I think pink contrails are pretty.

Goodnight, skyline. A song of you (a song of you) Comes as sweet and clear As moonlight through the pines

Running White Deer. County Wicklow, Ireland, 1967 Ph. Paul Caponigro

Who CAN deal with complicated formatting for chapbooks? I have something [beautiful but awkward]that wants to submit.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is showing from tonight at 10.10pm on BBC Four as part of John le Carré Night. Photo of Alec Guinness as George Smiley taken for a 1979 @radiotimes.bsky.social cover by John Timbers.

In for 2026: Moose Deer Other antlered beings Out for 2026: The REF Non-critical approaches to GenAI Lunchtime meetings In for 2026: Not being able to come to the internet Staying hydrated Brutal sincerity Out for 2026: Anythingcore People who don’t hold you up the way you hold them up Flirting

I met eyes with Elizabeth II at traffic lights / walked into Princess Diana in Boots on Kensington High Street

. . . . . They wished to bloom and to bloom is to be beautiful; but we want to ripen and that means being dark and taking pains. . . . . . Sie wollten blühn, und blühn ist schön sein; doch wir wollen reifen, und das heißt dunkel sein und sich bemühn. -Rilke

I think I might have cabin fever.

when the effort to leave someone alone is done consciously

I love this list

Available now - support yr DIY poet this season DM or mail for more info

The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I’d completely written this off as a silly novelty, yet opening my letter from last year, I’m surprisingly moved. I guess it works after all.

The new aesthetic was old hat the last two times.

What to do when one is utterly exhausted by and bewildered with and bored by one’s entire wardrobe (no matter how beautiful).

How I’m walking out of 2025.

Let the soft animal that is your body be hunted like prey by the hard animal that is someone hotters body

quiet studio / coffee / sleepy dog

Be nice to plot regional variations of these before they’re lost to ubiquitous ‘Mate’ ‘Pal’ etc forever. Round here (Huddersfield) the go to vocative was ‘Love’ from and to both (all?) genders. Still common with women. Rarer now for men esp man to man tho not yet obsolete. How about where you are?

I could get up, I guess. But the soft tendency to linger 🤷‍♀️

and at any moment / someone might fall in love with me I was / that woven into the electric / cold bright air (Heather Christle)

86. The CV of the great Annie Sprinkle, post-porn modernist and pioneer of ecosexuality #TabClosed2026

Volume 12 of Barthes Studies will be published on 12 November 2026 and will be a special issue on Le Plaisir du texte/The Pleasure of the Text, guest-edited by Bryan Counter. In 2027 there’ll be another guest-edited special issue (‘Global Barthes’) but we’re open to submissions for 2028 and beyond.

So, do these make me look like the pseudo-intellectual that I am?

Woke before dawn, scrabbling and biting, dreaming of my werewolfity; walked it off; spent the day in Cambridge with the always thought-provoking @badaude.bsky.social and finally home to find three salmon in the fridge. Will walk *that* off in due course.

A great monument has risen above the town.

My belated Christmas present for all of you. Do you know about this? Tap on the phone, and a random poem from somewhere in the world will be whispered into your ear. Hang up and dial again, and you never need to be alone. dial-a-poem.org

Goodnight, stargazers.

2025 achievements Did not resign from my job, which is a fucking miracle never mind a small achievemént. Protected my heart, which is the only currency i have. Did not act to mend a fractured friendship.

« I guess boys like your slut personality because it can’t be your face » RD, an absolute bitch c1990

Inhaling the sunshine like a spell while I can, holding it tight until Spring.

I pretty much post for the handful of mutuals I’ve had since forever on various platforms (and myself), and it makes me feel very queasy when anything breaks that containment.

"makes no difference to me -- the year ends or doesn't end" Issa Kobayashi (images: Kaii Higashiyama / Koson Ohara)

Goodnight, skyline, from this Christmas moon.

One thing I love about Christmas is listening to all the various critiques of our respective meals during the day’s calls.

Christmas morning stomp around the lake, home to panettone and hot chocolate.

Bonnes fêtes, skyline! Merry Christmas!

Goodnight, skyline, and Merry Christmas. Weave a darkness plush as molefur with my tongue [Monica Ferrell]

This is the 15th year of #DuvetKnowItsChristmas, which is preposterous. Rules: if you find yourself dealing with unusual / claustrophobic / gaudy sleeping arrangements this Christmas Eve, share a picture with the world. Use the hashtag (with capitalisation) and cc me if you can be bothered.

Christmas Eve girl dinner in front of a movie on the most chill Christmas ever. (It’s perfection).

Long nap. Toasty and ill-disciplined. Off the clock in every way. We’re having a very quiet Christmas and not racing off to Paris this year. I love it.

My whole summer of 2025

girl who is a library the longer she stays in a place, the more bookshelves, mysteriously populated, slip into being around her, never when you're looking

Good morning to the sky flush, and the heart flush and the thrill of your nerve-endings fluttering only.

Goodnight, skyline. Fox-wild, desire is a trap. Gretchen Marquette reminding me of what’s what

I do love a message that starts « carissima! » it just disposes me in your favour so much more than « hey »🤷‍♀️

Tomorrow evening it’ll be my annual duty to vaguely shepherd the activity on the #duvetknowitschristmas hashtag and urge people to give small sums to charity. 7.30pm? Something like that?

What I don’t like is plans. I like impromptu, seize-the-moment flights and the sudden. When things are planned out — as my life so often is because time/lack/competing priorities — I actually die inside. I yearn for the unschedule.

Today is for small domestic chores and lots of tea drinking. For once, I don’t have a deadline hanging over me, so I will abide in that state for a while.