I have always loved words that fox the mind, Words of the archaic or rare-used kind. My life-story is inenarrable. I can’t tell you stuff I’m not capable Of telling either if I’m deficient In apt terms, or secretly efficient In hiding things I dare not let you see In case perchance you think badly … More Does life bear telling, when what matters in life is inenarrable!
What if it were a Sandretto plastic injection moulding machine …? Some initial thoughts on first reading Matthew Rice’s Plastic. Perhaps the most intriguing poetry publication of this year is Matthew Rice’s volume, a narrative in a series of lyrics each dedicated to a single passing minute of a 12 hour night shift in a … More What if it were a Sandretto plastic injection moulding machine …? Some initial thoughts on first reading Matthew Rice’s ‘Plastic’.
Source: https://observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/the-sunday-poem-burning-car-by-andrew-mcmillan I suppose even physical clutter is the residue of memories, sometimes transmuted into obsessional and repetitive images – the better if repeated with a kind of nuance that varies each token from others in its type of memory. I use the words type and token as in philosophical metaphysics, explained in the link … More Memories clutter but are dangerous to seek to clear out sometimes.
One line in a poem of complicated love between women, written to Brigid Brophy, by Iris Murdoch reads: ‘Don’t make of sex a basic category’. To her journal she committed the following reflection about herself: ‘It’s no good being a female queer, one must be a male one’: This is a blog on Murdoch’s Queer … More This is a blog on Murdoch’s Queer Poetry. Is it a layer of Queer History or the record of a Psychosocial Anomaly? It is based on Iris Murdoch (ed. Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson, Rachel Hirschler & Frances White) [2025] ‘Poems from an Attic: Selected Poems 1936 – 1995’
To the memory of John Burnside and in dear friendship for Joanne, I contemplate. the poet’s posthumous lines: ‘and everything they loved / is erstwhile, in the empire of forgetting: / …’ [*] There is nothing that once were the objects of our lives that can be remembered in their entirety, hence the fact that … More To the memory of John Burnside and in dear friendship for Joanne, I contemplate. the poet’s posthumous lines: ‘and everything they loved / is erstwhile, in the empire of forgetting: / …’
‘The departed are yet to arrive / … / but the roads are all laid out: /’ [1] There is no ideal time to pay more attention to the details past than the death that inevitably defines a ‘life’ and picks out its salient meaning. This is a blog referring to a first reading of … More ‘The departed are yet to arrive / … / but the roads are all laid out: /’ There is no ideal time to pay more attention to the details past than the death that inevitably defines a ‘life’ and picks out its salient meaning. This is a blog referring to a first reading of Simon Armitage (2025) ‘New Cemetery’.
Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’! When I was a student at University College London, I used to find myself walking through Russell Square to and … More Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’!
I bought Lode from the Left bookshop in Durham where Gillian Allnut herself works as a volunteer, and I read it through for the first time last night before attempting to ignore the heat and sleep. What buzzed through my mind together with the gorgeous complex rhythmic adventures and associations with recall from past great … More If I were a poet, then I might know how best to thank those who make life beautiful: Gillian Allnut thanks someone for showing her how to see the beauty of a ‘Golden Saxifrage’ and other kindness. This blog is about one poem in Gillian Allnut’s beautiful 2025 volume ‘Lode’. I wish I knew how to thank her.
Why does Simon Armitage dwell on dwelling? A blog on Simon Armitage (2025) [with illustrations by Beth Munro} Dwell London, Faber & Faber. The new poems by Simon Armitage that were published yesterday are inextricably linked to the Lost Gardens of Heligan, ‘Europe’s largest garden restoration project’, in Cornwall. They will also be ‘manifested physically … More Why does Simon Armitage dwell on dwelling? A blog on Simon Armitage (2025) ‘Dwell’ London, Faber & Faber.
As I sort my library, I come across writers I have long meant to read. Such a one is the poet James Merrill, who I came across in relation to reading novels of his period some years ago. I know nothing really of Merrill. I read through the selection I have in the Everyman Library … More ‘The School Play’: Growing up Queer amid so many manly performances. The poet James Merrill on the perils of a “small part”, “but an important one”, when: ‘What was not important to the self / At nine or ten’.
‘A taste for the poetry of William Empson may always have to be queer one’, or so spoke my thoughts as I get to cataloguing my few books (alas the critical texts – even the wondrous Milton’s God disappeared under an earlier cull, a misadvised one, of my library). Empson felt poetry was about emotion … More The queer poetry of William Empson
In an earlier blog post (see it at this link if you wish) about Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s Strange Beach, I ended it with a promise, or is it a threat, that: ‘I want to return to them. Maybe I will, for I have more to say of the brilliant things in Andrew McMillan’s book blurb on … More ‘The poetic phrase is constantly thinking, is forever rebuilt and remade on the shifting sands of language’. Rethinking new poetry, including Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s ‘Strange Beach’ again, and now Yomi Sode’s ‘Manorism’ [2025].
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