New Sponge Day.

I will be launching my book The General at Peter Barlow's Cigarette, date TBC. Here's a li'l vid until then. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZAX...

Kids' books can be a challenge for the older dad.

Peter Barlow’s Cigarette number fifty-odd. Saw Ansgar Allen and Kate Feld, had to skedaddle for a two-year old’s bedtime. Ansgar read a tract by an anonymous author on 'the Vice Chancellor' and Kate new work about negotiating lockdown as a single mum. Pictured here, Tim Allen talking to some chairs.

reading, PBC #51 Sat, from THE TONGUE MACHINE & the other one (photo by @stevehanson.bsky.social - thanks to the organisers)

"Come friendly bombs" etc.

Out into the world it goes!

Thank you to Erratum Press for the work they put into this book. I'll be launching it officially and reading from it at the launch, date TBC.

Here's the link: www.erratumpress.com/the-general

I've posted an extracts from The General on my Substack. If you could order a copy of the book it would really help a great independent press, Erratum in Sheffield. The extract is my exploded letter to Yddub, or JD Vance. The link to order will follow: bittertonic.substack.com/p/the-genera...

Posting The General to the National Poetry Library on the South Bank. They've been taking my work since the two volumes of SING. I don't think of myself as 'a poet' but an experimental writer.

Hesgeth's a big fucking fart.

The first verdict on The General is in, from Scott Thurston: 'As fierce and uncompromising as ever' he says. If you could order a copy it would help a very innovative small press survive, they are run on shoestring budgets and enthusiasm. Here's the link: www.erratumpress.com/the-general

PBC. Ansgar Allen's reading is going to be very interesting... GO!

This is what a care package from Shane Moritz looks like. I particularly liked the box this time, done up like a bit of textured wallpaper partition with some skirting at the bottom.

A link where you can buy the new book might be useful too. Self-promotion is not a natural skill for me! www.erratumpress.com/the-general

You can still get copies of Proceedings from the mighty Knives Forks and Spoons Press, click on the link here. Cover art for that book came from some pieces I made as part of a group show at Castlefield Gallery in... 1687. www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/product-page...

Cover painting by my old colleague Dick Chappell and opening quote by Keith Kahn-Harris. These two things focused what was up to that point a sprawling text. There's a bluesky post here explaining it a little more. bittertonic.substack.com/p/the-general

Wonderful to receive copies of The General today, a sort-of follow-up to my Proceedings of 2021. Erratum Press are a great publisher, a joy to work with at every stage, and they do work with you. The books look great, Dick Chappell's cover painting reproduced beautifully @erratumpress.bsky.social

Maybe The Donald can regime change himself? "My patience with this Trump guy is wearing thin, the ships are turning around now, god bluss ah-murka."

@nightingalesuk.bsky.social Great gig at The Trades! Love the 5-piece lineup. Tight, no space between songs, no encore, bang bang bang, perfect! Also papped yr aftershow weave past us, and Hebden Post Office...

I can no longer look at this without seeing a postmodern spoof.

Lovely to see Matt Goodwin choke on his own sense of entitlement as an actual working-class candidate takes the seat he assumed was his. The empty prophet, the morbid symptom of the digital age, the anti-migrant sentiment stoker, your self-awarded role as tribune is wearing toga-thin. Fuckety-bye.

'The erg was a sea of dunes, waves upon waves.'

'On Arrakis, shadows were life’s only shelter from the killing sun' backslash margarine consolidation news.

My Substack is out. A longer piece this time, pushing at something else. bittertonic.substack.com/p/farewell-t...

Mandy Mandy Mandy, how delicious your downfall + MMU's knee-chewing statements distancing themselves from their former Chancellor are pure entertainment too: an institution that's a damp cardboard diorama with drawn-on Doric columns, covering over a kind of intellectual doss house. Fuckety-bye.

@keithkahnharris.bsky.social Doctor KKH, I reacted to one of your posts (over at 'the other place' in 2024) by barfing up a whole book, which found a publisher (Erratum). I explain this in a substack post (thought you might want to know). bittertonic.substack.com/p/the-general

Here's a substack post which provides a little more context about my new book, The General. bittertonic.substack.com/p/the-general

Here it comes, on the same lane but in the opposite direction, A REPUBLIC.

My Substack is out! Give me a follow if you like it. bittertonic.substack.com/p/doing-it-f...

Thrilled to see this book of mine coming out via the wonderful Erratum Press, a joy to work with. A cathartic blast from behind the pram, a speak-to-text hexing of the arsehole pretend gods currently strutting around the debating chambers. Get yourself one, take its ride, feel a tiny bit better.

Fuckety-bye.

My Substack is out: bittertonic.substack.com/p/apocalypso

Peter gives up Labour Party membership as though the time is right, when there he was pissing against George Osborne's wall after a jolly at his house - and both on Deripaska's yacht in Corfu. Yet ordinary Labour members were suspended, blocked, punished by the Starmerism that hired Peter.

The former prince was known as Randy Andy in the 80s. Spitting Image made a satire centrefold of him reclining with a string of sausages between his legs, and a single B-side called 'Just A Prince Who Can't Say No' (look up the lyrics). This was 1984.

All these faux statements of shock. Most people I knew when working at MMU didn't like that Mandelson the snake was at the top. Everyone knew he was 'of the night.' Are you telling me management had no idea? Starmer saying 'ooh he lied I'm so shocked.' Nobody else is.

Maybe even he should have bought a bungalow.

The times are bleak but the fall of Peter Mandelson is delicious. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Goodnight.

My Substack is out: bittertonic.substack.com/p/digital-shit

Farage the great pro-British interests patriot and anti-globalist anti-Davos stalwart goes to Davos to advise Iranian. I don't particularly care, but I assume the chest-beating reformist I'm not racist buts should. Or is he just an old fashioned hypocrite having them for useful idiots? Answer = yes.

My Substack is out, I'll be posting on Fridays and the odd thing in-between. Give me a follow if you're interested in what you read: substack.com/home/post/p-...

I feel the need to get some new boots in the cupboard, because the King of Denmark is about to bollock Trump and prices prices prices. Is it the 19th Century now? Or maybe the 18th? The 17th?

I've been umming and arring about Substack. Finally done it, all follows welcome: bittertonic.substack.com/p/confuse-an...

As I said four months ago, total waste of time.

Neoreactionary architecture.

Farage will sell your grandmother for £100. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

JD Vance, I've decided that Pennsylvania is essential to my interests. I'm sure you'll enjoy telling Governor Shapiro and entourage to fuck off for me before I move my tatty old stuff in then declare it Hannsylvania. What do you mean no? I thought you would admire my world spirit on horseback style.