So what happens when Reform take over your local council? This. #KentCountyCouncil

Best Books for Writers 📌 buff.ly/Yvmvoro 📚 buff.ly/7h8dYXr

New piece by me on the Labour leadership, the Makerfield by-election, and Brexit

New book: FINDING ALADDIN celebrates a Syrian storyteller who was almost lost to history. Hanna Diab created Aladdin from the facts of his own life, only to be betrayed by those he trusted—and then erased from his own story. I'm overturning 300 years of injustice. Order now: linktr.ee/matthewteller

Britain’s post-Brexit ungovernability. New post on my Brexit & Brexitism Blog discussing last week’s elections, the Labour leadership crisis which has followed, and what both tell us about post-Brexit politics: chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2026/05/brit...

I've long thought that one of the most insidious, enervating, unavoidable, continually stress-inducing aspects of the occupation—which is almost impossible to convey to outsiders not experiencing it at first hand—is sound. That x100 in Gaza. Ahmed Sbaih writes: massreview.org/2026/05/08/t...

this is a killer chart

Britain "at the heart of Europe", 2026 edition:

🔴 Rick Wilson's Warning From America: Nigel Farage Will Be Your Donald Trump, Unless You Act Now The former Republican strategist and Lincoln Project founder has some hard lessons for Conservatives and Labour alike

Retweeting, because we MUST keep bearing witness. '...the physical witness written on the bodies of these patients was that the ceasefire really has not meant the cessation of hostilities, of violence against the bodies of the people of Gaza. It’s ongoing.' #genocide💔

On Antoine Volodine's novel The Monroe Girls, an abject post-apocalyptic romantic comedy biblioklept.org/2026/05/07/o...

This website collects, summarises, analyses and visualises the starvation of Gaza in the last 30 months. Initiated by colleagues of mine from the Hebrew University. bearing-witness.com/starvation-s...

Edmund White was a dear friend and teacher whom I miss terribly nearly a year after his death. I've written a brief memoir about him here: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Wrote about Robert Coover's weird, mind-bending, vital 1968 novel about fantasy baseball, "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.," newly reprinted by NYRB Classics. for @thenation.com. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Today I have written about the delights of J. H. Prynne, the grand old Cantabrigian late modernist who died recently. (And a bit about his close contemporary, Geoffrey Hill.)

Israel bombs Beirut again, in line with its standard definition of “ceasefire” in which it fires whenever it wants to while the other sides stops firing. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...

Pierre Guyotat's Idiocy is different from his "language texts" ("by comparison, a breeze to read") but remains a "protest against the horrors of colonialism, capitalism and the violence we inflict on nature and those we deem Other." Reviewed in @stingingfly.bsky.social by John Christopher Vaughan.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Pettiness beyond all reason, while Farage and his ilk sail on through massive scandals.

It gets weirder by the day. Here, a health secretary whose policies directly undermine children's health rambles on about physical fitness for military service in front of a POTUS who got exempted as unfit and now appears to be virtually catatonic.

What the hell www.newyorker.com/culture/prog...

‘The men and women who composed in the Middle Ages are usually anonymous, and their compositions are likely to be based on mathematical conceits no one could possibly follow in performance. You will hardly ever hear them in a concert hall.’ Peter Phillips: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I’m not sure there is anywhere left to go after this headline. Words fail me.

A roundup of the key US stories that received less attention over the last week, from attacking enemies to spreading lies to corruption. youtu.be/bDHO03znwV4

Paywall down for the week @prospectmagazine.co.uk if you're interested in pieces by me on John Ashbery, W.H. Auden, Glen Baxter, Raymond Briggs, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Lee Seong-bok, Poets Laureate, J.H. Prynne, Sam Riviere, Richard Siken and Stevie Smith www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/author/3551/...

This now exists. Available soon, from all good bookshops. Available now on pre-order, from all good bookshops. @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social

'Ryūnosuke Akutagawa had literary beef with Junichirō Tanizaki.' I review a new collection of Akutagawa's writing, 'Hell of Solitude' here: www.3ammagazine.com/3am/hell-of-...

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the answer to this is "No."

Is nobody is immune to Frank O'Hara's charms? Here he is allowing the late great J H Prynne to talk seriously about pleasure & fun – and the place of these, with misery & terror, in the dialectical work of poetry: 'the pursuit of fun was a fragile affair... your friends kept falling by the wayside'.

I wrote about what it's like to read the poetry of J.H. Prynne

Great poem, this, by J H Prynne, who passed away this week. Always gets fascinating responses from students.

Editor of Snow lit rev Anthony Barnett (abar.net/snow.pdf) will be at the @poetrysociety.bsky.social’s Free Verse poetry fair in London this Saturday: poetrysociety.org.uk/news/free-ve... Do go and have a look at his wonderful magazine. Here’s a little about him: www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/anth...

We are immensely saddened by news of the death of the poet J.H. Prynne, aged 89. Prynne was Britain's leading late Modernist poet. Bloodaxe has been proud to publish his poetry since 1999. Our tribute is below. www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?article...

Keston Sutherland on Prynne in the eternally-riveting Glossator, which devoted an entire issue to Prynne as well as publishing his Tintern essay. glossator.org/wp-content/u...

‘Prynne’s writing is not impersonal; it is constantly and urgently concerned with questions of personal agency and presence, and with the natural, political and social environments these are involved with or alienated from.’ Patrick McGuinness (@padrig.bsky.social): www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v2...

Very sorry to hear that the poet J.H. Prynne has died, at the age of 89. Here, from 10 years ago, is my attempt to describe the man and the work

Standing by the window I heard it, while waiting for the turn. In hot light and chill air it was the crossing flow of even life, hurt in the mouth but exhausted with passion and joy - RIP J.H. Prynne

It is beyond belief that the UK government is speaking to these people with a view to entrusting them with sensitive data. This is a very handy overview of why that is madness.

God’s angels, they’re analogous to the maggots in this here cheese, you see… i joke, but this is a great book by a great writer

‘Compact yet thought provoking ... It is heartening that at least one publisher in the English-speaking world has decided to mark the centenary of Bachmann’s birth this year.’ @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social A wonderful review of The Threshold and the Ledger by Tom McCarthy: buff.ly/8c8Z9rF

My essay for the 4K release of TROUBLE IN PARADISE—Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece—is up at the @criterion.bsky.social website. www.criterion.com/current/post...

A fantastic essay on THE ENDLESS WEEK by Laura Vazquez (translated by Alex Niemi): "I doubt there will be many novels published in the near future that will work this powerfully on our language—and so on our sense of ourselves and our world." zonamotel.substack.com/p/review-the...

have you seen AI Perec?

I wrote about the piece on Ágota Kristóf in the new issue of the LRB: sonofabook.blogspot.com/2026/04/agot...

“Israeli strike kills infant girl in south Lebanon during father’s funeral” — headline that tells you all you need to know about Israel’s war on Lebanon

"The Universal Baseball Association is part of the great American postmodern canon. Come and play." Good literary criticism here.

“Enrigue’s books, of course, are never straightforward historical fiction. They’re percussive experiments…” Anderson Tepper profiles Álvaro Enrigue.

I just read that Glen Baxter has died. His books, including Impending Gleam and Jodhpurs in the Quantocks were a big influence on me. I was into him pre-Gary Larson. A great British absurdist in the tradition of Vivian Stanshall.

On his birthday, remembering Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997). A regular in my reading ever since I read Closely Watched Trains and Too Loud a Solitude two decades ago.

Faber is marking twenty years since the death of John McGahern with a revitalising year of publishing to introduce one of Ireland’s greatest novelists to a new generation. thebookseller.com/news/faber-m...