I’m rereading Notre Dame de Paris. Victor Hugo could hardly be accused of understatement or subtlety. I’d forgotten the rôle of the crowd: how the mood of the populace, easily led, swings between extremes. It’s the crowd that’s truly the monster. #literature #novels #society

From the Irish Times - a couple of poems about how to write poems

"Interior". One of a series of poems responding to the paintings of Emmy Klinker (1891-1969). A German artist, born in what's now Belgium, and declared a degenerate artist by the Nazis. #poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #emmyklinker #klinker

New poem from A.E.Stallings. More than a nature poem when you read it – don’t be misled by the snippet in LRB’s post. #poetry

An artwork is more than a pretty picture or object. It's a record of the many hours, months, and years of experiences, training, observations, feelings, thoughts, and countless trials and errors that produced it. It shows us ourselves, our predecessors, and who we could be in the future. Value it.

John Ashbery

I write with quantum theory, not about it. The poem exists in superposition until observed. Writing is measurement. Reading is collapse. Art and reality share the same wave function.

Anyone else had fun writing a sestina? Or alternatively despaired and given up? I think it is a niche form for poetry but I’ve employed it twice in my life, when I needed a sense of slow time drifting forward in spirals.

"see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries – the realists of a larger reality.” Le Guin

Beautifully clear explanation of the lunar eclipse due tonight. Unfortunately the sky over England is probably going to hide the whole thing under a modesty veil of cloud.

Terrific episode in a great series.

I was delighted to have a chance to be on what turned out to be Melvyn Bragg’s last series of In Our Time and also thrilled that an article in The Times today lists our episode (on George Herbert) as one of the best 15 ever! You can listen to it here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

There she is. Pensive. And no wonder – she's four times older than the church and may well be the one to last longer. Dated around 2000 BCE and with a troubled history of her own, she can look beyond our present fractious and dangerous times. #history #culture

The oldest known "poems" are anonymous - such as the Rig Vedas of Hinduism, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Song of the Weaver by an unknown Egyptian of the Second Dynasty. https://rb.gy/aflce #PoetryLovers #poems #poetry #PoetryCommunity #PoetrySky

A new school year starts this week in England. Good luck teachers! I think especially of teachers of English – teachers who can train young minds to navigate language, detecting the lies and manipulations, and getting to recognise truth in both its clarity and its subtlety. #teaching #truth

Light, shade and sinew. All it takes to paint a life, to open a mind. ©️September 2025

A game designed by Arnold Schoenberg.

Tomorrow is the last Sunday of our summer break! Lots to look forward to next month: Sept 7: Ariane Schneck on Descartes and Elizabeth of Bohemia Sept 14: Polarities in Daoism Sept 21: Early Cartesianism Sept 28: Femininity in Daoism All on www.historyofphilosophy.net! #philsky #podcasts

Short and clear; so helpful.

I find this poem arresting, both for its content and its craftsmanship (shocking and subtle, respectively). Somebody please put it in an anthology and give it a sustained existence.

Why are you killing me? Well, don't you live over the water? My good friend, if you lived on this side, I should be a murderer and it would be wrong to kill you. But because you live on the other side I am courageous, and it is right. - Pascal, Pensées 3.84

Ne me remerciez pas les "jesaistout, j'aitoutcompris", ça me fait plaisir 🙂

This, looked at one way, Appears to be the clear and certain path We plan to take. But wait, it could be we are looking back And rueing fragrant paths we might have taken … #abitofverse #poetry #photography #life

Rite of Passage - by Sharon Olds ‘A room of small bankers...' #poetry #poemoftheday

A reminder we need badly. (I was once fortunate to hear Vaclav Havel speak in Prague; inspirational).

The nobility should keep authors the way they previously kept fools, says Hazlitt, the decline of which practice is a sure sign of ‘social degeneracy!’

G’night Europe …

Poetry Updates

Happy National Poetry Day, Kiwis! I know there are lots of events planned, and we have a granddaughter who is going to be presented with a certificate for a poem that was Highly Commended in a recent competition. Grandparents are Proud! #poetry #newzealand #aotearoa #nationalpoetryday

Unbearable. Should be unspeakable … except it needs to be spoken of … as you have done here.

Poetry, rhythm & melody. A personal thread. Not an essay or even advice When I started writing verses years ago, I was concerned by ideas & wanted to change the world. An eminent academic read my stuff & commended the 'sprung rhythms & odd music'. I was rather appalled. It seemed a trivial comment

This seems remarkably topical these days, if anyone is buying books for an adolescent.

La gracieuse géométrie de la sérénité. #6Mots #Art by 📷 Wayne Sorensen

Interesting review in the TLS of two fairly recent collections from the US poet Diane Seuss – published in Britain in February. What Seuss has to say about Keats’ insanitary habits came as a surprise. “But the nightingale“ she says:– #poetry #literature @thetls.bsky.social

A hint of autumn Oystermouth cemetery

Teenage Levitation Day comes round so fast doesn’t it?

Time tunnel #photography Reposting with a certain hashtag removed after being shocked by what I saw when I clicked on it!

Anna Pitjara - "My Country". Born 1965, Anna Price Pitjara (Petyarre) is an Anmatyerre artist from Atneltye in the expansive Indigenous homelands region of Utopia, in the remote Northern Territory some 240km north-east of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). #painting #art

I've just paid attention to the cover of the latest issue of @pnreview.bsky.social Painted by Marsden Hartley it has the title 'Weary of the Truth' Heavens, this seems on target for our times! #poetry #art #USA #truth

It was good to be able to consult a Virginia relative on an early draft of this poem. I'd visited half a dozen places up and down the eastern seaboard of N America but not the coast where Pocahontas had been raised. My cousin helped me get a sense of place. London I know well! #poems #poetry

I've always been fond of this one. It's the last poem in a series of ten – first published by Artemis (USA) and then in my collection published by Bennison Books. #poem #poetry #journey #history

'In her delirium she walked again the coast where she was born; paddled its lagoons and creeks' Journey's end. And what is the appropriate mood? Here is the last of ten poems drawn from my collection Shimmering Horizons (Bennison Books 2021). #poetry #poems #journey

I wrote this as a sort of reckoning with the past, and the various ways we consider recent history as it occurred and occurs to us. I compare Walter Benjamin’s time in Moscow in 1920s and my own in 1990s. Thanks @pnreview.bsky.social: www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/benj...

« Le monument est sauvé ! », a lancé, soulagé, le maire de la ville

80 years ago

A double mystery: Why was I never taught about the West African emperor Mansa Musa, his wealth, his learning? And what happened to his elder brother who abdicated, sailed the Atlantic and vanished with his fleet? The penultimate poem in my series on historic journeys. #poems #poetry #journey

I have mixed feelings about the next poem I’ll post in my series. It retells the story of a medieval West African emperor of huge wealth who rode in state to Mecca while his brother sailed out into the Atlantic and vanished. It’s in free verse but too close to prose for me now. #poems #poetry

This poem was first published in an anthology. I had been invited to contribute to the Austin International Poetry Festival's commemorative anthology on their 25th anniversary in 2017. Then five years later I included it in my collection Shimmering Horizons. #poems #poetry #journey

Well of course I would recommend this book from the THWUP sale teherengawakapress.co.nz/products/the...

Our Fool for Poetry Chapbook competition is open for entries until 31st August. All the details on how to submit your entry can be found on our website- www.munsterlit.ie. Good luck! #writing #poetry #chapbooks