More fun with children. Eldest: What’s the book about? Me: Well, its been a while since I’ve read this one, so I’ve lost track of who’s sleeping with who. Eldest: Is it all cheating? Me: Pretty much. Eldest: [A hard stare] Me: Yes, I learned another language to read more trash, ok?

The Man: So, your friend’s coming over tomorrow— what are you going to do? Play with your toys? Youngest child: Chaos.

It’s that time of the year when my kids ask if o can make the cool triangle cookies in normal flavours and the answer is no, I can’t.

I can’t say what I want without hurting myself even more, and there’s no one to say it to, so here’s another run at an old poem From 1932’s (Naye) Lider. I’ve probably posted it before. I still like it.

Ahhh, another stork sighting! I hope we get to introduce the kids to those weird-ass birds this summer. They are the best. So loud!

I’m going to tell you the truth — I had better tshirts and posters when I was a Joycean.

Today in poems — super sweet mother poems, also death. They may be the same thing.

Scene: Roughly 30 years ago. The Metro. Paris. Angelique, the super cool French guide: Do you know what else we call le Beaubourg? 16-year old me and friends in Paris in a sing-song chorus of bored French students: Le Centre Pompidou… Angelique: The big piece of *shit.*

I am still working pretty hard to parse an encounter from December where I met someone and we talked about our respective interests a bit. The person I was talking to said it sounded cool. Then their mother said ‘anyone else would think that was dead boring, but they’re interested in everyone’

I’m still finding sitting down and reading a book of poetry from cover to cover quite instructive. I know what’s going on elsewhere (the second, lesser known, part of Golem was written in the same period, for instance)

I will absolutely never understand the mentality that makes someone argue that one’s country isn’t being invaded by minority X but (gasp!) by minority Y!

So I guess I’m off into another book of poetry. You might as well just mainline it.

The coffee I made may or may not have been decaf. I am too ill to go make more. I suppose we will find out in a few hours.

Ok, so here’s the deal: I promise I will be good if I can have another film like Green Knight. I might even make you cookies if you can get me a green cape like Dev Patel’s.

Totally up for hearing all about the tigers in the cage of your heart. Who are…uh…(checks notes) throwing themselves on God and piercing His heart. That’s about where we are tonight, yes.

I was so disappointed when we took the kids to London and they had absolutely no connection with Baker Street. The first two places I went in London as an adult were Baker Street and Abbey Road. When we went to Switzerland, I went to Reichenbach Falls and nothing will ever beat that.

Part four is clearly where this book goes off into the weird and wonderful. Awesome, dreadful and wonderful, incidentally, all employed in their rather antique senses

I think my brain is mostly soup

I expect big things out of you snowbound Yiddish poets (special shout out to the Philly crowd)

My story, will be updated here: gillianbrockell.ghost.io/breaking-sha...

Peter Mandelson arrested now…🍿

I had the best chicken-foot slippers as a kid and I wish I had them now to dress for the job I want.

I didn’t much care for the recent ‘Frankenstein’ (it looked absolutely fabulous, though!) but was listening to the NYT interview with Del Toro and how he felt the book/story spoke to him as a lonely kid, with a heavily religious upbringing, who felt he had a lot of love to give.

I’ve gone from 1919’s ‘Lieder’ to 1932’s ‘(Naye) Lider’ (the title is given as both Lider and Naye Lider on the book) There’s a whole book of poems in the middle (In Keynems Land) and a whole spate of plays (Golem, Rags, Poor Kingdom, Different/Bankrupt, Shop, Hirsh Lekert, Chains)

Oh no, the music thingmie knows I am living on Neil Diamond at the moment.

I love the obsessives in every corner of the world, whether they be more mainstream or more niche. You want to memorise all of Berryman’s poem, watch all of Christopher Lee’s films, visit every state, own every Japanese Beatles’ bootleg? I salute you.

So part one of this book was great. Part two was iffy. Part three dragged and rang a bit hollow. Part four is great (and a bit iffy in places) but it’s building up to one of my (really long) favourites.

Just finished Sons and Daughters and my goodness, that was something. I will need to acquire more Grade, certainly.

I cannot tell you how much I am going to try to communicate in Germany this summer. The 12 year old still thinks I’m brilliant because I can roughly translate song titles for her until I get stuck on ‘Mond’ and yell at the word. Der Mond. As if.

Tha i fuar agus fliuch.

Had one of those nights/mornings peering at ‘דונקאן’ until it clicked that maybe it was Isadora Duncan after the Martha Graham the other day. And it was because she was married to Yesenin.

We live in a time of monsters and comic book villains.

Do not read טאטע-לעגענדע if you have unresolved father issues. Or do. I’m not the boss of you.

Sometimes I have mixed feelings about my needing to swear allegiance to the king. This is not, though, one of those times.

There’s a bit here about cutting into a cake that’s still warm in the centre, snuggling up in the warm when it’s quiet and snowy outside and looking at the stars. Not going to lie, this sounds like weekend plans.

I have finally arrived in Soviet Russia in 1925 after a disquieting time in Poland. No spoilers, I want to see how this all works out.

Being reminded today of the sheer uncertainty of doing serious health things in another language. For instance, like the time no French midwife would take me on for pre-birth classes because I wasn’t a native speaker.

This is the better Sacco and Vanzetti poem.

Todays poems: Bad shit is going down in New Jersey. As expected.

My partner can actually flip a pancake quite impressively.

Now I’m getting the blowback for not being thrilled with ’jokes’ made to my kids that I could have smothered them at birth.

Why the fuck am I like this?

A game of two halves. Tulips in a poem (rough, literal Englishing, but you get the picture)

In contrast to my famed lack of a sense of humour, lack of generosity and hatred for humanity, my brother is a very personable improv comedian.

Went to see Mary Queen of Scots last letter today — a lovely feature was that they translated it into Scots (it is in French) and had it available to listen to in Scots (her first language) French and English.

I usually joke about being in love or having an imaginary boyfriend, because how else can I describe something that fundamentally makes no sense at all. But I feel like that’s cheapened what it is I do. Anyway, have a poem.

Because I’m a shameless self-promoter, here’s the story of H. Leivick’s Bundist girlfriend again. She was arrested a few years after his visit to the Soviet Union — at around the time he had his first large falling out with Communism over the Hebron massacre in 1929 ingeveb.org/texts-and-tr...

I have somehow managed to do the opposite of the thing where you get a cat and people only give you cat-themed things. I am sincerely interested in….let’s call it ‘cat’...and people think this is some multi-year joke on my part rather than respecting I have a genuine six year investment in ’cat.’

I had to go all the ways into Glasgow and back to show my ID for five minutes and prove I exist. Trust me, mate, I wish I didn’t.

Ok, this has been weighing on my mind for a while… Is saying ‘the both of us’ rather than ‘both of us’ bad English?