Some reading for the weekend, with something for everyone, I hope …

1. Another free book to download in the Cambridge University Press Elements in Language Teaching series edited by Heath Rose and Jim McKinley, Technology and Language Teaching by Ursula Stickler https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/technology-and-language-teaching/31B1CC3D298097FA2BCE89A3F0EAC00A

“Step-by-step, teachers are shown how to make decisions about the choice and usage of online tools, how to adapt their pedagogy and teaching strategies to fit with online learning environments, and how to create a positive learning experience for their students.”

PDF below. No jokes about the author and the rules, please.

2. Today’s poem for Ukraine is February 23rd, 2022, by Danyil Zadorozhnyi https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/march-2022-ukraine-february-23rd-2022 written as a deliberate echo of the poem by W H Auden, September 1, 1939, with its famous line, “We must love one another or die”. Text of the Zadorozhnyi poem here, with PDFs of both poems below.

February 23rd, 2022

“trees—that’s what I lack most of all,” she says

“you have so few of them here in Lviv

Donetsk, though, was a green city

greenery all around”

but I didn’t know that

I was young, never spent much time there,

never valued people or the county until after it happened

“second time I’ve lost my home,” she utters with hatred

“officially, this time”

and I get her

and I don’t

hugging her

my mom’s concerned there’ll be tons of internally displaced persons

where will we put them all up, she asks

I don’t mind, but I don’t have any space

except in your room, if you want

containing my emotions, I elect empathy, saying

I get you

but it’s too early to talk about that

though I actually think it’s too late

if we’re only talking about this now

so, being kind constantly is very hard, tricky

but easy and at times the only thing someone can want

and if the war, not just any war, came to our home

and we had to flee to another city in another part of the country

I’d like to be helped there

not for the people there to make xenophobic comments on the internet

trying to catch my kids speaking the wrong language

twisting my wife’s tongue—she’s from Belarus, for heaven’s sake, seeking shelter here

if only I had the money to rent three of the four rooms in the apartment

with old landlords and Soviet furniture

Danyil Zadorozhnyi

(translated by Yuliya Charnyshova and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler)

3. Barry Gifford was completely unknown to me till yesterday. Here’s a short, one-thousand-word story of his, Joy Fun, courtesy of Seven Stories Press https://sevenstories.com/blogs/257-joy-fun-an-excerpt-from-barry-gifford-s-new-book-the-boy-who-ran-away-to-sea

4. You might need to be a Philip Larkin fan to appreciate these memories of him from alumni of Hull University, where he served for thirty years as university librarian https://hullalumni.me/2022/03/25/memories-of-larkin-part-one-i-wish-to-apply-for-the-post-of-university-librarian/ See what you think.

5. And, finally, a good long read from The Guardian, How south London became a talent factory for Black British footballers https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/mar/31/south-london-crucible-for-black-british-footballers