life achievement unlocked: visiting every poet’s grave mentioned in The Smiths’ Cemetery Gates

FAO Your Party

obsessed with Bob Dylan’s new dripped out look wearing a North Face with the hood up on stage

this is quite the effusive cover quote. too bad it wasn’t for the book it was on as i’d probably have bought it immediately.

can’t believe Nice N Sleazys kb’d Michael Shannon last night and he left shouting ‘Fuck this place. Fuck Glasgow’

The UK government will evacuate nine of the 40+ students in Gaza with scholarship at UK universities. My PhD student Shaimaa isn't included. We must now make sure they help the other students - email your MP today. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

i regret to inform you i’m now facilitating terrorism by selling Sally Rooney’s books at work.

Proud to have an article in here reflecting on Alexander Trocchi’s legacy alongside the most incisive and urgent commentary on our current political malaise. Get it doon ye!

really excited to get stuck into these. huge fan of Hopscotch so glad to see Cortázar novels back in print.

Arthur’s Seat is on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel and the sewers are muddied with a thousand lonely Oasis fans and a dark wind blows

seeing lots of folk in Oasis gear queuing up for Fringe shows. it’s almost as if much of the so-called ‘Oasis effect’ is just thinly veiled cultural snobbery.

Demonstrating my headstand reading stunt during a presentation of my new book Fascist Yoga at Argonaut Books in Edinburgh last night. If you missed me you can still buy the book at Argonaut & it's also available online here: www.plutobooks.com/978074535112...

The words “Please can you DON’T?!” were immediately conveyed here by poor Calum, drummer for Shinlifter. Sorry, pal. They asked me to. Just pretend I’m not here. 🥴

It’s festival time and I’m chairing a few events at both the Book Festival and Fringe. Tomorrow I’m talking to @stewarthome.bsky.social about his latest provocation, Fascist Yoga at @argonautbooks.bsky.social argonautbooks.co.uk/product/7th-...

surely academics at Edinburgh University have highlighted for years the racist undertow to the enlightenment so why doesn’t the principal simply commit to not cutting the jobs of those doing this research he deems so valuable?

depressing to see such naked snobbery being published in the year of our lord 2025. working class people have always been reading literature; they never stopped.

support escalating for Gaza but baffled by the strategic error here of advertising an occupation in advance

We were robbed last night. When it’s our stock or our money that is targeted, there’s insurance and systems in place for this, but when it’s stealing from a charity in an extremely direct way then we just can’t abide it. scottishbooktrust.com/donate @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social

great book post at work today

last week i gave a talk about Alexander Trocchi’s aesthetics and politics of failure at a centenary symposium at Glasgow University which has now been published by @bellacaledonia.bsky.social bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/06/19/s...

“And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.”

speaking tomorrow at this conference to honour the centenary of Alexander Trocchi’s birth at Glasgow University. come watch me give my first, and most likely last, academic paper on Trocchi’s aesthetics and politics of failure.

happy pride month to them

Tenet being the cinematic masterpiece of the 21st century thus far

SHINLIFTER and OCH VEY on the same bill tonight! 7pm, Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh. Tickets £10/£8 on the door.

excited to be supporting OCH VEY tonight at Wee Red Bar. come on DOON!

glad to see one of my favourite English novels and easily the best occult fiction i’ve ever read finally coming back into print in August

glad someone is finally doing something to redress the centuries of matriarchy in the publishing industry

it’s indeed concerning how The Spectator has become comfortable with platforming Nazis

new Thomas Pynchon? in THIS economy?

for your convenience and our financial detriment, you can now listen to my band Shinlifter’s single on Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/5UKNm0...

what’s with LRB suddenly reviewing fiction titles in time for publication date? did the publishers start holding the review copies hostage because they were sick of the reviews only coming in a year later?

never felt more seen in a book

strange that this article omits to mention Sally Rooney, one of the bestselling writers of the moment, who writes *checks notes* literary fiction? www.spectator.co.uk/article/good...

if you’re at a loose end tonight, how about a bop to cacophonous tunes about minor injustices while raising funds for those affected by the floods in Valencia? if that sounds like your jam, Shinlifter are playing at Wee Red Bar for this very cause. tix here: www.eventbrite.com/e/valencia-e...

‘A forgotten outpost in the world republic of letters.’ For my latest substack, I write about the Scottish conduits of literary modernism. sigmaportfolio.substack.com/p/kelman-and...

Bathgate’s last gift to the world’s health was anaesthetic so we’re really specialising in multiplying humanity’s routes to unconsciousness www.bbc.com/news/article...

PLOT TWIST! the congratulations gig has been POSTPONED but we’re instead playing with Big Lanes at Leith Depot instead, woo hoo!

very excited that my band Shinlifter will be making their glorious return to Sneaky Petes on Friday to support the mighty congratulations and launch our Percolator/Nandos single. if you use the code SHINLIFTER you can get cheap tickets here: www.seetickets.com/event/congra...

very excited that my band Shinlifter will be making their glorious return to Sneaky Petes on Friday to support the mighty congratulations and launch our Percolator/Nandos single. if you use the code SHINLIFTER you can get cheap tickets here: www.seetickets.com/event/congra...

the Oscars rarely reward the right films but disappointing that Nickel Boys walked away with nothing as it would’ve opened it to the wider audience it deserves and encouraged investment in more bold, experimental filmmaking

read that dumb ‘Against High Brodernism’ review and love that the writer rails against factual errors and critics being unfamiliar with national contexts only to be slapped with this editor’s note. *chefs kiss*

RIP Gene Hackman. will rewatch Night Moves in his honour, an underrated banger of a film which i discovered through @mjohnharrison.bsky.social’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. m.youtube.com/watch?v=mdlL...

excited to in Glasgow for Shinlifter’s first west coast show. we’ll be on at the Hug and Pint at 8, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in Alasdair Gray’s Hillhead mural

ScotLit folks here, is anyone aware of anything to mark Alexander Trocchi’s centenary this year? Conference, special journal issue or the like?

it’s the centenary of Alexander Trocchi’s birth this year so it was good to see Cain’s Book featured in Desire Paths, Lavender Menace’s brilliant exhibition tracing histories of queer Edinburgh. highly recommend the exhibition which is on until tomorrow: lavendermenace.org.uk/event/desire...

A substack on my recent trip to Copenhagen, reflecting on the folly of my visit fifteen years earlier: sigmaportfolio.substack.com/p/always-els...

very pleased with my new workplace mug courtesy of @agrayarchive.bsky.social!

if you scan the QR code at the Kierkegaard statue in Copenhagen, he calls you and says ‘if you marry, you will regret it; if you don’t marry, you will regret it’