There will be no shelter here tonight, only the long road to the land of strangers. Every house will be stripped and every roof caved in, as each man, woman, and child is made to bear on their back the sum of a life. A poem by Tarn MacArthur (@tarnnation.bsky.social). www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This place was never yours, they’ll say, though years from now as she steps from factory floor to city street, the winter haar pouring in, muting the world, effacing everything, it’s here that she’ll be A poem by @tarnnation.bsky.social. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

There will be no shelter here tonight, only the long road to the land of strangers. Every house will be stripped and every roof caved in, as each man, woman, and child is made to bear on their back the sum of a life. A poem by Tarn MacArthur (@tarnnation.bsky.social). www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Please go and have a read of a new poem I wrote after visiting and researching the township of Aoineadh Mòr in Lochaber. The narrative is based on a true story of a woman whose family were evicted during the Clearances and settled in Edinburgh.

Poems by @tricialockwood.bsky.social and Tarn MacArthur (@tarnnation.bsky.social
) and a cover by Dror Cohen. Read now at www.lrb.co.uk

Very excited to have a new poem in the @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

My review of Solie's latest: The Water in These Poems May Be Poisoned, but Beauty Persists www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/b...

Standing in passport line in Nice airport and a French woman goes, “I’m not a fan of the British for many things but they’d never behave like this in a queue.”

Well done Scotland, zero reform constituency wins! Let’s hope they underperform in the lists now.

What a pleasure to find myself holding forth on Scottish poetry in the new issue of the New York Review of Books. Many thanks to Jana Prikryl and the Review for extending me the hospitality of their pages. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

My PIC! Long road to this moment. Buzzing for her! www.faber.co.uk/journal/fabe...

Omen? Saltire above Murrayfield!

What. The. Fuck.

Thank you, Laura Ballarín Cereza, Member of the European Parliament. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

via @theguardian.com

“In the meantime, the Met police said they would stop arresting people immediately for showing support for Palestine Action after the high court ruling but would gather evidence for potential future prosecution.” So so so scummy.

Love all the chat from the likes of Campbell and Stewart, along the lines of “we’ll say one thing for Corbyn, he had the moral standards to recognize Mandelson was bad and get him out”. As if moral standards shouldn’t be the first point of politics?! 🤦 They tell on themselves so much it’s not funny.

In Manchester working. In London outside his mansion with his sports car that is worth more than your house. It is obvious which you should vote for.

Absolutely butchered this.

Remembering Michael Longley, who sadly passed away a year ago today.

Good to see the Observer featuring new poetry. Today it's my 'Mineral'.

Great teasers from the new journal Free Bloody Birds’ forthcoming second issue, w/ a poem by Muldoon and essay on MacNeice from @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk maestro John Clegg. www.freebloodybirds.com/issue-two/

Good afternoon from Skye.

Mick Imlah on the great Gordon Brown.

My debut book of poems is out this year in March, or thereabouts, from @DiodeBlue. Here's a sample.

Tomorrow marks 12 years since my father’s sudden death. A lot of my work has been influenced by that loss, but this poem perhaps addresses the daily feeling of it most directly. Happy New Year!

A spill of yew like Christ’s blood in the snow; and somewhere in the hedge, just yards away, a fleck of presence waiting to be born… —John Burnside, “Nativity” published in RUIN, BLOSSOM (Penguin, 2024) #poem #poetry #Christmas www.penguin.co.uk/books/456120...

According to J. Carmichael Watson, the #Gaelic poet Màiri nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (Mary MacLeod, c.1615–c.1707), was buried face-down at her own request: “She directed that she should be placed face downward in the grave – ‘beul nam breug a chur foidhpe’” (with her lying mouth down) #WyrdWednesday

All the organisation and decision making of last week seems to have disappeared quite quickly here. The the first 20 last week were quite poor as well, but trying to turn momentum away from home without some of your top players going to be a lot tougher.

Warriors, what a win!

Can’t believe they’re flogging AI with “omg it taught me how to cook this amazing dish”… you mean like a recipe, like one of the oldest recorded forms of writing in human history?

This is one of the best performances I’ve seen from an Edinburgh ten in years.

Name a more iconic combo than Scottish backs and not passing on a 2 on 1.

And I say again … how will they enforce this?!? Do trans women have two heads? Will there be people there to ‘denounce’ anyone who - subjectively - ‘looks a bit too much like a ‘fella’’?!? The sheer crassness of it …

Was there any coverage of the recent record warmth in both the Arctic and Antarctic? Multiple global datasets now confirm these records, and I think it's really quite striking. Here's some very quick plots showing NOAAGlobalTempv6 data from October too. And see my earlier posts.

This is exactly what I said would happen when I analysed the NHS 10 year plan. Clever words are hiding the reality-people are agitating to pull as many services out of hospitals as possible. Why? Because it’s a lot easier to privatise services that way🚨 www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Oooommmmmfffffgggggggg!!! #ScoDen

Smoke in the woods like someone walking in a silent film beside the tracks… —John Burnside, “Signal Stop, Near Horsley” published in SELECTED POEMS (Cape, 2006) #poem #poetry www.penguin.co.uk/books/389400...

I don't do this so much these days but a poem for a Sunday. Leaves by Derek Mahon, from this beautiful book.

Toonie needs to go. Blame Finn as the easy way out but no team meltdowns like that if they’re coached well. #scoarg

You can’t have this much lack of mobility at the back and expect to win against such a fluid counter attack. Defense is all over the shop. #GRESCO

These are some quite heartbreaking stories and, as Holly Greenberry-Pullen comments in the piece, really illustrates the perverse absurdity of deeming trans teens to young to even get blockers but being fine with intersex kids getting horrifically drastic full-on bodily surgery as *toddlers*.

A cracking Declan Ryan poem in the new @newyorker.com issue: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

A contemporary great!

The UK has donated £7.5m in emergency funding to Jamaica. Kylian Mbappé has donated £20m. Wtf is wrong with this country?

When I worked in WaPo Opinions in 2017-2018, senior editors specifically told junior editors not to factcheck Marc Thiessen and other MAGA columnists, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to publish anything by them at all, and “we need them for intellectual diversity.”

"Is the Nazi MP who says she's driven mad by TV adverts full of Jews a racist or realist? How many people of Jewish heritage would the German National People’s Party expel? And should Germany be selling tanks to Yugoslavia?" Join LIVE from the Weimar Republic in the year 1931 🇩🇪

Today's column is about the government's huge, unprecedented assault on nature ... and about the eerie, astonishing silence of the big nature groups. The RSPB, National Trust, Wildlife Trusts have 7.5m members between them. A vast force, completely unmobilised. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...