Incredible new @aestallings.bsky.social poem. (And how fab to have church-poetry colleagues who share these things.)

Cicadas grate and grate the air Like pencil sharpeners. Hope Shrinks like a bar of soap. The sea’s ten-thousand-league long stare Goes on, unblinking. Things are bad Elsewhere, I know. It’s hard to write Knowing it is no way to fight. @aestallings.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Auguries - @aestallings.bsky.social The wilted season: peacocks drop their tails, The vines drop leaves And wear a bunch of raisins on their sleeves. The scoured sky pales. Cicadas grate and grate the air Like pencil sharpeners. Hope Shrinks like a bar of soap [...] www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Athens (Gr) people, doing this on Monday:

This is good @lrb.co.uk @aestallings.bsky.social www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

... Colin Kidd on Jacobitism Susannah Clapp at Dungeness Raymond N. MacKenzie on Jules Verne Christine Okoth on Margaret Busby Tess Little on Malachi Whitaker Blake Morrison on Elizabeth Strout Armando Ledezma in Venezuela a poem by @aestallings.bsky.social and a cover by Anne Rothenstein.

Καλό Μήνα!

OK, today I am going to make tracks on admin and translation and chores. Coffee!

On #WorldSnorkellingDay, an air-bag deployed on a Neo-Assyrian gypsum wall panel relief, c. 865BCE, from Nimrud North West Palace. Now in British Museum. I love the fish swimming along in the same direction.

Unbridled vandalism www.timeshighereducation.com/news/i-thoug...

Off to a slow start. Girding loins for lots of proofs (tracking down page numbers, ugghh). Coffee.

The peacocks are moulting, and the garden is littered with this splendid trash:

Bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin (1888) representing a classical caryatid, normally standing upright and bearing her burden for eternity. Here she has collapsed, pressed down by the weight of the heavy vessel she carries. It was originally titled ‘Sorrow’. #ClassicalReception 1/

In case you didn’t know, Exeter uni, where I work, has announced a plan to make 25% of staff in my English department redundant. Left-over staff will do double the teaching while their research time will be shrunk to 1%. Meanwhile admissions for English at Exeter are HIGH, and on the rise this year

OK, today turning in my unorated oration to be published in the (Oxford) Gazette, and proofs for an article which include lots of queries to the author (mostly page numbers! Yikes.) Coffee.

Thread of appreciation and a petition to sign. www.change.org/p/stop-redun...

Well, my oration was cancelled today... due to heat! Alas. (It will eventually be printed in the Oxford Gazette.)

“Theon to his father Theon, greeting (χαίρειν). It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to the city! If you won't take me with you to Alexandria I won't write you a letter or speak to you or say bye to you” — a Romano-Egyptian son in Oxyrhynchos (P.Oxy. 1 119). papyri.info/ddbdp/p.oxy;...

By Signing His Name to Massive Jars, This Enslaved Artist Defied Literacy Bans in the South. Now, His Masterpiece Is on View With a Famed Paul Revere Bowl

OK, today must make tracks on the oration. No ifs, ands, or buts! Coffee.

OK, today a final push to get some (stages) of projects over the finish line. Plus there is an oration to write. Coffee!

“Brad Paisley, a Grammy Award-winning American country music singer and songwriter, urged his followers to sign a petition to stop the construction of a 69,000-square-foot data center that would be 50 yards from the Nashville Zoo, which he called “an absolute nightmare scenario”

Oh hell. Comics legend and my personal heroine Marjane Satrapi, dead at 56. What a terrible loss!

Oh no!

Detail from the sculpture by Fenwick Lawson which portrays six monks carrying St. Cuthbert’s coffin to safer places in response to the Viking raids on Lindisfarne. This version of the sculpture is from St. Mary’s Church on Lindisfarne. 📸 My own. #Woodensday #Lindisfarne

OK, today, reading and zoom meetings about said reading. Coffee!

'Would poetry be more effective – that is, interest more people more deeply – if it were more directly concerned with the issues of our time?' @joriegraham.bsky.social, Don Paterson, @aestallings.bsky.social and more have their say in our 2026 Survey of Poets. thelondonmagazine.org/article/essa...

Καλό Μήνα!

Hey Atlanta! The Skylarks are playing tonight at the Moonshadow Tavern on Larryville Highway. We hit at 9:00 pm…

Why, helloooooo! This happy whoever is the star of the Pictish Glenfoot quadrocephalus, photographed today in lovely Perth Museum. #FindsFriday #StoneHeadSunday

Shrey spelling 32 words in 90 seconds to win the Spelling Bee is the new greatest athletic accomplishment of 2026. I don’t even know how he said the letters that fast. Got a “Holy Mackerel” out of @minakimes.bsky.social

Damnatio memoriae!

Gosh!

Not good

Not good:

Good shortish poems about needles/thread/sewing/cloth/textiles/sewing machines?

One of Aesop's fables is about a tortoise who is the only one not to attend Zeus' wedding. When ask why, they say 'Οἶκος φίλος, οἶκος ἄριστος' (basically, the home you love, that home is best). It appears to be the root of "There's no place like home." The older I get, the more I get tortoise-y.🐢

Stopping Data Centers for the common good: www.americamagazine.org/short-take/2...

Love the idea that ancient Romans were occasionally picking up a bouquet of flowers...

Another low sleep day (jet lag, mostly, I think), but today will polish up and turn in introduction, and maybe tinker with translation. Also, lunch with friend. Coffee!

Happy #MemorialDay! Come for the #axolotls. Stay for the #cocaine smuggled in #KimKardashian's undies. (Click link in thread for all 5 Poems of the Week.) @paullander.bsky.social @michaelgerber.bsky.social @americanbystander.bsky.social @aestallings.bsky.social @faithsalie.bsky.social

Grateful for this in-depth and astute review of Frieze Frame from the Weekly Hubris: weeklyhubris.com/a-e-stalling...

`Poetry reading at the Hammer museum tonight. Spent today going to Griffeth Observatory with son, saw sweeping views, etc., but also lots of hummingbirds!

THE MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED Submissions are now open until May 25th! Don’t miss your final chance to submit your poetry at www.montrealpoetryprize.com #poetryprize #poets #poetrycommunity #prize #lovepoetry

Remembering Emily Dickinson on the 140th anniversary of her death (May 15, 1886).

Arrghh. Daughter being sent home from school with fever. Uh oh. Anyway, coffee!

🤨🤔 greekreporter.com/2026/05/11/g...

"The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary." -Ursula K. Le Guin, *A War Without End*

"One study found that increasing the number of people who receive SNAP benefits by 5 percent could have prevented nearly 32,000 suicides over 15 years. And a $1 increase in minimum wage has been linked to roughly 8,000 fewer suicide deaths over a decade."