Look what arrived today in sleepy, frosty Gloucestershire.

Bsky experiment! Here's Elizabeth Loudon (@esloudon.bsky.social) reading her poem “Renunciation” from our forthcoming issue Shō No. 8. You can also read the poem on our website: shopoetryjournal.com/elizabeth-lo... An earlier version of this poem appears in Best New Poets 2025.

BBC: "Photo appears to show Andrew laying across laps." No it doesn't. It shows him lying.

For really no reason I implore you to read this poem by Rachel Wetzsteon, published in 2002. www.thenation.com/article/arch...

So much done so swiftly here - grief, suspension, dailiness, wonder and terror, in the fourteen lines of a pared down sonnet. shopoetryjournal.com/robert-okaji...

Sometimes at dusk I walk around and look (ok snoop) through people's windows, after they turn on lights and before they close the curtains. This poem just out in the lovely Dawntreader (from @indigodreamspub.bsky.social) is in part about that - in part about heartache.

All year long I've given things up -- hopes, roles, dreams. This one hit hard. But out of it came this one poem. With thanks as always to @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social. shopoetryjournal.com/elizabeth-lo...

And thanks to Sho Poetry Journal from an ex American who will always love America for its wild poetry.

I've been on the board of Judith Dimant Productions (formerly Wayward Productions) for a while now and this new show is going to be a stomper. www.shittheatre.co.uk See you there?

Here I am, folks. I’m so glad this very personal poem landed safely with @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social. tinderboxpoetry.com/mine

I know spiderwebs are a dime a dozen and ditto photos of them, but look what the dog and I woke up to.

www.facebook.com/share/p/19C1... My friend Mark Mardell was chucked off his Turkish Airlines flight at the weekend because he had Parkinson’s and his son had asked for assistance for him. (He’s written about it as a public post on Facebook but the link is proving hard to share outside,)

Dear everybody out there - here's a new anthology of prize winning writing by carers, including a poem by me. The anthology officially launches on Wednesday November 12th: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-curae-.... Want to buy a copy for a carer? It's renardpress.com/books/the-cu....

A lovely gift for the caring reader?

So much hidden suffering for patients and their carers.

For a year or two I taught English to Ukrainian refugees, and several of them became close friends. They're scattered now, some back to Ukraine, some across the UK, and some still close by. This poem is for them.

Well, Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin made the cut. And a director's wife. I know I know, but whatever the reason, it's so disheartening to be erased this much. www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7...

Coming soon coming soon.... an anthology of new work by writers who are also carers. I'm in here somewhere. Thank you so much to @bookwormvaught.bsky.social and a heads up to @ylbooks.bsky.social and any other bookshops who might like to carry a copy (out in November).

I've been involved with Wayward Productions from its inception six years ago. The new name says it all: Judith Dimant is an outstanding leader in theatre, we're lucky to have her, and there are brilliant things to come. www.judithdimant.com @waywardprods.bsky.social @judithdimant.bsky.social

What you may wonder is the big deal with a parent begonia and its titchy baby shoot from a leaf cutting. Well my lovelies this is literally Einstein’s begonia or at least a cutting therefrom. It’s a thing. There’s even an opera about it. I’m so damn proud.

Guess whose work will be in Best New Poets 2025? Which goes to show, you can endure months of battling with hospital park and pay machines and poetry still wins, for all of us.

Also when somebody very close to you dies slowly while you watch helplessly, nothing encourages more magical thinking. Magpies and owls. Trees lit up at sunset. The wolf hour. Everything's a damn sign.

One of the weird things about somebody very close to you dying slowly is that you keep thinking how you'll tell them all about it when they're done.

The first rainbow of the autumn and it’s a double.

Pensions, productivity and the myth of the migrant “drain” – why Britain’s real crisis is ageing, not immigration. Another cracker from the Bear. @eastangliabylines.co.uk @bearlypolitics.co.uk

It is. It's an omen. Wordle 1,539 2/6 🟩🟩⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Could this be an .... omen? Wordle 1,538 2/6 ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

So it's possible to revise a poem all weekend and submit it to somewhere that feels just right and get a kind acceptance on the Monday.

Sadly I have yet to meet Jonathan Main at Bookseller Crow. However, I know him to be a very good thing. Jon is rather under the weather & they need a bit of an umph. If you were going to buy books from us online in the next few days, please don't. Buy them from them instead. booksellercrow.co.uk

"'When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.' And he is right... Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place..." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Reading Helen Garner's diaries, so vivid and sharp, and my only criticism is - why so little about the dog? Not even an initial for the dog's name? Will the dog suddenly get its own entries or is it all writers and lovers and her sister and daughter and the odd bystander bloke?

Bristol friends, Shearsman book fans, come to East Bristol Books 18 September to hear not me (well, me, too) but the splendid Frances Presley and Andrew Duncan. I have such admiration for them both. Share? www.headfirstbristol.co.uk/whats-on/eas...

There's never a bad time for a Natalie Shapero poem. www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Almost a #BodegaCat in Giudecca Venice, last winter. In a local caff. He had a cool name which I've now forgotten (Marlo?). Anybody?

This gentle photograph was taken by the great Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji, I believe of his own house, and his wife Balkees. I kept it close by as I wrote about Baghdad's past, with its moments of calm and hope.

Old Baghdad. Soft gold stone. High waters.

Lord help me I'm googling used camper vans.

Bridport Prize starter pack @bridportprize.bsky.social with winners & shortlisted writers including @kitdewaal.com @dreenawriting.co.uk @marcellenewbold.bsky.social @esloudon.bsky.social Please follow & repost the pack & tell me if you want to be included #booksky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity

You can read my poem The Market In Winter in the preview pages of Issue 4 of @thebelfastreview.bsky.social here: thebelfastreview.wixsite.com/home/copy-of.... They're breaking some new ground. With gratitude to the editors and everyone keeping poetry alive.

This one meant so much to me - the poem, which is about the pain of losing my beautiful adopted home, and also being accepted by the marvellous Black Iris. www.blackirispoetry.com/leaving-amer...

If you'd like an uncomfortable but honest memoir about what happens to you and your relationship when your partner's diagnosed with an incurable neurological illness, here are two stunners: The Iceberg by Marion Coutts, and The Archaelogy of Loss by @sarahtarlow1.bsky.social.

Ahhhh.... I'm shortlisted for the Alpine Poetry Prize, along with writers I admire so much -- @pascalepetit.bsky.social, @victoriaspires.bsky.social, and Charlotte Ansell, my fellow (and winning) Curae poet. Which means I don't stand a prayer, but I'm still so proud.

Thank you @richardsmyth.bsky.social for this sober warning from the trenches: "When highly articulate, highly educated, highly confident people experience intense emotion, books tend to happen."

Dear @bethbpoet.bsky.social look what my dear friend in Bridport sent me for my birthday:

The loveliest thing about publishing poetry is meeting editors (even if online). Oana Nicola at the Columbia Journal is so helpful and kind. Here's a poem of mine she accepted and also improved (any remaining weaknesses all mine). www.columbiajournal.org/articles/the...

Despite what media suggests, getting old does not mean your Saturday nights are spent pole dancing or hosting vegan dinner parties. They are spent trying in vain -- despite working through the alphabet - to remember the names of long lost or little seen friends.

If any of you have a subscription to Journal of Contemporary Iraq (@[email protected]?) you can read this review of A Stranger In Baghdad, by Zainab Mehdi. intellectdiscover.com/content/jour....

Good news for this mother, who's already juggling extraordinary demands, but she should never have been put through this. Neither should any carer. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

I hate these stories with a passion. This is one injustice the government could fix - with apologies to those harmed. Please don't let it be years of courts and tribunals and whatnot. Just fix it.

I'm reading only Australian women writers at the moment - @charlottewood.bsky.social, Michelle de Kretser (on Shirley Hazzard!), Fiona McFarlane, Helen Garner - and there's so much comfort and joy and brilliance in them all.