While scrubbing moss off paving stones this afternoon, I listened to two episodes of In Our Time. One on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and one on Dylan Thomas. What did I learn? 1. Many of the scrolls concern the apocalypse. 2. Thomas was part of a group of poets called The New Apocalyptics....

This Saturday, @lindapersson.bsky.social and I will be part of the summer exhibition programme at Årstads Mycket Tillfälliga Konsthall. The overall title of the programme is Paradise, and our installation, referencing Benjamin, is titled 'But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise'. arstadskonsthall.se

ICYMI ... last week @ minor lits ... — an interview with @liamsprod.bsky.social + an extract from his novel DEAD ICE minorliteratures.com/2026/06/23/p... minorliteratures.com/2026/06/24/d... — an extract from THE NIGHT PARROTS by Stephen Orr minorliteratures.com/2026/06/25/t...

You can read about this rubbish heap, the disenchantment of the world it represents, the snowy landscape within which it sits, and the novel it inspired in this interview I did with the fantastic @minorliteratures.bsky.social Many thanks to @monalisavitti.bsky.social and @tobiasvryan.bsky.social

'The anti-realistic moment in the modern novel, its metaphysical dimension, is called forth by its true subject matter, a society in which human beings have been torn from one another and from themselves. What is reflected in aesthetic transcendence is the disenchantment of the world.'

An excerpt from my novel Dead Ice is available to read over on @minorliteratures.bsky.social We in Europe are in the middle of heatwave, so this cold wintry reading might feel rather incongruous... but maybe cool thoughts are necessary. And we are past the solstice and heading back into the dark.

You can read about this rubbish heap, the disenchantment of the world it represents, the snowy landscape within which it sits, and the novel it inspired in this interview I did with the fantastic @minorliteratures.bsky.social Many thanks to @monalisavitti.bsky.social and @tobiasvryan.bsky.social

and coming up this week ... — an interview with @liamsprod.bsky.social , alongside an extract from his novel DEAD ICE — fiction from Stephen Orr

Printing up some of my photographs for an upcoming exhibition with @lindapersson.bsky.social at Årstads Mycket Tillfälliga Konsthall in Falkenberg in July.

I've been spending a bit of time with Melancolia recently, specifically Dürer's Melancolia I (1514), along with Benjamin's taxonomy of melancholy in the Trauerspiel book, Warburg's account of pagan renewal in Reformation Germany, and Saxl and Panofsky of course...

I've been spending a bit of time with Melancolia recently, specifically Dürer's Melancolia I (1514), along with Benjamin's taxonomy of melancholy in the Trauerspiel book, Warburg's account of pagan renewal in Reformation Germany, and Saxl and Panofsky of course...

Yesterday was 'Sweden's National Day' supposedly after the election of Gustav Vasa as King of Sweden in 1523, but only a tradition since 1916. Today we went to Viserum to honour the freedom fighter Nils Dacke, a Småland peasant who led a popular revolt against Vasa and his Reformation.

When I worked in a bookshop, parents often asked me if books were appropriate for their child (usually YA titles). My most common answer was that most things are appropriate with the correct contextualization, which often outraged people.

As I'm waiting for a part for my car, and there is no public transport on a Saturday where I live, I thought I would try to hitchhike to the railways station (~15km) to get to a vernissage this afternoon. No luck, so I gave up after a couple of hours. I'm not surprised, but slightly disappointed.

Okay, a list of a hundred books I've read and think are quite good. Only one book per author, no particular order. It reveals the peculiarities and prejudices of my taste, certainly... But I tried to be honest with what I've read and recall. I might make some annotations below...

So many amazing things to read, so little time, so much lack of language skills (can there be a lot of a lack?)...

You go into the Scuola di San Rocco and see the most amazing Tintorettos and then the exit leads you straight into an alleyway where the walls are covered in pigeon shit -- From the sublime to the profane in one go...

You go into the Scuola di San Rocco and see the most amazing Tintorettos and then the exit leads you straight into an alleyway where the walls are covered in pigeon shit -- From the sublime to the profane in one go...

Thresholds / passages.

General tarnishing and decay of the world...

The interior of San Marco Cathedral was pretty breathtaking...

'Presentation at the Temple' Giovanni Bellini (Venice, ca. 1438/40 - 1516).

Venetian façades.

I think I took more pictures of the textures of the walls in the Arsenale than any of the artworks...

Venice textures...

This evening's film lined up already, plus supplementary reading material. Happy May 1st!

Tonight!

Sunday morning was perfect for finishing up Ice by Jacek Dukaj. Fascinating alternate history set in 1924, where the Tunguska event unleashed freezing gleissen upon the earth, with implications for science, society, and capital H History.

Next Wednesday, @lindapersson.bsky.social is part of the show 'Survival Kit' opening at Kalmar Konstmuseum. If you are nearby, please come along! www.kalmarkonstmuseum.se/event/vernis...

No Kingston University, I don't think I will sign up for the Alumni 'Inspire the Future' programme, seeing as how you closed the department where I studied with you... That bit of cultural vandalism was unforgivable.

I took this picture nearly 10 years ago by the chalk cliffs of Møns Klint in Denmark. There had been big storms in the preceding days, strange days around midsummer with visits to barrows, bonfires, and nighttime bicycle rides with lightning flickering all around us...

I love these slate panels on the side of a local building...

This was such a beautiful and tender article, about beautiful and tender lives... I had not heard of Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi before, but this sent me to search out some of their music... and it did, as it says in the article, bring me to tears. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/a...

This texture was also photographed in Norway... From a hotel room that was overlooking a building site. A demolished building had exposed this strange grey paper-like wall.

More textures. A Norwegian mine, photographed nearly ten years ago now... I remember these dark rocks.

Textures...

I still have a few copies of my novel Dead Ice available if anyone would like one. I would be especially interested in doing a trade of some sort... Please send me a message if you are curious. Edition of 50. 299 pages. 25 black and white photographs.

The difference between an em dash, an en dash, a hyphen, and a minus sign is important.

Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras... It can't happen soon enough. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXU9...

This beautiful icon arrived last week. Although, is 'beautiful' really the correct word? Icons are prayers or instances of the divine, a material link in an order that these days feels faint and distant. Does beauty still have a place in this disenchanted world, isn't it now a rub on a wound...

This beautiful icon arrived last week. Although, is 'beautiful' really the correct word? Icons are prayers or instances of the divine, a material link in an order that these days feels faint and distant. Does beauty still have a place in this disenchanted world, isn't it now a rub on a wound...

Watched Aki Kaurismäki's 'I Hired a Contract Killer' last night. Wonderful as all his films are. I love how he makes London look like one big desolate factory/demolition site (or maybe it looked like that in 1990...?) www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN80...

I enjoyed this immensely. It has been on my shelf for a long time (years?) and is unexpectedly wonderful. I thought it would be different from his other work, but didn’t realise it was such a meditation on a diverse range of art and artists, and on the intangible sense of the nebulous within them.

People should take advantage of this generous offer from Toby. Glantz is a disconcerting book, right down to the level of sentence structure, that thrusts you right into the contingency of the world, where the only certainty feels like a monolithic yet somehow inchoate sense of oppression.

A beautiful publication, gratefully received in the mail today. Many thanks Alexander @wordkunst.bsky.social I will return with more thoughts once I have made the time to read with the consideration it requires.

The sun is definitely getting higher in the sky...

The snow is on its way out now, but I'm still lost in its textures...

A chance to once again share the most unpardonable printing error I have ever found. In the faber & faber reissue of Thomas Bernhard's Extinction, page 10.

After reading the Krasznahorkai story 'A Murderer is Born', I've discovered/realised that I can bid on auctions for icons. This is maybe dangerous...