Tuesday, 10th December (Richmond)

Posted on December 10, 2024 by roycross

1. First up today, The Association for Quality Education & Training Online (Aqueduto) is offering a webinar this Thursday, 12th December, at 14:00 UK time, Practical strategies for designing and delivering courses using messaging apps with Anne Lennon & Philippa Davies. More info and registration here https://aqueduto.com/community-events/events/webinar-practical-strategies-for-designing-and-delivering-courses-using-messaging-apps/

As mobile technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous, messaging apps have emerged as powerful tools for delivering educational content. This presentation will offer practical advice on designing and delivering effective courses through popular messaging apps, based on the lessons we learnt from the design and implementation of a course for teachers on WhatsApp and Telegram. Participants will hear about the project and come away with practical tips on course design, delivery and encouraging participant engagement.

2. Some radical thinking on development aid on the Danish Development Research Network (DDRN) blog from Arne Wangel, ‘Why not give all the money to the poor?’ https://ddrn.dk/16790/ PDF below.

With a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper explores the radical and potentially game-changing idea of allocating most Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to social cash transfers. It concludes that financially it would be possible to reach many or even most of the poorest households with meaningful amounts on an annual basis. This would have a considerable socio-economic impact. As a side-effect, governments that are now at the receiving end of current ODA would face a funding gap, as funds are shifted to social cash transfers paid directly to their citizens. Governments would need to compensate for this through increased taxation. In some countries, but not all, this is theoretically likely to lead to positive governance effects as governments become more accountable to their tax-paying citizens and are incentivised to improve the performance of revenue and adjacent government services.

Just give all the money to the poorDownload

3. Here’s a recording of the informative and entertaining Ipsos Review of the Year for 2024 https://vimeo.com/ipsosuk/review/1036042422/ec9938a52c Low-resolution video below, experimentally (on the website only).

2024__a_year_of_milestone_momets_-_the_year_in_review (240p)Download

4. A review by John Kampfner of Angela Merkel’s autobiography, ‘Freedom’, a book in which he feels she doesn’t do herself justice, What is it about her? Merkel spectacularly fails to make her case; maybe I could do it for her https://johnkampfner.substack.com/

 5. And, finally, courtesy of The ELT Buzz Digest, a NYT video about primary education in Japan, What Japan Teaches Its Kids, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRW0auOiqm4

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Thursday, 5th December (Cambridge)

Posted on December 5, 2024 by roycross

1. There’s a TeachingEnglish webinar next Tuesday, 10th December, at 12.00 UK time withFiona Copland & Sue Garton on English as a school subject: learning effective practices from primary-sector English language teachers in the global south https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/news-and-events/webinars/webinars-teacher-educator/english-school-subject-learning-effective

Here’s their blurb: Drawing on their collaborative research project with academics, teacher educators, teachers and children in Malawi, Mexico, Uzbekistan and Bangladesh Dr Fiona Copland, Head of the School of Education, Learning and Communication Sciences, University of Warwick and Sue Garton, Professor of Applied Linguistics (TESOL) at Aston University, discuss barriers and solutions to learning English in the four contexts. Referencing video content and teacher education materials created from real classroom situations they examine strategies for repositioning students and teachers as emergent bilinguals rather than weak language learners and highlight associated approaches to and practices in teaching English more effectively in the primary school sector.

PDF below of the report by Fiona and Sue on which this event is based.

You’ll find the recording of the previous event in this series, Supporting teacher well-being: Connecting, learning and contributing, with Cristiana Osan here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/news-and-events/webinars/webinars-teacher-educator/supporting-teacher-well-being-connecting

Global_practices Copland and Garton_v3_FINALDownload

2. First of three on AI: Nik Peachey’s great handbook for the British Council, AI activities and resources for English language teachers https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/publications/resource-books/ai-activities-and-resources-english-language-teachers

PDF below.

Peachey_2024_ AI_activities_resources_English_language_teachersDownload

3. The ELTons Festival of Innovation the other week included a lively debate on AI, ably chaired by Neenaz Ichaporia, The great AI debate: a force for good in language education? https://youtu.be/kVKyOsQc0T0

4. A short blog post on AI by Michelle Meadows for the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment (OUCEA), How to encourage academic integrity in the age of generative AI https://www.education.ox.ac.uk/oucea/news/how-to-encourage-academic-integrity-in-the-age-of-generative-ai/

If assessment’s your thing, you’ll find useful OUCEA’s series of videos on the ‘central issues in assessment’ https://www.education.ox.ac.uk/oucea/project/assessment-materials-online/

5. And, finally, brain rot, also from Oxford https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/

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Tuesday, 3rd December (Richmond)

Posted on December 3, 2024 by roycross

1. The October 2024 issue of ELTJ, vol. 78 Issue 4, was a special issue devoted to Generative Artificial Intelligence and ELT https://academic.oup.com/eltj/issue Lots of free access articles, including the editors’ introduction, Generative artificial intelligence and ELT, by Alessia Cogo, Laura Patsko & Joanna Szoke https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article/78/4/373/7815126 PDF below. Fruzsina Szabó and Joanna Szoke’s article, How does generative AI promote autonomy and inclusivity in language teaching?, that I shared last month is also free to read in this issue, as is a Key Concept note on Fluency by Pauliina Peltonen, who was revisiting Tricia Hedge’s note on Fluency in the same series in 1993. PDFs of both pieces below for thirty-years-on comparison purposes!

Generative artificial intelligence and ELTDownload
Tricia Hedge on Fluency 1993Download
Pauliina Peltonen on Fluency 2023Download

2. Gail Ellis won an Outstanding Achievement Award at this year’s ELTons, recognised for her pioneering 40-year contribution to English language teaching for young learners. Her work, from championing learner agency and inclusive practices to innovating with picturebook pedagogy, has profoundly shaped early language education. Gail’s legacy includes groundbreaking publications, advancing professional standards, and inspiring countless learners and educators worldwide with her dedication and generosity. Here’s part of that work, the Words & Pictures Library: an online library for picturebook-based English Language Teaching (ELT) https://wordsandpictureslibrary.com/

3. At 16:00 UK time this Thursday, 5th December, Alison Phipps & Khawla Badwan will be presenting their book, Keep Telling of Gaza, online. More info and registration here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-keep-telling-of-gaza-tickets-1080347461339

4. A good post from Colin Bangay for the Global Partnership for Education blog, Sustainability education as antidote to climate anxiety: Not just the facts, but also the actions When and how to introduce climate and environment topics in education in ways that promote agency instead of anxiety and feelings of helplessnesshttps://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/sustainability-education-antidote-climate-anxiety-not-just-facts-also-actions

5. And, finally, the New York Times Best Books of 2024 https://tinyurl.com/yc3yht2h  Plus an engaging video on three of those ten from Gilbert Cruz, the New York Times Book Review Editor https://www.nytimes.com/video/books/100000009823421/the-top-10-books-of-the-year.html

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Thursday, 28th November (Cambridge)

Posted on November 28, 2024 by roycross

1. First up today, a gleaning from last week’s TLS (Times Literary Supplement), from the Munich research group, CESifo, A Matter of Taste: The Negative Welfare Effect of Expert Judgments by Nicolas Lagios & Pierre-Guillaume Méon https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4991796#

From the glitz and glamor of film festivals to the sophistication of wine or culinary awards, expert judgments can drive consumers to or away from the products they review (Ginsburgh, 2003, Ashenfelter and Jones, 2013, English, 2014). Those judgments are particularly important for experience goods, the utility of which consumers, by definition, cannot know prior to consumption. By assessing those goods and sharing their judgments with the public, experts send a quality signal that may be received by consumers and persuade them to choose better goods, thereby delivering welfare gains.

However, the view of experts’ work as welfare-enhancing rests on the assumption that their judgments reflect the tastes of consumers or, to put it simply, that they can tell consumers what they will like. This assumption is questionable on several grounds …

PDF below.

A Matter of Taste – The Negative Welfare Effect of Expert JudgmentsDownload

2. The latest episode of the Monocle podcast features Steve McQueen talking about his new film, ‘Blitz’, which details the lives of 20th-century Britons during the Second World Warhttps://monocle.com/radio/shows/monocle-on-culture/684/play/

3. From the Riverford Wicked Leeks blog, Does organic food have a perceived class problem? https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/features/does-organic-food-have-a-class-problem-in-this-country/

Imagine that tomorrow Keir Starmer announced modest subsidies for organic farmers. Perhaps there’d be a photo opportunity outside Number 10, featuring a podium of organic produce and their proud, organic growers. Across most of Europe this would be a fairly neutral news story. But in England, the dailies would have a field day – accusing Starmer of promoting ‘posh produce’ at the expense of ordinary food. In the opinion columns that followed, journalists and farming union representatives would argue that organic is the preserve of the elites. That it’s backed by the likes of King Charles III and Lady Carole Bamford and eaten by out-of-touch celebrities at upmarket restaurants like Raymond Blanc’s luxury organic Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.

Well, is it (just) a class thing, I wonder, when an organic chicken will cost you £21.45 from Riverford and a non-organic one of the same weight £5 or less from most supermarkets?

4. The ECML (European Centre for Modern Languages) is organising a think tank next Wednesday, 4th December, on the topic “Fostering motivation in language education: what role for decision-makers and educators?” which will be live-streamed on YouTube in both French and English. More info and YouTube links herehttps://www.ecml.at/Cooperation/ThinktankFosteringmotivationinlanguageeducation/tabid/5930/Default.aspx

According to the 2023 edition of the Eurydice report for the European Union – Key data on teaching languages at school in Europe (PDF below) – there has been a decrease in the percentage of students in lower secondary education learning two or more foreign languages since the 2013 edition. Moreover, the findings are even less auspicious in the context of secondary vocational education. This is in stark contrast to the situation regarding the learning of English: more and more education systems are introducing English at an earlier age (in primary or even pre-primary) and currently almost all students (in Europe) in lower secondary are learning English.

Also below, a PDF of the other key document under discussion at the think tank, the Eurobarometer 2024 – “Europeans and their languages”

key data on teaching languages at school in europe-ECXA22001ENNDownload
Europeans_and_languages_SP540_enDownload

5. And, finally, the decline and fall of the Lionel Messi-endorsed Indian education colossus Byju’s, as told by Philip Kerr, courtesy (yet again) of OLDaily https://adaptivelearninginelt.wordpress.com/2024/11/19/edtech-winners-and-losers/  Some of the teaching material Philip highlights would be laughable if people hadn’t paid for it …

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Tuesday, 26th November (Richmond)

Posted on November 26, 2024 by roycross

1. Some good clear analysis here from Carbon Brief of the final outcomes of COP 29 in Baku https://www.carbonbrief.org/cop29-key-outcomes-agreed-at-the-un-climate-talks-in-baku/ Tidily sorted into sections, which might lend itself to a whole class activity with pairs of students each responsible for summarising/reporting on different sections?

2. Ethan Mollick’s latest blog post, Getting started with AI: Good enough prompting – Don’t make this hard, begins as follows: While reading a new paper on doctors using GPT-4 to diagnose disease, I saw a familiar problem with AI. The paper confirmed what many other similar studies have found: frontier Large Language Models are surprisingly good at diagnosis, even though they are not specifically built for medicine. You’d expect this AI capability to help doctors be more accurate. Yet doctors using AI performed no better than those working without it—and both groups did worse than ChatGPT alone. Why didn’t the doctors benefit from the AI’s help? One reason is algorithmic aversion. We don’t like taking instructions from machines when they conflict with our judgement (my emphasis), which caused doctors to overrule the AI, even when it was accurate. But a second reason for this problem is very specific to working with Large Language Models. To people who aren’t used to using them, AI systems are surprisingly hard to get a handle on, resulting in a failure to benefit from their advice.

You will find the post here https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/getting-started-with-ai-good-enough

3. In that post, Mollick observes, In every classroom I teach in or organization I speak with, the vast majority of people have tried AI, but are often struggling with how to initially use it. And, as a result of that struggle, have not put in the 10 or so hours with AI that are required to really understand what it does. Coincidentally, and having become a bit of a Mollick groupie, I’d just signed up to a free ten-hour-or-so Coursera course of his, Transforming Classrooms with GenAI: A Practical Guide! You can sign up here https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-ai-in-education-leveraging-chatgpt-for-teaching/home/module/1 You’ll need to create a Coursera account if you haven’t already got one: click on New to Coursera? Sign up at the bottom of the page. It’s £22 if you want a certificate, which also means you get your quizzes marked – I’m holding out on that for now. So far, so interesting!

4. An NYT gift article, the review by Junot Díaz of Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, which includes a reading of the first chapter, nine minutes long, by Brian Nishii  https://tinyurl.com/3d5xcr9n

5. And, finally, another NYT gift article, How Good Is Your Mobility? We lose a little range of movement as we age. Here are seven ways to test yours https://tinyurl.com/4kffnkyy It seems I’m not quite as decrepit as I thought!

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Thursday, 21st November (Cambridge)

Posted on November 21, 2024 by roycross

1. Here’s all the winners from this year’s English Language Teaching Oscars, the ELTons. Truly global, with winners in alphabetical order from Benin, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Turkey, the UK and the USA!

Plus, four very worthy recipients of the Outstanding Achievement Award, again in alphabetical order: Rod Bolitho, Rama Matthew, Okon Effiong and Scott Thornbury

https://www.britishcouncil.org/english-assessment/eltons/festival-of-innovation?shpath=/eltons-winners-2024

2. Courtesy of the remarkably fecund OLDaily, AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably by Brian Porter & Edouard Machery  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-76900-1 PDF below.

AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorablyDownload

3. I try hard not to be cynical about the mega-rich and their motives. Breakthrough Energy was founded by Bill Gates. They’ve just published a very upbeat report, The State of the Transition: Climate Tech Has Arrived https://transition.breakthroughenergy.org/ PDF below.

Major global investors—including endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and infrastructure investors—are finally getting off the sidelines and engaging in climate tech opportunities in meaningful ways. Meanwhile, corporate leaders increasingly understand that climate tech is not just about shrinking their carbon footprint. It’s also about strengthening their businesses and deploying their capital more efficiently.

Breakthough Energy Annual Report 2024_10.16.24 (1)Download

4. Big changes afoot in international education? Here’s a piece from the ICEF Monitor, Beyond the Big Four: How demand for study abroad is shifting to destinations in Asia and Europe, which suggests that affordability and post-study work opportunities are increasingly important factors in the choices students make https://monitor.icef.com/2024/10/beyond-the-big-four-how-demand-for-study-abroad-is-shifting-to-destinations-in-asia-and-europe/

5. And, finally, from The Guardian, plans to map London’s linguistic riches, Linguist calls for London’s endangered language communities to be mapped https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/26/londons-endangered-language-communities-to-be-mapped-in-new-project

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Tuesday, 19th November (Cambridge)

Posted on November 19, 2024 by roycross

1. Regardless of its easy to use clickable map, I rather doubt this Carbon Brief publication, Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world, will be much read in the Trump White House https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/attribution-studies/index.html

2. The Cambridge University Press ‘Elements’ series is wonderfully eclectic. Here’s some recent publications, all free to download here (scroll down to the bottom of the page) until 12th December https://www.cambridge.org/core/publications/elements#

Feminism, Corpus-assisted Research and Language Inclusivity by Federica Formato

The Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams by Alan Thomas

The Fading Light of Democratic Capitalism – How Pervasive Cronyism and Restricted Suffrage are Destroying Democratic Capitalism as a National Ideal … And What to do About it by Malcolm S. Salter

Peace Leadership – A Story of Peace Dwelling by Stan Amaladas

Ukraine not ‘the’ Ukraine by Marta Dyczok

Aegeomania – Modern Reimaginings of the Aegean Bronze Age by Nicoletta Momigliano

Contemporary Body Horror by Xavier Aldana Reyes

That last one is in their Elements in the Gothic series. Here’s the summary, so you can decide if it’s one for you:

‘Body horror’, a horror subgenre concerned with transformation, loss of control and the human body’s susceptibility to disease, infection and external harm, has moved into the mainstream to become one of the greatest repositories of biopolitical discourse. Put simply, body horror acts out the power flows of modern life, visualising often imperceptible or ignored processes of marginalisation and behavioural policing, and revealing how interrelations between different social spheres (medical, legal, political, educational) produce embodied identity. This book offers the first sustained study of the types of body horror that have been popular in the twenty-first century and centres on the representational and ideological work they carry out. It proposes that, thanks to the progressive vision of feminist, queer and anti-racist practitioners, this important subgenre has expanded its ethical horizons and even found a sense of celebratory liberation in fantastic metamorphoses redolent of contemporary activist movements.

3. Here’s Jessica Mackay’s updated list of CPD Opportunities Autumn 2024 https://eim-ub.blogspot.com/2024/08/cpd-opportunities-autumn-2024.html

There’s an interesting looking one at 16:00 UK time tomorrow from Trinity, Making Listening Work: Do’s, Don’ts and Tech for Engaging Listening Activities with Chiara Bruzzano https://www.trinitycollege.com/qualifications/teaching-english/transformative-teachers/Making-Listening-Work-for-Engaging-Listening-Activities

4. ‘Best book’ lists are always good for an argument. Here’s 100 (fiction) books to read in a lifetime from AbeBooks https://www.abebooks.co.uk/books/100-books-to-read-in-lifetime/ which contains equal numbers of books I’ve read and books I’ve never heard of.

5. And, finally, free to read on Granta till the end of this year, ‘Hunter’ by Shuang Xuetao, translated by Jeremy Tiang https://granta.com/hunter-shuang-xuetao/

Here’s the first paragraph: Lu Dong moves the standing lamp, turns to gauge how far he is from the wall, then goes back to the chair he’d carefully positioned – no, never mind the chair, better to be prone on the floor. Pulling open the glass door, he steps out onto the balcony and extends a clothes-drying pole into the open air. Not heavy enough. That’s the most pressing problem – not the lamp, not the color of the floorboards, not the table in his peripheral vision distracting him from his target, but the pole’s insufficient weight.

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Thursday, 14th November (Cambridge)

Posted on November 14, 2024 by roycross

1. Personality traits that typify job roles revealed in study is the claim made by a recent post on the Edinburgh University blog: Stereotypes about which personality traits are associated with different jobs are largely true, an extensive study by psychologists (at the universities of Edinburgh and Tartu) suggests https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2024/personality-traits-that-typify-job-roles-revealed

You can jump straight to the test here https://apps.psych.ut.ee/jobprofiler/ You’ll need ten or fifteen minutes, if you don’t agonise over your answers too much.

The questionnaire results give you a) a job list of the people doing jobs that tend to give the most or least similar responses to yours; b) a job map showing your position relative to average job incumbents according to their personality profiles; c) your ‘Big Five trait’ scores. My scores on that last one? High on extraversion and openness; medium on disagreeableness and conscientiousness; low on neuroticism …

2. The LSE Impact Blog describes itself as ‘a platform for understanding and increasing the impact of academic research’. Here’s an enthusiastic recent post by Friedrich Geiecke & Xavier Jaravel, AI can carry out qualitative research at unprecedented scale https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/10/30/ai-can-carry-out-qualitative-research-at-unprecedented-scale/

3. An intriguingly-titled post from Ben Williamson’s blog, code acts in education, on the Oblongification of education https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2024/05/24/oblongification-of-education/

Ben’s latest post is on Critical keywords of AI in education https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2024/11/08/critical-keywords-of-ai-in-education/

4. Here’s an NYT gift article, the latest in their ‘Read Your Way Through’ series, Shanghai https://tinyurl.com/bdfxkjvb

5. As the first week of COP29 in Baku (at which oil and gas were described as a ‘gift of God’ by the president of the host country) comes to a close, the Carbon Brief team are offering an “ask-us-anything” webinar at 14:00 UK time tomorrow, Friday 15th November, to explore the key emerging topics and themes of the summit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3117314089955/WN_olK1_zCjSkSBZfP40pvvBQ#/registration

6. And, finally, sex, scandal and the death of a poet in 1970s Karachi on the Southasia Review of Books podcast https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/society-girl-sex-lies-scandal-karachi-pakistan-media-1970-mustafa-zaidi-shahnaz-gul

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Tuesday, 12th November (Richmond)

Posted on November 12, 2024 by roycross

1. First up today, The Place of English, Tony Capstick & Harry Kuchah Kuchah’s discussion for TeachingEnglish https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/news-and-events/webinars/webinars-teacher-educator/place-english

How can teacher educators help teachers to think through and make sense of questions about the place of (varieties of) English in relation to other languages? Questions of correctness and variety choices and ownership of English; questions around native speaker/anglonormative teacher language proficiency; questions around the ‘English only classroom’, multilingual approaches and linguistic diversity; questions about the value, benefit and practice of English as the language of teaching and learning.

2. The poets shortlisted for this year’s T S Eliot Prize will all eventually be found each reading three of their poems and talking about their work here https://www.youtube.com/@TSEliotprizeYT/videos Four out of six so far: Raymond Antrobus, Hannah Copley, Helen Farish & Peter Gizzi.

3. Tim Harford’s new podcast, Cautionary Tales is fun https://timharford.com/etc/more-or-less/

Together (says Tim) we weave stories of human error, of tragic catastrophes and hilarious fiascos. Oil tankers crash in broad daylight, vital military ideas are carelessly given away to the Nazis, and a shouty man in a uniform pulls off an audacious heist. Alongside the drama, each story has a moral that emerges from psychology, economics, even design. Each story will make you wiser.

4. Here’s the Goethe Institut’s Word! language column – in English! https://www.goethe.de/prj/ger/en/kre/spk.html

Dedicated to language – as a cultural and social phenomenon – (Word!) examines how does language develop, what attitude do authors have towards “their” language, how does language shape a society?

5. And, finally, make what you will of Bubble Pop! https://bubblepop.lol/

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Thursday, 7th November (Richmond)

Posted on November 7, 2024 by roycross

1. Here’s the thoughtful first episode of Carne Ross’s Gentle Anarchy podcast, in which he interviews Daniel Levy, a  member of the Israeli negotiating team in Oslo in 1993 who has since altered his stance on Middle Eastern affairs https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/gentle-anarchy/episodes/DANIEL-LEVY-e2q4f1t

2. Details here of an UKFIET online and in-person event with a no-punches-pulled title in London on Monday 18th November, Responding to ‘Scholasticide’ in Gaza: The Role of the UK International Education and Training Community https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ukfiet/1399229

3. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is somehow still operating in Gaza. Here’s a recent account of their work, Rebuilding Gaza – the paradox of shelter without resources https://www.nrc.no/expert-deployment/news/rebuilding-gaza—the-paradox-of-shelter-without-resources/

How can you provide shelter to people in a humanitarian crisis when there are no buildings or building materials available? This is the main struggle for Alison Ely and her colleagues in Gaza.

Medical Action for Palestinians (MAP) also continue their work against all the odds. Here’s a short film by three of their staff https://www.map.org.uk/landing-pages/watch-now-gaza-one-year-in

Three of our colleagues, Tarneem, Amal and Mohammed, have shared their experiences over the last year, living under Israel’s constant military attacks and a suffocating siege.

4. It’s time for a visit to Ethan Mollick’s blog, One Useful Thing, where his latest post is The Present Future: AI’s Impact Long Before Superintelligence. “You can start to see the outlines of an AI future, for better and worse,” says Ethan https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-present-future-ais-impact-long

5. And, finally, here’s Elif Shafak reading and talking about Charles Bukowski’s ‘Bluebird’ https://elifshafak.substack.com/p/the-bluebirds-in-our-hearts-and-creative Here’s the text of the poem https://allpoetry.com/poem/8509539-Bluebird-by-Charles-Bukowski

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