This is a great article that continually steelmans the opponent's arguments and finds that every argument isn't supported by the data.

Surely one of you has a subscription to the Paris Review and can shoot me a copy of this: Alice Oswald, The Art of Poetry No. 119. Please? Pretty please?

Two households, both alike in dignity

For anyone who's contemplating the use of dialogue and debate for pure and cynical spectacle these days, I have a book for you:

Astonished that Publishers Weekly has put out this great review of DISPATCHES FROM THE AVANT-GARAGE. (What is happening I never get mainstream attention, my world is the weird world (good)) But what I hope is that more people will find out about the Alternative Press, and you know?, now they might!

Pleased to close off the year with my review of Leyla Bouzid's Une histoire d'amour et de désir (2021) appearing in Imaginaries: a film that has the distinction of being among the few I know to largely be structured around a semester of comp lit seminars! Link below: h-france.net/imaginaries/...

Get your PTR here (there)!!

Re upping this request for leads for images of genAI books or synthetic books in the wild. Not texts, images of books. Thank you! #bookhistory

Excellent job alert!!!

Astonished that Publishers Weekly has put out this great review of DISPATCHES FROM THE AVANT-GARAGE. (What is happening I never get mainstream attention, my world is the weird world (good)) But what I hope is that more people will find out about the Alternative Press, and you know?, now they might!

The takeaways: 1) It's useful for everyone to know that Poetry Foundation is now a nonoperating foundation, a shift in its IRS-regulated designation that means it focuses on external grantmaking rather than programming. 2) This change makes PF a national philanthropic org with a magazine attached.

Very welcome news today that the UK will join the Erasmus+ programme in 2027. This will enable greater opportunities for study abroad and contributions in UK universities, and is something we called for in our most recent Manifesto.

This Publishers Weekly article about protests at the Poetry Foundation, including layoffs & changes in PF programming, is so strange. Because this shift is so important to poets, to readers, & to the field, here's a 🧵 about how we got here: tinyurl.com/326xy2tm

First vacation where our kid has a phone and it’s been so annoying kind of rooting for the pick pocket community ngl

I have an extremely niche question related to post-WWII Cameroonian poetry & a writer name Jean Ikelle-Matiba. Is there anyone out there in our beautiful world who knows his work?

Students! Have you written a poem about math or a mathematical concept? There is a contest, and it is free to enter. Deadline January 20th: www.ams.org/learning-car...

This makes me sick to look at, and that is wonderful because AI could never, could never create a physical response so destabilizing because I (human) see a photographer (human) taking great, stomach-churning risks for art.

someone should invent a thing that's like a university but it's goal is to facilitate learning

The Cable got there! thebristolcable.org/2025/12/prot...

@twolinespress.com has arrived in the UK and Europe! We're so proud to be the distributors for this wonderful publisher 📚 www.thebookseller.com/news/two-lin...

Nearly a year ago a bunch of us remember Jerry in Glasgow. Papers and poems from that will be published in the new year... robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2025/03/robe...

Sorry to Paul McCartney but I always thought he was the worst Beatle. However! I love his solo stuff and also Wings. Yes my listening age was estimated as 76. You are welcome for this cool and timely commentary.

My kid brushed his teeth and put himself to bed and my other kid did the dishes. What the fuck is happening here.

Madelyn Dawson writes about Joe Brainard and "The Complete C Comics" for the Brooklyn Rail -- brooklynrail.org/2025/12/art_...

Things are v bad now, but I recently listened to the This American Life ep about Harold Washington. Obvs it covered all the racism he faced during the campaign and his tenure but it also had all these interviews w people from 1997 when it first aired and they were saying the MOST overtly racist shit

YES.

“In a neat reversal of Apollinaire and Frank O’Hara—court poets to an array of painters—Joe Brainard was the painter among the poets.” —Lucy Sante

They're doing like a reverse Sean Bonney poem: don't say "we want power" say "we believe in free speech" don't say "we want to oppress you" say "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help'"

Friends, we have to stop pointing out their hypocrisy. They will do and say and believe whatever it is that serves power. In seeking power, they are absolutely consistent.

It is time for the rest of the world to divest from the US. Beyond time.

This new volume reassesses the approach of the Austrian Brazilian critic Roberto Schwarz to literature, culture and global power relations, making a contribution to today’s push to decentralize thought and rethink cultural dynamics worldwide. 🔗 www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

They hate us for our freedoms.

Jet lag makes me weepy and being in places I used to live or hang out or even sometimes go makes me nostalgic so every time I see my far away friends they must think I am just the saddest person on earth. I’m basically not tho! I mean whomst among us isn’t sometimes, but basically not tho.

W. S. Merwin, from “Berryman”

New cool example of hybrid print-digital publishing. Those interested in the recurrent shifts of cultural appreciation/specific need re: print media <––> digital media, consider reading my book!

Our latest issue, Wasafiri 124: Presencia y Resistencia - British Latinx Writing & Art is now available to read for our digital subscribers and those with access to Taylor & Francis 💻 If you’re unable to access Wasafiri digitally, preorder the print issue: buff.ly/OWMJ4pb

Reading Rooms at the British Library are closed *all week* because so many of its workers refuse to work for pitiful wages in a contemptuously authoritarian and obliviously managed environment. We need leaders who get it and are big enough to sort it out! It’s a mess and a disgrace. Lift it up!!

Our special issue of differences is out! Claire and I were asked to suggest one article that would be open access, and (although it was VERY hard to choose) we picked Whitney’s, which is about Claudia Rankine’s “American lyric” in Ibero-American translation: read.dukeupress.edu/differences/...

"Nearly 80% of the settlement is set aside to claimants who were minors a decade ago during the water crisis." Somebody needs to write the definitive book on the remarkably long + tangled effort to deliver a fair class-action settlement to folks in Flint.

I cannot be counted on to spell my own name correctly at this point in the term-year-decade. Who am I, a dissolving self, only partially accountable to text.

Ready to enlist

My top song for 2025 was Phil Collins' Sussudio, which I listened to for hours on repeat while writing-rewriting a 10k word article on bpNichol and Paulo Bruscky's photocopier and fax machine poetry. It was the perfect meter for thinking with 1980s information technology; I thank Phil Collins.

ahem

Welcome back to #FossilFriday! Here is a Petoskey Stone which is Michigan's state stone. It is a colonial rugose coral known as Hexagonaria percarinata. This comes from the Middle Devonian (Givitian) Gravel Point Formation (Traverse Group). Each corallite that you see would have housed a polyp.

Robert Glück will be in London speaking with Andrew Durbin at Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road, on Thursday January 8th. Buy a ticket soon because it might sell out. If you don't know him: Glück is the author of Margery Kempe, Jack the Modernist, and About Ed, all of which we proud to publish.