Tag: poems

thing 46: ‘this, too, was myself’: reading from a book with my name on the cover

At moments of crisis Bertie Wooster often tells Jeeves that he could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up the soul and cause the old knotted and combined locks to do the fretful porpentine thing (or some Woosterish version of that). For Bertie, the problem might involve an accidental engagement with some droopy girl who thinks that raindrops are God’s tears at our unkindness; or (more…)

oyez, oyez, oyez!

This isn’t a thing, but feels like a culmination of an awful lot of things.

It’s a quick post to unveil my new website, which is dedicated to poetry. The new site has come about because an actual press is going to be publishing two actual pamphlets of my poems, one of which will have an actual ISBN number (more…)

not really a Thing… but exciting

Some definitions:

Poetry: ‘what makes the invisible appear’ (according to Nathalie Sarraute); ‘the revelation of the self to the self’ (Ted Hughes).

Hope: a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.

Fear: an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.

Ambivalence: the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.

And… (more…)

thing 30: ‘we are the wood drake’: reading together

‘… and then you’d think aha! something interesting is going to happen and then someone would mention Derrida and it would all be over…’

Thus my friend Simon, speaking about his time reading English at Oxford and the death-by-theory thing which can so often happen during formal study. I know what he means. In my very first group supervision at Cambridge we were issued copies of a poem—I have repressed the knowledge of what it was, if I ever knew—and the Director of Studies’ opening gambit (more…)

do not adjust your sets…

Your thing 26 parcel is currently in preparation and will be dispatched from the what the afternoon knows warehouse very soon. In the meantime, some news of an upcoming thing.

When I was on the course at Charney (see thing 17) a conversation with Paul, one of the facilitators, led to an invitation to come on the radio show he hosts, Calon on Books, on community radio in Wrexham. This definitely sounded like a thing! Not as terrifying as an abseil, or not in the same way, though I will have to watch my language as the show is live. It’ll be on at 6 on Wednesday 24th October, and you are warmly invited to listen in on the interweb, if you’d like to. Just go to calonfm.com at the appointed hour, and click the magic livestream link. Afterwards the show will appear on the site’s listen again menu, and Paul tells me there’ll be a soundfile I’ll be able to put up here in due course.

So, get the bourbons in; or possibly, given the hour of the broadcast, a sherry. I’d better save mine till after the show.