Wednesday 23 January 2013
Friday 18 January 2013
Thursday 17 January 2013
Monday 14 January 2013
Rhymes and life
Everything is better when it rhymes. It gives life a certain completeness that can never be achieved in reality. We are drawn to the structure and logic of the poetic form coupled with the liberating creativity of the boundless poetic subject. This sounds much more pretentious and wanky than it actually is: basically we love rhythm, and right now - sonnets are doing it for us.
The well structured, 14-line poems have captured our imagination ever since school and Shakespeare and 'the darling buds of may', 'my mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun', 'shall I compare thee to a summer's day' et al. entered our lives. On the surface these look like the musings of a love-sick young man, with generic (if blindingly clever) attempts to woo his young lady. But when you take into account the fact that most of Shakespeare's sonnets were addressed to a young man, the genre takes on an entirely new and subversive format. And that's the angle we found interesting at NamaKo.
As you may have noticed, our blog has been filled with sonnets over the past few weeks as our team have been compiling their musings on city-life and the struggles of the creative youth into the terribly whimsical format of renaissance poetry. They couldn't be more diverse; from pigeon uprisings to the thoughts of a blue whale, from the description of an eclipse to the experience of insomnia, our sonnets are random, intriguing, and at times, quite wonderful.
Underpinning all of it is love. The sonnet is the quintessential love genre. Many of our sonnets are initially about the much bleaker topics of futility, boredom, unfulfilled potential, but, as doleful as it might sound; love is what ties it all together. Our love of the city, our love of the artistic struggle and our love of… whales. We want to spread some love around this often melancholy city - so look out for our sonnets gracing the streets of London very soon.
Get in touch if you'd like some personalised love in your life. Email info@namakolondon.com and our editorial team might write you a personal sonnet to lighten up your day. Or email us your poetry, we'll blog the best ones. Get waxing lyrical.
The well structured, 14-line poems have captured our imagination ever since school and Shakespeare and 'the darling buds of may', 'my mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun', 'shall I compare thee to a summer's day' et al. entered our lives. On the surface these look like the musings of a love-sick young man, with generic (if blindingly clever) attempts to woo his young lady. But when you take into account the fact that most of Shakespeare's sonnets were addressed to a young man, the genre takes on an entirely new and subversive format. And that's the angle we found interesting at NamaKo.
As you may have noticed, our blog has been filled with sonnets over the past few weeks as our team have been compiling their musings on city-life and the struggles of the creative youth into the terribly whimsical format of renaissance poetry. They couldn't be more diverse; from pigeon uprisings to the thoughts of a blue whale, from the description of an eclipse to the experience of insomnia, our sonnets are random, intriguing, and at times, quite wonderful.
Underpinning all of it is love. The sonnet is the quintessential love genre. Many of our sonnets are initially about the much bleaker topics of futility, boredom, unfulfilled potential, but, as doleful as it might sound; love is what ties it all together. Our love of the city, our love of the artistic struggle and our love of… whales. We want to spread some love around this often melancholy city - so look out for our sonnets gracing the streets of London very soon.
Get in touch if you'd like some personalised love in your life. Email info@namakolondon.com and our editorial team might write you a personal sonnet to lighten up your day. Or email us your poetry, we'll blog the best ones. Get waxing lyrical.
Thursday 10 January 2013
Wednesday 9 January 2013
Thursday 3 January 2013
Fuck the resolutions
New year, new you… we've heard it all before. Who says you need to be new? Just because the date on the calendar has changed it doesn't mean the person you were on the 31st December was riddled with fundamental flaws. Sure, we could go with the trend and vow to get skinnier, get less drunk, spend less money on mildly pornographic horror films… but why? Just because it's January doesn't mean we've stopped loving cheese and wine and half-naked people getting chainsawed.
Topping the list of the depressingly boring resolutions for 2013 are quitting smoking, saving money, joining some mythical land know as 'gym'… all terribly sensible. Sensible yes, but soul-crushingly dull. Looking back over our past resolutions the NamaKo team have realised that there's much more value in embracing these so called 'flaws'. It's our flaws that make us real, make us interesting! Imagine a world of pension-saving, lettuce-eating, non-smoking, gym-dwellers; do you think anything beautiful or passionate can come from something so sterile?
2013. It's just another day, we are still the same people. If you must change something, change what's around you. Change your environment, bring it to life! We at NamaKo have resolved to embrace our 'flaws' and use them to our advantage. And we will do so sitting on our roof drinking rum and smoking. Break out against the resolutionists… join the revolutionists. This is the year of you, just like last year.
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