James Joyce's short story The Dead, from his collection Dubliners, takes place on 6 January 1904, the feast day of the Epiphany, 122 years ago today: www.gutenberg.org/files/2814/2...

newly posted: J.R. Carpenter : How does a poem begin? / @jrcarpenter.bsky.social @shearsmanbooks.bsky.social ; periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2026/01/jr-c...

last call for submissions to @MinorLits ... fiction, essays & experimental info and deadlines here: oleada.io/publication/...

in which, @robmclennan.bsky.social asks me, how does a poem begin ? periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2026/01/jr-c...

2025. the year of Measures of Weather. thanks to @shearsmanbooks.bsky.social for publishing, Jade Cuttle and others for reviewing, Doug Parker for meteorological discussion, the judges of the Laurel Prize and the Forward Prize, all the sky watchers, and everyone who read poetry this tough old year.

it’s not just Reform voters who think you have to be born in the UK to be British. it’s also every British person who asks me where I’m from the minute I open my mouth. after 16.5 years in this country. accent racism is also racism. please stop www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

coral carried to London in a sailing ship’s ballast eroding out of the Thames foreshore, with two Tudor dress pins for scale #mudlarking

ever wonder why they call a dick a cock though? well. this is a cockspur. a small yet horny protuberance that grows on the inner side of the lower leg bone of a cock. short for cockerel. a doggerel. for rooster. #mudlarking

In p a u s e. J. R. Carpenter (@jrcarpenter.bsky.social) turns the simple act of going for a walk into a radical practice of attention. Written over a year of daily encounters with kisiskâciwanisîpiy (the North Saskatchewan River) as it runs through www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

happy solstice from near the prime meridian in Greenwich, London. mudlarking in the dark this morning, my headlamp found pleasure in the placement of this piece banded chert in half a smashed oyster shell.

I have two new poems in this issue of @manchesterreview.bsky.social — many thanks to the editors

London, 20 December 2025. 7:13 AM. #mudlarking

Robert Boyle’s to do list is really something: royalsociety.org/blog/2010/08...

a rare pink fog blankets the nation www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

the thing about whitby jet is, you know it when you see it. but that doesn’t stop you (or me, anyway) from picking up not jet not jet not jet for days. picked up this piece this afternoon in low light on a falling tide in an area that had already been well searched and immediately knew it was jet.

Caedmon’s Cross, erected in honour of the earliest English poet whose name is known, in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church in Whitby in 1898. Cædmon (657–684) cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (now known as Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of St. Hilda (657–680).

🕰️ With the year coming to an end, we asked a selection of our contributors to give us their favourite poetry books and pamphlets of 2025. Next is Fiona Larkin's pick: Measures of Weather by J.R. Carpenter (Shearsman). Thank you, Fiona!

Random link from the archives: "...and by islands I mean paragraphs || J. R. Carpenter" https://web.archive.org/web/20220713110541/http://luckysoap.com/andbyislands/ originally retrieved Wed 13 Jul 2022 11:05:41 AM EDT

the re-emergence of zines as samizdat in the US right now www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

standing inside my house looking through the jagged blur of an ocular migraine at the dark shadow of my house low against a bright ridge of trees close against a dark sky northward in which a double rainbow hangs for a moment an alignment of fine droplets suspended in what pass for slant winter sun

CFP: POETRY AND PERFORMANCE IV De-Authoritarianism and Indisciplinarity. April 22 to 24, 2026 | FLUP and Casa Comum – University of Porto. Deadline for submission: December 15, 2025 ilcml.com/en/poetry-an...

books find their readers. two years after its publication, I’m delighted to see this insightful review of The Pleasure of the Coast by Canadian small press powerhouse @robmclennan.bsky.social

Join Poetry@Leeds live online for a special event on visual poetry with Professor Fiona Becket, author of Contemporary Visual Poetry Women Writing the Posthuman (Routledge, 2025) — 10 December 6-6pm poetry.leeds.ac.uk/events/54-2/

exciting book news — my new poetry collection, p a u s e, is now available for pre-order from @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

one for the mudlarks

after dipping in and out of Proust for decades, this year I finally read In Search of Lost Time cover to cover. astounding. pretty sure I’ll be rereading it for the rest of my life.

WHY LET KIDS GO HUNGRY. ENERGY BILLS SOAR, SCHOOLS CRUMBLE, YOUTH CLUBS SHUT DOWN, RENTS SKYROCKET AND WAGES FALL, WHEN YOU COULD JUST TAX BILLIONAIRES? — anonymous billboard, Armley, Leeds.

the joy of not being sold anything. billboard by Banksy

the deadline for our Poetry’s Environments conference at University of Leeds 9-11 June 2026 is fast approaching. submit proposals by 5 December: conferences.leeds.ac.uk/poetryenviro...

join us for this water-themed poetry reading in London this evening !

favorite reads of the year lists in November is the new Christmas decorations on sale before Halloween. we’re just not there yet people, not yet.

anyone else quietly building a stack of books for strictly non-work holiday reading already? if so, what’s on it?

wrote an article for @thebookseller.com outlining to the industry why small presses are the lifeforce & future of book production. Pls share esp w people who may not know what small press publishers do! www.thebookseller.com/comment/dont...

A Granta series on punctuation and grammar: lol's, transitive verbs, ellipses, quotation marks, line breaks, xox's... 🤗

feeling the late semester squash. fossils cheer me. with their zero fucks to give about time. this adorable blob of flint is giving echinoid (sea urchin) vibes. with rows of pores indicative of a Micraster cast. & a bonus tubercle mould from maybe a Temnocidaris.(100–66 million yrs old) #mudlarking

a loose approximation of a painting. Still Life with a Stoneware Jug, Berkemeyer, and Smoking Utensils, 1640, Pieter Claesz (Dutch, about 1597–1661) echoed in #mudlarking finds from the Thames

Hopefully more to come home after this— my nieces were among the Indigenous people privately shown some of the Vatican’s collection of Native items over 3 years ago at the Papal apology for residential schools and there were lots more than objects.

a cracking addition to the asterisk collection #mudlarking

Next week! For all those in Yorkshire, I will be giving a talk for the Royal Meteorological Society alongside @jrcarpenter.bsky.social (who very kindly invited me along). "Towards a Wind Humanities" - on wind as "model, media, and experience" www.rmets.org/event/toward...

I’m reading with Elfie Shiosaki and Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal in this water-themed poetry evening in London 6-9pm 26 November. Free, with food after: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/my-river-w...

middle daughter piano lesson, curious about these recent Pamenar Press titles by Stephen Collis and J.R. Carpenter, // @pamenarpress.bsky.social @jrcarpenter.bsky.social

meanwhile, in south london. cherry trees are still losing their autumn leaves. and also, already in blossom.

a score for packing for five days of trains, friends, opera, mudlarking, performing at a poetry festival, walking on a beach, and important work meetings. lipstick and a fountain pen. work gloves and a silk scarf. a ring and a loop. implements of magnification. to see both near and far.

on the 4th of November artists around the UK will participate in Remember Nature, a day of environmental art activism www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

glad I managed to catch the last few hours of We Will Sing, Ann Hamilton’s eerie and expansive exhibition at Salts Mill, Saltaire bradford2025.co.uk/event/we-wil...

I have a chapter called “Library of Wind” (after Nancy Campbell’s book Library of Ice) in this wonderful new book from Torque Editions BiblioTech: ReReading the Post-digital Library torquetorque.net/publications...

epic 27 hours in London for Small Publishers Fair. so many favourite people. much buzz. such books. spotted my books on four tables this year: @essencepress.bsky.social @shearsmanbooks.bsky.social @pamenarpress.bsky.social @uniformbooks.bsky.social @smallpublishers.bsky.social

night larking #mudlarking

normalise lecturing on weather writing wearing battered wellies with waterproofs and knee pads in rucksack #mudlarking

my contributor’s copy of BiblioTech: ReReading the Post-Digital library arrived today, edited by Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner.