Jeffrey Side
Tuesday, 29 July 2025
Scents Before Modernity
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I was a young child in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the world I grew up in was saturated with everyday scents that were distinctive a...
‘The Poetics of Ambiguity: Romanticism, Empiricism and the Modern Mind’ - free ebook
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The new ebook from Argotist Ebooks is ‘The Poetics of Ambiguity: Romanticism, Empiricism and the Modern Mind’ by Jeffrey Side. Description: ...
Saturday, 19 July 2025
'The DWP Restart Scheme Exposed: The Secret Job Searches and Sanction Threats Unveiled by an Insider' by Andrew Davies—guest blogger
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Recent insider disclosures from an Employment Advisor (EA) working within the UK government’s Restart Scheme, shared openly on Reddit (see l...
Friday, 18 July 2025
'How the DWP's Restart Scheme Funnels Welfare Money to Private Firms' by Andrew Davies—guest blogger
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The UK government claims to be cutting back on welfare spending: tightening eligibility, toughening work requirements and cracking down on s...
Thursday, 10 July 2025
The Evolution of the Western Film Score
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I first came across the music of Aaron Copland in 1989. I already knew that his work had influenced the sound of Hollywood Western film scor...
Tuesday, 8 July 2025
Exposing the Flaws in the Observer’s Salt Path Critique
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A recent article in The Observer called ‘The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation’ ha...
Sunday, 6 July 2025
‘How the UK Benefits System Became Punitive’ by Andrew Davies—guest blogger
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In 1989, if you were unemployed in the UK, you were entitled to Unemployment Benefit, Income Support and Housing Benefit without being subje...
‘A Critical Look at the Restart Scheme’s Structural Flaws’ by Andrew Davies—guest blogger
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The UK government’s Restart Scheme is presented as a lifeline for long-term Universal Credit claimants, an intensive employment support prog...
Tuesday, 24 June 2025
The Beautiful Contradiction at the Heart of Stevie Wonder’s Love Song
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I only recently became aware of Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)’. It is a song with one of the most beau...
Friday, 20 June 2025
The Genius of ‘Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson’ by Aaron Copland
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Emily Dickinson’s poetry can often seem reserved and difficult to access when just read on the page. Her writing is usually short and indire...
Sunday, 15 June 2025
An Analysis of Internal Contradictions in The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’
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I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of Brian Wilson, a towering figure in pop music whose influence extends far beyond his renowned...
Monday, 9 June 2025
Why Bad Poems Can Become Great
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Having spent over 25 years studying, reading and reviewing poetry, I’ve come to the possibly heretical conclusion that it’s often the review...
Monday, 2 June 2025
Toward a Poetics of Complexity and Ambiguity
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Empiricism’s influence on poetry has long shaped the cultural expectation that language can function transparently—that it may render percep...
Friday, 30 May 2025
Empiricism's Poetic Legacy
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The legacy of empiricism extends far beyond the philosophical and scientific spheres, permeating deeply into the aesthetic sensibilities of ...
Tuesday, 27 May 2025
Modernism’s Hidden Debt to Romanticism
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Modernism is frequently celebrated as a radical rupture with the past—a movement defined by its break with tradition, its aesthetic experime...
Monday, 26 May 2025
The Empirical Illusion of Romantic Subjectivity
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Romanticism is often celebrated as the epoch that privileged subjectivity, imagination and emotion against the cold rationalism of the Enlig...
Thursday, 22 May 2025
Coleridge and the Failure of Empirical Compromise
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If William Wordsworth constructed a poetics of perception, then Samuel Taylor Coleridge struggled—heroically, inconsistently and ultimately ...
Saturday, 17 May 2025
The 1980s: The Last Great Cultural Decade
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I was in my twenties during the 1980s and didn't realise just how extraordinary a decade it was. Looking back now, I feel that decade wa...
Thursday, 24 April 2025
Rethinking Gender Beyond Biology
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Note This post reflects my own process of learning about gender and trans experiences. At no point do I intend to define or speak for trans...
Tuesday, 22 April 2025
The Human Being as God’s Camera
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Back in the early 1990s, I was looking for something beneath the surface of religions. And I adopted a metaphor, probably not original to me...
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