Hard to believe that Michael Longley died a year ago today. Here's a favourite poem from The Slain Birds, the last book he saw into print. The poem is dedicated to Gail McConnell, a superb poet in her own right.

Thinking of Lucille Clifton's elegy to her son, Channing, who died on this day in 2004. It's from Mercy, her collection of the same year.

It's probably obvious, but nonetheless, a PSA. As you can probably guess from my near total lack of posting here (and indeed, across all other socials), I'm not going to be on this or any other app much. If you have need of me, I'm reachable here: karlknights.wordpress.com/contact/

Renée Nicole Good was a poet. They won a college prize from the Academy of American Poets in 2020. You can read the prize winning poem here: poets.org/2020-on-lear...

Quite surreal to find myself and 'my huh' in this roundup of last year's prose from the Poetry Foundation. Amidst the Mojave desert, LA, Japan and Paris, there's a Blythburgh doorstep, and teenage me, often visiting the Poetry Foundation website daily. www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/176...

And here's Dennis O'Driscoll's 'New Year Party', from his posthumous collection, Update. Here's hoping the 'new year's manifesto' isn't a total crock.

Thinking of the late Michael Longley, and his tradition of sending out a poem in the family Xmas card, alongside an illustration by his daughter, Sarah. Here's a snippet from Out of the Cold, a limited edition of their Christmas card work.

Gutting to wake up to the news of Alice Wong's death this morning. She was always kind to me, and she stuck up for me and fought my corner more than once, when I was a near stranger. She's a marvelous writer, editor, advocate and thinker. Farewell, Alice. Thanks for your urgent, caring work.

Flabbergasted and pleasantly surprised to say the Poetry Foundation has chosen my essay as one of two nominees for the Best of the Net. My essay about a rarely recorded queer Suffolk being seen in this big a way is really touching. What a distance my Blythburgh doorstep has travelled!

Genuinely gutted to read that Brian Patten has died at 79. I adored his work, and his reading at Aldeburgh is still the best reading I've seen. He emailed me shortly afterwards, to wish me luck with my writing. Here's a favourite Patten poem, from Armada, without question his best collection.

Sorry to hear that Tony Harrison has died. In a conversation with Simon Armitage, filmed by the BBC, Harrison spoke about how he regretted that he couldn't write anything his parents might've enjoyed until after they died. Here's one of the poems in memory of his dad, among his best work for me:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH

Neurodivergent writers, how do you guard against procrastinating immensely? I'll have a writing room for a month soon. I usually write in dribs and drabs, amidst the hubbub of life. I've never had such a large slab of time solely for writing. How to make sure I don't dawdle the time away?

Difficult to express how much I despise seeing this note on AI use underneath a BBC News article, and not for the first time.

Two poems from Anna Świrszczyńska (known to American readers as Anna Swir) from her astonishing book, Building the Barricade, an account of the Warsaw Uprising. The poems, translated here by Piotr Florczyk, speak so painfully to the genocide and forced starvation happening right now in Gaza.

Farewell to Allan Ahlberg, at age 87. Here's a favourite poem, from 1983's Please Mrs Butler. The illustration is by Fritz Wegner. Ahlberg poems are often funny, but underpinning every word and line break is a very deep sympathy for the pains of childhood that never wavers, as in this poem.

A long shot, but I'll give it a whirl - do I know anyone at Princeton University? I'm looking to unearth the story of a rare, historical memoir from a queer writer in my hometown, but the papers are much larger than I anticipated, and the first 300 pages are free to students and faculty

Look Ma, it's me (bottom left) with the mighty Bloodaxe 🙏 Being in a Bloodaxe anthology has been on my bucket list for as long as I've been a writer. We did it! And I'm in great company, too. Special thanks to Rachael and Bloodaxe for putting this reading together, and making an essential book

Farewell, Fanny Howe. Here's the poem of hers I see most often on socials, 25 years after publication. Go read the poems, and have a go at writing your own list of things you love

I've debated whether to say anything about it, but I didn't get anything for my birthday, or any cards etc, for the second year in a row. Not mentioning it to raise a 'woe is me' story, but more because I suspect isolated birthdays are much more common than they might seem at first.

I don't usually get too personal on socials (I usually focus on commenting on other things), but it is my birthday once more and I want to say, especially to queer people who are estranged entirely from their families as I am, that you aren't entirely alone in finding birthdays hard to take.

Haven't remembered to share archival queer Suffolk stories for pride until this very moment. Here's one of my fav recent finds, an article from BBC Suffolk, 2005. It's by Kirsty, and the article is called 'A Suffolk T Girl'. Happy pride, Kirsty. 🏳️‍🌈 www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/cont...

Farewell to Bill Moyers, who's died at 91. He's one of the very few journalists I know who was entirely comfortable talking to poets about their work. First and foremost he was a fan, and he interviewed scores of poets. Thanks for the words you asked about so well and so often, Bill.

Weighing up buying more copies of my pamphlet and thinking about how many I'd sell these days, and feeling a fresh rage at the absolute melts who torched the social media where my connections were, making them effectively unusable and little more than a stream of AI pics and bot slop replies.

Wonderfully strange and heartening to see my essay in the Poetry Foundation's newsletter that's just gone out, landing in inboxes all over the globe. What a distance for a Blythburgh doorstep to travel! I'm grateful that a little seen side of Suffolk can go galavanting around, finding readers. 🙏

Thanks for all the love on the This Be the Place essay, folks. It's on the front page of the Poetry Foundation right now, and you can read it here. The messages people have written so far mean more to me than I can say. www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/169...

“What’s a poem, after all, but an attempt to talk to a stranger?” Recent @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social guest Karl Knights (@inadarkwood.bsky.social) has a new essay today on rural queerness and poetry at Poetry Foundation’s This Be the Place series! 🏳️‍🌈 📚💙

Very excited to say that my piece in the Poetry Foundation's series on places is live! A piece for pride, a piece for rural queers, a piece for my neighbour, and my Blythburgh self. Excited to have gotten a slice of a little seen Suffolk onto a world stage! www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/169...

New poem alert! I'm in @eff-able.bsky.social, thanks to George and JP for inviting me along. Here are the first two lines of a double sonnet, a very Suffolk take on hookups (after all, what's hotter than a three hour bus ride to cover a spitting distance?) Grateful to be part of this urgent project

Happy Pride Month to everyone else who is also chronically ill and high risk and unable to participate in Pride Month festivities because folks won't mask. I see you. Your love is still valid. And to everyone else who can safely attend events this month, please mask up.

If you're on Insta, in response to the appalling cuts to PiP and Access to Work, Hot Coals Productions have reshared a short film I wrote called Indefinitely, a cry from the heart of the benefits system, pushing against all too familiar 'scrounger' headlines. www.instagram.com/hotcoalsprod...

Want to read a new-ish poem by me? Well you're in luck, my poem from He / She / They / Us: Queer Poems is available via the Google Books preview, as I'm the fourth poem in the anthology. Some lines are indented, but on the whole the poem is intact! www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

Also read the full poem here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/158055...

Read the full poem and listen to Episode 71: Karl Knights (Of Directness, the Music of Ordinary Language, and Writing Disability Poetics While Existing All Year) here: ofpoetrypodcast.com/2025/05/13/e...

Ya girl's in the Bloodaxe newsletter this month! Read on to check out my poem that features in the new anthology, Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets mailchi.mp/76aa7dd31da3...

A real joy to be on the Of Poetry Podcast, a show I listen to. Tune in for the premiere of a poem I'd never read aloud before!

New Episode with Karl Knights! @inadarkwood.bsky.social Episode 71: Karl Knights (Of Directness, the Music of Ordinary Language, and Writing Disability Poetics While Existing All Year) share.transistor.fm/s/9e757d99

Anyone out there know some solid writing, in whatever form, on the queer grief of family rejection/estrangement? What little writing I know is frustratingly simplistic, and yells out 'found family' like a knee jerk reaction, skating over the grief of it all.

Happy birthday, Seamus Heaney. I don't know if he's my favourite poet, but he's the poet I quote the most, the poet that lives rent free in my head most days. Here's a late, post Human Chain poem.

The excitement of the first new Pulp track in twenty odd years or so being immediately sullied by an AI assisted music video feels like the bleakest summary of where the arts are at right now

To no one's surprise, IPSO have upheld the articles about me from the Daily Mail, the Mirror and co. They ruled that my address isn't 'inherently private information', and the pilfered 2019 photos from socials are 'effectively public domain' by being posted on public socials. So there we are. Sigh.

The way the media treats the Covid cautious, disabled and those with Long Covid has got to change. Karl isn’t “petrified”. He’s adapted to reality. Society’s denial has left him isolated. When everyone is busy doing “you do you”, people like us are left behind.

Would like to say again that I had no involvement in these rag pieces whatsoever, and they were published (with five year old pre-pandemic photos and quotes culled from my socials) with zero consent and no warning. As well as being inaccurate, the Daily Mail piece includes doxxing info. I am livid.

Thrilled to report that thanks to the Daily Mail publicizing the town I live in without my knowledge or consent, something I never, ever do on account of the violent right wing attention my writing on the pandemic sometimes gets, I'm now moving cautiously and don't feel secure or safe. 😀

On the plus side, I WAS involved in this article for People Magazine. Thanks to Becca for interviewing me, and thanks for choosing some photos from a writing residency. A mask is a rare sight these days in magazines and such, so I'm glad to do my bit to fly the flag. people.com/man-comes-ou...

FWIW, I didn't sanction or have any involvement in a piece from the Daily Mail that's gone out on me this week. They reached out and I told them I'd rather eat a bowl of nails than work with them. They've culled pics from my socials, regurgitated another journo's research and called it an article.

What stage of capitalism is it when you go to find one of your poems for a reading and find a flat out wrong AI summary of yourself instead?

I'm always harping on these days about the importance of masked artists being seen, so I'll put my money where my mouth is. Here's me. I'm one of the Bound Unbound residency poets, working on poems this week with the great folk at Suffolk Libraries. If you're protecting yourself still, I see you.

I read an article this morning that boiled my piss, the piece tried to analyse the pandemic in poems, and ended with this: 'now, essentially, it feels like most of us would rather try to forget the whole affair. The 'covid poem' is already a thing of the past.'

Just learned that a friend died last week, after begging her doctors to wear masks to protect her and themselves. I can't fathom a world where I have to convince you to care. I can't get my head around having to say that my friend and disabled people like us are worth protecting just because we are.