Water
Cider Press Review: 1 poem: Old Man’s Shed
Isacoustic: 3 poems: The Brough of Birsay, St. Magnus Cathedral, When I High, When I Saw the Deep
The High Window: 6 poems: Painted Stags Clermont-Ferrand, The Sun Sets into the Sea, Axes, A Song to Stone, Song of Trees, The Seafarer
WWII History, December 2017: essay: The Scholarly Spies of the French Resistance
Military Heritage, November 2017: essay: The Battle of Crecy
Crannóg: 1 poem: Cauldron & Drink
Cumberland River Review: 2 burial poems: Oleneostrovskii Mogilnik Cemetery, Skateholm Cemetery *Nominated for a Best of the Net Award
Underfoot Poetry: 6 bog poems: Last Meal, Haraldskaer Woman, Tollund Man, Kayhausen Boy, Damendorf Man, Grauballe Man, Lindow Man
Poethead: 4 goddess poems: Song to Sequana, Song to Sulis, Song to Nehalennia, Looking for Nerthus
Cider Press Review: 1 poem: Missing Child
The Journal (Wales): 3 burial poems: Long Barrows, Tormarton Ditch, To the Air
The Basil O’Flaherty: 4 poems: Unfinished Michelangelo, Kafka’s Sister, The Painted Caves: Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira, A Disciple of Pythagoras Wins a Chariot Race
Albatross: 2 poems: Migrations at the End of the Ice Age, Ring of Brodgar
Concho River Review, fall 2016: 1 poem: Neighborhood
Londongrip: 2 burial poems: Near Copenhagen, The Amesbury Archer
Military Heritage: Constantine the Great & the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
The High Window: 3 poems: Star Carr, Fire Houses, Pytheas in the Shetlands
World War Two History: essay: Exhausted Caravan, the 1940 Exodus from Paris
Poethead: 6 poems: Robert Oppenheimer, Horses from Orkney, Daedalus & Icarus, Skara Brae, Bone Antler Stone (Orkney Museum), Cuween Chambered Cairn
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 1 poem: Winter Crash
Military Heritage, May 2016: Alexander the Great & the Battle of the Granicus
Living Orkney, May 2016: essay: A Tourist in the Heart of Orkney
Concho River Review, fall 2014: essay: Blindness, War & History
Meat for Tea, March 2014: story: Adult Conversation
Bitter Oleander, vol. 20 #1: story: Flew Away for Number Three
