An #Otwituary for #BrigitteBardot I was in love with the idea of a woman, a creation in medium shot, half insoluble, half incendiary. Eventually, the camera caught her in close-up, a picture of disfigurement I once mistook for beauty.

Fancy a Christmas #DoubleDactyl? Here’s a Junior Choice from Penny Campbell, for whom the head of the herd is calling…

Transmission 40 from #ProjectAbeona is a Christmas poem. It comes via a FedEx SoLar pilot and is beamed back to us from 2080. projectabeonapoetry.substack.com/p/transmissi...

#DoubleDactyl of the Week is a Beethoven double-header. Moonlighting on this one is Nicola Billington and some other guy…

An #Otwituary for musician #ChrisRea Just when I thought the song was over, a voice like a bank of smog rolled in, fogging the road with a grey wisdom, a melody it would be so easy to ignore, driving us where we hope to follow.

#DoubleDactyl of the Week is from Alice Meynell, who may have met her Waterloo. Oh, sorry, wrong General!

An #Otwituary for playwright and scriptwriter #JohnAntrobus It took two minutes twenty-eight seconds to write this. Hardly a big job; the time it takes to annihilate an absurd world with a sight gag or a joke from a show we assumed someone else had written.

An #Otwituary for TV’s #BuckRogers actor #GilGerard We thawed out at the same moment: you from the bliss of cryogenic slumber, into a universe of cut-price skywalkers; I into too much reality, too many earthbound futures, unwinnable battles, unkissable Princesses.

#OneDrop Sixteen - #reggae poetry and culture - encourages you to skank close to the one you love and listen to some #LoversRock. Poems from Jo Gilbert and John McMahon, plus a whole host of interesting links to performances... onedroppoetry.substack.com/p/one-drop-s...

An #Otwituary for actor and director #RobReiner Met a guy at the Electric Banana who offered me a part in his movie; maybe waiting tables, an extra in a courtroom scene, a lonely novelist. I asked what he wanted from me; I want answers, he said. I want truth.

An #Otwituary for novelist #JoannaTrollope We are all middlebrow now, in thrall to he said she said, the touchable worlds of love, whether imagined or illicit, or sometimes even true. Someone should write this down; we may be touched by the significance of small things.

An #Otwituary for entertainer #StanleyBaxter Welcome to the extravaganza; Hollywood in a Glasgow studio, a man with a thousand voices, none of them his own, and yet all of them. Parliamo Tinseltown, parliamo the lingua franca of joy.

Transmission #39 from Project Abeona (poems from a plausible future) is beamed in via Andrew J Wilson. projectabeonapoetry.substack.com/p/transmissi...

An #Otwituary for novelist #SophieKinsella A book is the best way to travel; a paperback is a seat in First Class, a gold card. Live a life you could never afford, where nothing is perfect but everything balances at the turn of a final page.

An #Otwituary for #Mavericks frontman #RaulMalo Wind lifts the tin roof on a forgotten cantina down by the border. A couple dance by the jukebox. A voice like añejo carries over the desert; please let her know that I’m well.

#OneDrop Fifteen looks at #reggae covers and sample culture - with a great poem from Dickson Telfer onedroppoetry.substack.com/p/one-drop-f...

#DoubleDactyl of the Week is from Jim Lindop, who can definitelt tell his Arias from his elbow...

An #Otwituary for architect #FrankGehry What if we could make our buildings dance, screw them up like rejected blueprints, fold their planes into curves and corrugations? It might be possible to twist dreams inside out, and turn these meditations into a metropolis.

An #Otwituary for #Stax guitar legend #SteveCropper They put a band together for you - guitar, bass, drums, keys - tight, and sharp, all the right moves, like thunder, lightning, all new licks made entirely out of light by the Colonel of the groove.

Just under a week to go till we launch the Eco Sonnet Chain - if you're interested in coming (and I hope you are!) we'll send you a Zoom link...please message me!

#OneDrop Fourteen returns to #Ska - and who better than to exemplify that sound but #PrinceBuster? Check out the poem by Keiron Lee Higgins plus some dutty lyrics from the King of Ska in his infamous Ten Commandments. onedroppoetry.substack.com/p/one-drop-f...

An #Otwituary for #WestHamUnited footballer #BillyBonds There is a factory by the Thames where men are wrought from iron, a number branded into their back, a dream of Saturday beaten into a breastplate with an old hammer.

@cerysmatthews.bsky.social thanks for sharing Chuck…you’re very kind!

@cerysmatthews.bsky.social also in support of your tribute today!

An #Otwituary for #StoneRoses bassist Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield #Mani You lived at ground zero, where the sound of a city drowned out every other song in the world, where a bassline could crumble suburbs to dust, and to survive meant you were made of stone.

@cerysmatthews.bsky.social in support of your tribute this morning!

An #Otwituary for playwright and screenwriter #TomStoppard There is nothing as dramatic as an idea; who will speak it? Who will speak against it? Who will be changed by it? The idea sleeps in the pen of its writer, and only awakens when it is time to be spoken.

For lovers of strong words and poetry with something to say, it's no.3 in #WhalebackCityPress 's sonnet chain pamphlets. Available from the WCP website, along with very limited copies of the previous two sonnet chains, 'Peace' and 'Strike' whalebackcitypress.co.uk/shop/

Whaleback City Press brings you the third in our series of #SonnetChain pamphlets. Join us online via Zoom at 7.30pm on December 10th (link to follow nearer the event) as we present poems from Eco Sonnets with a team of fabulous poets. More details here: fb.me/e/3FTrdqEVS

An #Otwituary for fashion designer #PamHogg This season we’re all in catsuits, stitched from skins of dead punks and supermodels, bought from a boutique on a dead-end street. We know style moves on; till then we’ll wear our art on our sleeves.

Transmission 38 from #ProjectAbeona sees what's left of the animals go in two-by-two. This transmission beamed in via M. Frost projectabeonapoetry.substack.com

#OneDrop Thirteen features a tense yet tender poem of motherhood from Katharine Macfarlane plus some context and music from the late #JimmyCliff, pioneer of the #reggae sound. onedroppoetry.substack.com/p/one-drop-t...

An #Otwituary for the first #reggae superstar, #JimmyCliff Sit tight and listen keenly; a sweet sound from the yard, neither dread nor dancehall, the sound of the flowing river we all must cross someday.

#DoubleDactyl of the Week is from Sharon Larkin, and is mercifully shorter than the novel that inspires it…

An #Otwituary for #StoneRoses bassist Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield #Mani You lived at ground zero, where the sound of a city drowned out every other song in the world, where a bassline could crumble suburbs to dust, and to survive meant you were made of stone.

#OneDrop Twelve features #BobMarley's influence on Jamaican politics in the 1970s - a poem from Geoffrey Philp and some other paraphernalia exploring Marley's political side. onedroppoetry.substack.com/p/one-drop-t...

#DoubleDactyl of the Week comes once more from the cultured pen of Christopher Reid...

#DoubleDactyl of the Week comes from Matthew Craig-Greene, and was a bit of a b*stard to write, apparently.

#OneDrop Eleven is on the mic, featuring #reggae MC U-Roy and the poetry of Hannah Lowe... onedroppoetry.substack.com/p/one-drop-e...

An #Otwituary for #JamesWatson, co-discoverer of the #DoubleHelix Science is a poem without rules, a solution to a twisted conundrum. Inside this poem are the molecules which make up every other poem, written, forgotten and yet to come.

An #Otwituary for actor #PaulineCollins Take this role as a gift in two acts, your audience willing you to risk what they never could. Leave them with those lines ringing: why do we get all this life if we don’t use it?

Transmission 37 from #ProjectAbeona is beamed in via Freya Sacksen in a decaying orbit with only plants for company...

An #Otwituary for actor #DianeLadd I saw you rouged in a dead man’s gore. I saw you work the diner. I saw the silence in your eyes fueling that barbed kindness, and though you don’t live there anymore, still I can never rinse away that wildness.

#OneDrop Ten is here. The 10th in Stephen Watt and Andy Jackson's series of poetic and musical celebrations of #reggae. This week's poem is a history lesson from Nick Toczek. Also, some serious Dub from Augustus Pablo and The Aggrovators/King Tubby. onedroppoetry.substack.com/p/one-drop-ten

Double Dactyl of the Week is a masterpiece of design from the sarky pen of Sian Lang We've been publishing these for nearly three years - take a look at our archive here! doubledactyls.wordpress.com/double-dacty...

Bitesize Book Club Dundee - starts on November 12th, but you still have until Friday 7th to reserve a place! A Book Club with no homework - just the pleasure of a stress-free weekly read of something stimulating and rewarding. Details in the link below! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bitesize-b...

An #Otwituary for actor #TchekyKaryo I am the prince of melancholy, my face an unchanging moon, my voice like low tide. There is drama in my stillness. You think you know what I’m thinking? You will know when I tell you.

An #Otwituary for film-maker #PeterWatkins The content of this Otwituary has been judged to be too horrifying for social media; no firestorms burning through Home Counties, no fallout, no looters shot on the street, only this nightmare, filmed as truth.

An #Otwituary for #FawltyTowers actor #PrunellaScales I hear a laugh from another room, the sound of Medusa cross-bred with a hyena. To see her up close is to step closer to death; death by stare, by word, by comic gelding.

Still time to get your tickets for this event at Glasgow's @AyeWrite festival on Friday 7th November - Bill Herbert and myself with some fantastic poetry! Just £6.72 for an evening's entertainment... www.glasgowlife.org.uk/event/1/word...