When I was a little boy some adult asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up and I said "read poetry all day" and they said "that's not a job" and I said "I know, I'll think of something" but then I thought that maybe it could be a job and now that is my job and I couldn't be happier.

I'm just sitting at a bar reading and minding my own business and they've played that horrible "Let it go" TWICE in one hour. #WhyThisIsHellNorAmIOutOfIt

I just got an email from my university informing me that they're expanding the role of AI. There's a "Learning Technology Innovation Centre" to "help faculty explore and apply AI in support of their teaching—from ideation to deployment." "ideation to deployment" ffs This is all so depressing.

I am so happy that the wretched Orbán lost in Hungary. Gratulálok Magyar Péternek. #OrbánEgyGeci

Joe Brainard was born on this day in 1942. He died of AIDS in 1994. I first read his great book I Remember in high school. I was a bookish gay kid and he changed my life. Thank you, Joe. 💙

Happy Valentine's Day! Here is a matchless quatrain from "The Ecstasy" by John Donne. When love with one another so Interinanimates two souls, That abler soul, which thence doth flow, Defects of loneliness controls.

Rudolf Nureyev cruised me at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He was so obvious even my father noticed.

As a gay Canadian, I'm getting a lot of questions from Heated Rivalry fans, so here goes. Yes, I played hockey, but not often and not well. On the other hand, I was very good at floor hockey, although my career ended when I was banned for life for "excessive force." Now I'm a poetry specialist.

Hello fellow Canadians! Please sign this important petition supporting trans rights.

I just reread Roderick Hudson. I feel people don't appreciate how filthy Henry James could be. For instance: "I have only one way of expressing my deepest feelings--it's this." And he swung his tool. Total smut.

"He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot / Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not."

Worlds AIDS Day. I'm thinking again of Howard, dead so many years now. He was my first love.

Happy Wrong Thanksgiving to my neighbours in the melancholy republic to the south.

Here are two tenure-track jobs in the English Department at the University of Victoria: www.uvic.ca/faculty-staf... www.uvic.ca/faculty-staf...

First day of teaching and we're under an air quality advisory because of the thick smoke from all the forest fires.

Hello everyone. Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax has a tenure-track job in Enlightenment rhetoric and / or 18th-century literature. Tell everyone. www.msvu.ca/about-msvu/c...

Happy birthday to Herman Melville, 206 years young. Once again I say "harpoon me, Daddy."

Last night was rather a blur, but when I woke up I saw that I had written METAPOETICS in block capitals on a piece of paper so it's on now.

Today I visited the memorial to John Milton, the greatest poet in English and one of my greatest joys since I was a teenager. "not to me returns / Day"

Irish pizza! Bacon, mushrooms, sausage, black & white pudding (a rather dull meat product that they love), and an egg. Yes, an egg. Wish me luck. #CulinaryAdventurer #GastronomicAudacity

My hotel lobby is full of brides and bridesmaids and in the park across from my hotel there's a very loud hippy drumming circle. #WhyThisIsHellNorAmIOutOfIt #WasEverGriefLikeMine

Just having a beer and a cigarette and thinking about Fanny Howe.

Happy Father's Day to my wonderful father, seen here with my sister and me, a tiny baby.

Two outhouses, both alike in shittiness. William Shakespeare

Happy Pride Month to all! As we say at the poetics lab, you can't spell Pride Month without ODE. #praxis #themoreyouknow

Thinking of my mother today. Here she is with my sister and me in 1970. Happy mothers' day!

Yesterday I submitted my final marks so I'm giving everyone in the world the day off. Party on!🥂🥂

Today in George Eliot news: my partner is rereading Middlemarch and I'm rereading Romola. This is as it should be.

why did I call my paper on Fulke Greville "Learning From Cupid" when I could have called it "Do You Want To Fulke" I'm so stupid

The business class lounge at Boston airport was out of breakfast sausages. #WasEverGriefLikeMine

Just overheard at my hotel bar: "I said to them for the honeymoon you can go to Italy or you can go to hell." Words to live by really.

omg I have once again made perfect coq au vin

I've decided to reassess and overhaul my perfume strategy. Thanks in advance for your support and patience.

I just saw an old friend at a restaurant here & I was so happy & looking forward to talking to him again & then I realized it was just someone who looked very much like David as David died almost forty years ago from AIDS. So I'm an idiot but I still cried. It never ends.

I received an invitation to submit a paper for a medical conference because of my "expertise in gynecology." For the first time ever I have impostor syndrome.

The Making of a God

Happy Valentine's Day to all my bluesky paramours. It's time for this poem again: Roses are red, Violets are blue, I'm Stephen Guy-Bray, You should be too.

I'm thrilled to have a piece in this excellent collection. And look at that cover photo! I wrote about myself, parataxis, Frank O'Hara, Joe Brainard, and Joshua Garcia, a young contemporary poet living in New York.

Yesterday's dinner: roast chicken and potatoes roasted in chicken fat.

🚨 Culinary Update 🚨 I'm using the ham bone from Chr*stm*S dinner to make soup. Tomorrow this will be the best split pea soup in the world. 🇨🇦🇨🇦

Yesterday's dinner. I baked ham in a bourbon & maple syrup glaze and served it with this lovely rosé.

Despite what this unhinged, far right, Zionist poster on X says, I think I am clearly Canada's greatest professor.

Trying to persuade my first-year students that studying fiction is fun.

I saw so many posts about the lyrics to Defying Gravity so I read the lyrics and they were unbelievably bad. I will never forgive any of you for making me read them.

Today is the feast day of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Please enjoy this video of the French bass 😍 Nicolas Brooymans 😍 singing "Wondrous Machine" from Purcell's "Ode to St Cecilia. www.youtube.com/watch?v=td1C...

A student had this Barthes mug made for me and you need to see it. Attn @barthesstudies.bsky.social

As a professor, I want to make a difference, so I was thrilled to get an email from a student yesterday with the subject line "William Blake is bad." So proud now.

I'm sad to hear that Alice Munro has died. She has beeb one of my favourite writers since I was a teenager.

Beautiful rhododendron & azalea by my balcony.

Goose leg, salt potatoes, and red cabbage cooked with vinegar, caraway, and champagne.