In each new outbreak of conflict in the world, there are different sets of structures of feeling at work, that is to say ways of thinking about issues whereby one’s hopes and fears and likes and animosities colour one’s thoughts. They draw on experience and on imaginings, sometimes productively, sometimes counter-productively – even frighteningly so, in other people’s opinion.

Beow is attached a downloadable pdf with my essay and new poem, “A Babel of Thoughts”. It is an attempt at getting inside the heads and hearts of a variety of people’s structures of feeling, as revealed in testimonies spoken on TV or written in the press, or given directly to me, or gleaned from forays into the pages of literature, all in the context of the appalling Israel/Gaza catastrophe. This is, I know, no substitute for political analysis. It is, rather, a complement to such an analysis, justifying – and being justified by – the point made in this website’s title, Culture Matters.