🪡’Unpick me old, spin me a yarn worthy of queer…’ 😮 extraordinary things happen across Rachel Mann’s poems, where trans self-realisation and spiritual transformation blend together, and words are stitched and re-stitched in dizzying display. 👏 another challenge to be sure, but worth it.

😊 well ain’t that a fun bit of news to wake up to…

🤔 strange to take a rest day that includes being haunted from two directions at once… but then I think it fits. As the Eve of All Hallows goes into All Saints Day, so Ella Hickson’s ‘Oedipus’ goes into Jay Bernard’s still-haunting ‘Surge’. 🙏 if there is such a thing as ‘the communion of saints’…

🎃 there are definitely worse ways of dealing with that old end-of-October pumpkin surplus! 😋 many thanks ManCandy for a first-rate evening of merry-making and gourd-based gladiatorship!

✊now *this* one is a beauty - quite proud that one of my poems found its way into this handsome pamphlet with some very venerable company! 🙏 thank you @janinebooth.bsky.social for allowing me a poem, and Harry Wyld for the excellent illustrations!

💚’@greenparty.org.uk are a small environmentalist party transforming into a mass party of the left.’ And now my favourite magazine has picked it up for their blog! There are real challenges ahead. But I am so excited about how we meet them. join.greenparty.org.uk www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

🌕 so my wife has never seen ‘Wallace & Gromit’ before, and in the process of introducing her to this cherished national institution and pillar of my childhood, we just happen to have come to… well… 🎃 #HappyHalloween all!

⚖️ rights are alarmingly fragile things, no less so for being absolutely essential. ✊now more than ever, we need defenders of our precious liberties. I am privileged to stand with them.

🎭 night at the Wyndham for a date went rather well! 😁 so yes, the play might as well have been called ‘Hot Renaissance Drama That F***s’ but however fast and loose it gets with the history, especially towards the end, it is a lot of fun, especially for my kind of drama nerd.

😳 stunning dereliction of duty from Labour, over 300 MPs were absent for a vote to take us out of the European Convention on Human Rights. ✍️ it is worth writing to your MP and making a stink about this. We need parliamentary representatives who will actually be prepared to defend our rights.

🙌 the Green Surge continues! 💚 there are exciting things happening in my Party at the moment - you want in? join.greenparty.org.uk

‘Arguments carry better when they shoot.’ 😏 treat the rise of fascism as the antics of a bunch of criminal chancers and their craven allies, first farcical and then blood-soaked, and the results are sometimes uneven, but still grimly compelling. ✊ a timely reminder that one must always resist.

😊 I don’t get too many opportunities to just relax these days. So when a window opens… ☕️ creature comforts are all assembled, time for me to indulge my inner hobbit and get cozy for a minute. #reading #metime

Something extraordinary is happening. +6000 new members in ONE SINGLE day. @greenparty.org.uk just hit 130,000 members and rising!!! Join.greenparty.org.uk

‘And what right has any man to say there is sufficiency of dreaming?’ 📖 I first saw this play in 2012 with Oliver Ford Davies as Andrewes and Stephen Boxer as Tyndale. Witty, intense, even devastating… it may even be better than I remember it.

😊 and here was me thinking it would be the end of the year before we pulled this off… 💚 be part of a movement for real hope and real change. join.greenparty.org.uk

🪓’It isn’t difficult to keep alive friends… just don’t make trouble - or if you must… make the sort of trouble that’s expected.’ 👏 I didn’t expect a play that debuted in 1960 to still be as witty, penetrating and politically razor-sharp as ‘A Man For All Seasons’ certainly is - a pleasant surprise!

🐍’When the krait strikes but does not loose / his venom: dry bite.’ 😊 there is a peculiarly American going-together of straightforwardness and strangeness which, even when I find it a bit folksy for my taste, makes Thomas Lux in particular such a charming poet to return to after many years.

👏 we did it gang - 100,000 members! 💚 it’s a giant milestone for @greenparty.org.uk - but it doesn’t stop here. 🗳️ for those who have joined, welcome - let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work. Those yet to join… everyone’s doing it! join.greenparty.org.uk

☀️ lovely day for a leaflet! 💚 felt good to be back on the street today with @newhamgreens.bsky.social for some Old Fashioned Door-to-Door work, complete with an Old Fashioned Spatula for tricky letterbox insertion (and anti-dog protection!) ✊ we have the wind at our back! join.greenparty.org.uk

🤯 ye giddy gods! We’re within 5k of breaking six figures! 💚 people - the progressive momentum is with @greenparty.org.uk - you know you want to! join.greenparty.org.uk

Not only are we at record numbers of members and growing every day - this is our highest ever poll rating. We're just getting started. This is the politics of the 99% Vs the 1% for a country we can all afford to live in - plenty of room to grow. Join.greenparty.org.uk

‘But if there are words, there is no death.’ 🙏 very glad I picked this up at #gpconf from the @feministgreens.bsky.social stall - Victoria Mackenzie has written a very slim book in which there is a quiet, thrilling power, not unlike the work of the medieval mystics who inspire her.

I'm never actually going to need to write another comment piece again am I? The right wing shit rags are just going to keep recruiting for us. Folks - want a better country? Join.greenparty.org.uk

90,000 members and still surging. Be part of it: join.greenparty.org.uk

🤩 blimey O’Reilly! ✊Alright, let’s crack 100k before the end of this month - we can do it! 👇If you’re looking for a progressive party that’s already *had* a successful Autumn Conference and passed a bunch of amazing policies - you know what to do. join.greenparty.org.uk

🍺 #gpconf is over - time to celebrate! 💚 things have happened this year that knocked me off course - but being with @greenparty.org.uk members this weekend has brought me back. Let’s do this folks.

🏳️‍⚧️ that’s how we do in @greenparty.org.uk - members make policy, members vote on policy, and on occasion we have basically no difficulty in passing it because it’s just that good! Massive love to @kailajay.bsky.social for their stonking achievement today!

And @kailajay.bsky.social spoke so brilliantly. A very emotional conference moment. 🏳️‍⚧️ 💚 #GPConf

🇵🇸 took some time today to head down to the beach at Bournemouth and be a part of the Red Line For Palestine event at @greenparty.org.uk conference. ✊let the call continue to go out to stop the genocide in Gaza, stop selling arms to Israel and sanction its government - again and again, until peace.

After a panel on ‘Attacks on Protest’ today at @greenparty.org.uk conference, chaired by @carolinelucas.bsky.social, I was reminded of this. You don’t have to support Palestine Action to think its proscription was a travesty. Sign and defend the right to protest. www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/end-...

👏 @zackpolanski.bsky.social raised the roof on day 1 of @greenparty.org.uk conference in Bournemouth. 💚 I had a reminder today of what got me into Green politics in the first place. Climate justice also means economic, social and racial justice, and in this room is a movement to make it happen.

Barnstorming speech from @zackpolanski.bsky.social properly addressing the horrific division in our politics and calling for kindness in the way we do our work. “Let’s look after each other, the Green Party’s time is now, we’re ready, let’s go! “ #GPConf

👏 the man is non-stop… join.greenparty.org.uk

😁 @zackpolanski.bsky.social front and centre in Bournemouth - makes sense! 💚 you can feel the energy this morning at @greenparty.org.uk conference - let’s pick up an agenda and get cracking! #gpconf

🌊’I could dive down. / I could paint pictures. I could be a good person.’ 😌 read the poems of Freya Bantiff, including her National Poetry Competition-placing ‘God the Whale’, for the pods of illumination breaking their surfaces in wry serenity - and cherish the world to which they direct us.

So it’s #NationalPoetryDay In the same day the antisemitic attack in Manchester and news of the detaining of the members of the Sumud Flotilla bringing aid to Gaza have meant that I cannot really engage with this year’s chosen theme of ‘Play’. But here’s this. Take care - breathe, keep going.

🙃 ‘[W]hen your neighbour is going mad it is only reasonable to want to understand the source of their distress.’ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Glancing as O’Toole’s is at times, he is entertaining on the structures of English self-pity, and surely right that the farce of #Brexit must force a nation to know itself differently.

🎲 you’re pre-rolling some characters for a D&D session. You need names and you’re coming up with them at speed, ramming various words together as you do. ✍️ such that you don’t see until too late that your bard’s second name could be read either as ‘Far-Treader’ or ‘Fart-Reader’. 🤦‍♂️ #tabletoplife

🙏’Irrigators guide the water. Fletchers bend the arrow shaft. Wood the carpenters bend. Themselves the wise ones tame.’ - Dhp 80 ☸️ revisiting some of that Original Recipe Dhamma to start the week. #reading #dhamma

😁 we hit it - 80,000 MEMBERS PEOPLE!!! 💚 the wind is at @greenparty.org.uk’s back right now. And we are going to make it count! join.greenparty.org.uk

🥰 Final reminder that tomorrow (Sunday) is the biggest action day ever in the history of the Green Party. ⏳ Mayor of Hackney & local council elections in May. 💚 First timers especially welcome - no experience necessary! See you tomorrow! 🎉👇🏼 Https://actionnetwork.org/events/big-day-out-in-hackney/

‘I’m told what seems like joy / is often joy’ 👏 it is a pleasure to go back to this debut from @kavehakbar.bsky.social and find in it the same luminous hunger for life, so viscerally expressed, that has attracted me to their later poetry. A book to quench your thirst then excite it all over again.

We just hit 79,000 members of @greenparty.org.uk Big milestone coming... A bold vision to lower bills, bring water back into public ownership, protect our NHS and end the genocide in Gaza. Join.greenparty.org.uk

‘You can tell a lot about a society’s priorities by what it tries to protect itself from…. really I should say ‘a government’s priorities’.’ My piece in Solicitors Journal contrasting the treatment of Palestine Action and violent far-right movements. www.solicitorsjournal.com/sjarticle/wh...

The Government has recognised the state of Palestine but still intends to prevent councils divesting from complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza & their illegal occupation. On behalf of @newhamgreens.bsky.social I’ve asked @rokhsanafiaz.bsky.social to demand Government protect our right to divest.

‘Dismantling the edifice of race… is about fundamentally rewriting the way we think about human difference, to resist the urge to group people at all.’ 🖤 in a world turning scarily to racist myths, everyone needs to read Angela Saini. ✊ for all of us, the myth of ‘superior’ people must die.

I’ve written to Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper demanding urgent action to ensure the safety of the Global Sumud Flotilla. 52 boats carrying aid and peace activists to Gaza. The UK must act to assure their safety. Israel is committing a genocide. All eyes are on this flotilla.

Absurd. How little does this Government care about the climate? Squeezing out 100k more flights a year won’t improve people’s daily lives. Investing in a growing green economy to lower bills, create high-paid jobs and cut deadly air pollution will! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The Green Party now has 78,000 members. Thats 10,000+ new members this month alone who want to draw the line. I know there are so many more people who want to take a stand. Join us: join.greenparty.org.uk