This is issue 103 of The Rialto and I have a poem in it, which is exciting. Also a Minecraft Zombie Hamburglar but that’s beside the point.

Cleanse your timeline with a cat pic. The black and white kitten is Oreo. The Turkish van mid yawn is Elsa. Pause for a moment. You don’t need to keep scrolling right now. You can put the phone down. You can just be in the room you’re in for a while.

Over the last month my ‘Take This With You & Leave It Somewhere Else’ #poetry #zines have crossed the ocean from the UK to Portland, Maine and popped up in Wales, Glossop, Manchester and at a Drake concert. To find out what role Lou Ferrigno played in all this click the thing.

I reckon about a hundred bots have followed me in the last 24 hours. Anyone else getting this too?

What’s triggered me suddenly getting so many new followers? Have I been put in a new starter pack or something?

I’ll get around to posting a full update soon on where my #poetry #zines have been found this month to my Substack page (link in bio) but I’m particularly excited today to wake up to the news that a zine I left on a train to Manchester in early July has just shown up in Portland, Maine.

Hello Bluesky. Stop the doom scroll for a second and enjoy this photo of my kittens Elsa and Oreo. Have a good day.

More from my ongoing poetry zine experiment on the attached link. The zines have made it to London and are starting to gather other people's artwork as they travel.

Hello Bluesky. Here's another update on my current experiment, where I write poetry zines, leave them in public for other people to pass along, then map the zines' travels.

I just perched a #poetry #zine on top of a signed Phil Cool vinyl, as you do. Phil Cool was a comedian from Chorley whose main thing was that he would pull faces. I looked online to see if I could find this album. I was curious how he translated such a visual act to an audio only medium…

I’m leaving poetry zines in random places to be found by strangers. They each contain instructions to the finder to take the zine with them and leave it somewhere else. In the linked post I start to map out where the zines have been so far.

A week or so ago I found a book of poetry called The Rubaiyat on the charity stand at Tesco. I’ve now replaced The Rubaiyat with my own Rubaiyat, except Rubaiyat means quatrain and none of the poems in my zine are quatrains, but still. I put some more poems where there used to be poems

My #poetry #zines are on the move! I’ll figure out a way to map their movements then post more here and on the Substack in my bio. Thanks to anyone who’s messaged to tell me where you found one/left one. The pics are the latest zines, left on my morning/evening commutes into/out of sunny Manchester.

New post on my Substack about the 3rd week of my #poetry #zine experiment, and about these poems I found while I was out leaving poems for someone to find.

TAKE THIS WITH YOU & LEAVE IT SOMEWHERE ELSE! Hot off the presses and coming soon to the empty space by the crystal skulls. It’s been hard to get out and about this week so I’ve grabbed the chance to make a shiny new #poetry #zine and leave it next to some ornamental skeletons.

I’ve posted another update about my ongoing #poetry #zine experiment. I put loads more of these things out over the last week and am having a lot of fun writing and making them. Click the thing to find out more and as a bonus you'll receive a reasonably serviceable metaphor about bus seats.

If you’re out browsing for Millennium Falcons today you might stumble across one of my poetry zines. If you do, take it with you and leave it somewhere else. #poetry #zine

The patterns are so random on trains & buses because it’s supposed to distract your eye from stains or vandalism, like you’ll be so thrown by the overall chaos of the complicated patterns that you just won’t be able to notice any details. Anyway I’ve thrown another #poetry #zine out into the world

I lodged this zine between the seat and the wall of the train. The photo is rubbish because it was really busy and I was sat across from someone. I was trying to be stealthy but my flash went off. #zine #poetry

I’ve scattered many zines around today. I’ve been on a bit of a spree. Frank here appears to have found one already. #zine #poems #zinester #foundpoetry

It continues. Left on the bus. I tried to do another crown bind here but the card was too thick so I had to do an 8 page fold instead and it’s made me want to vary the binding/folding up. I saw a great thread bound book the other day that I loved so I might give that a go. #zines #poetry

I've posted an update on my Substack about how my #poetry #zine experiment is going so far, for anyone interested in that sort of thing. open.substack.com/pub/martinsm...

Take This With You & Leave It Somewhere Else: stuffed in the magazine rack at a cafe near you. #poetry #zine #zinemaking

The experiment continues. Take This With You & Leave It Somewhere Else: stuck to a bus window near you! #poetry #zine

I’m going to quietly drop a load more of my poetry zines in random public places this afternoon. No two have the exact same poems. They only exist in these physical zines. Hopefully somebody who finds one plays along. #poetry #zine

I wrote this and didn’t know where to put it, so it can live on my Substack. Its about Brian Wilson, ish, sort of. open.substack.com/pub/martinsm...

The experiment continues. Another of these zines is now out in the wild. #poetry #zine

I’m scattering poetry zines around with instructions to whoever finds them to take them away, leave them somewhere else and tag me telling me where they left them. Today I snuck the first zine out into the wild. I felt a bit like a spy with the lowest stakes mission possible. #poetry #espionage

A new thing. I like the idea of a poem interrupting someone’s day. I’ve only recently, in the last few years, been actively and deliberately reading poetry. I was made to teach it one year, against my loud objections, and I fell into a rabbit hole I’ve never been able to get out from #poetry

If you write the word “Imagine” during a Facebook messenger chat it displays a pop-up asking if you’d like Meta AI to imagine something for you. That feels like a particularly dystopian UI choice.

Every year on this day I find this little present to myself from 12 years ago in my diary and am grateful that I wrote it down. I like to think that Ric Flair had the exact same dream that night.

Weirdly sad about this. Staying in the town you grew up in means watching the places tied to your memories gradually disappear around you. This branch of Smiths was always the meeting spot in my teens. It was where the trip to Manchester/Afflecks or wherever began. Everything must go!

As David Lynch used to say on his YouTube channel, today I’m getting on the fun work train. First teaching of the year and it’s a day on Media Platforms and storyworlds. What’s everyone else working on today? #edusky #AcademicSky

Slightly drunk, thinking about the career of the actor Tim Robbins. In 1994 he starred in The Hudsucker Proxy and The Shawshank Redemption. Imagine the heights his career could have reached if he stuck to making films named ‘The Surname Thing’ for a few more years. Unfathomable heights.

Blue skies and golden sunshine all along the way.

☹️

A girl I knew in college saw David Lynch speak at an event. When it ended, she found a way to get to the front to tell him how much his films and shows meant to her. His response was “Thank you. And remember, the universe is in your basement.”

One of those nights where I suddenly get a bunch of new followers despite not posting anything. Hello everyone 👋

Something about the trending topics being added and the stuff being shown in my Discover feed is starting to make this place feel like a bit of a doomscroll.

I’m getting a little influx of new followers this evening for some reason. Hello 👋 I’m a UK based academic teaching creative writing and media. I sometimes post about those subjects or about teaching and UK higher ed, but it’s ‘twixtmas so I’m dadding and posting nothing but the occasional cat pic.

Have yourself a vaguely gothic twixtmas.

Someone got my kids a Furby for Christmas and I’m struggling to imagine the monster that would invent something capable of inflicting so much suffering on so many people.

Happy Kyussmas to all who celebrate! 🎄 🌵

Still can’t think of anything to post so have another picture of my cat Roast Beef at his most Christmassy.

I usually post worky stuff on here but I’m not thinking about work until January so to save me having to think of anything else to post about, please enjoy this photo of my cat Roast Beef at his comfiest and most Christmassy.

The online Christmas shop was a shit show of broken glass bottles, weird substitutions and extremely short dated stuff that had obviously been intended for Christmas dinner, so with the deepest of regret I’m currently on my way to the supermarket. Pray for me.

Has something happened to make Uber suddenly decay? It’s been significantly shitter for the last month or so.

MY DAUGHTER (staring thoughtfully out of the window at the weather): “Poor Santa.”

I switched the out of office on for my emails yesterday but I switched the out of office on for my brain about a week ago.

My favourite genre of music is the low-royalty Christmas music they play in chain shops that you hear 90 seconds of once then never hear again.