Books aren’t pills. But I do need them like blood. This is the first of my Sick Reading posts, where I write about being ill, and the books that have saved my life. First, @nataliediaz.bsky.social's Postcolonial Love Poem (@graywolfpress.bsky.social). 🔗 novelniche.substack.com/p/sick-readi...

Beginning 2026 with the official announcement of a new MM romance from @joannachambers.bsky.social = a pocket of bliss to take into this week! Joanna writes so beautifully, and with such care, about men in love. This book is going to be exactly what I need in February; I can already feel it.

Happy Eighth Birthday, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting! I love you. You saved me. You kept me dangerous. You remind me to be wild. #EveryoneKnowsIAmaHaunting

Welcome, October 🎃 What spooky reads do you have lined up this month? 💀🥀📚

Our times are tough, but I have to believe that our poems are (radically, tenderly) tougher. Join me on my two-part workshop for The Writing School, and unstopper the truths your poems most long to say: thewritingschool.co.uk/unstopper-th...

In greenest gratitude for a new poem, "The Meaning of Trees", to branch out as today's selection for poets.org's Poem-a-Day. Profound thanks to Nathalie for inviting my work into her thoughtful, seeing curations this month. Thank you, dear trees, love you bad-bad 🌳🌲🌴 poets.org/poem/meaning...

Extremely excited to read Nazaret's debut! Congratulations!

🔥 Photograph by Shaun Rambaran.

I'm beyond elated (electrified) to have interviewed @alisonsealysmith.bsky.social for the newest issue of @caribbeanbeat.bsky.social. Alison's voice as Storm/Ororo Munroe has carried so many of us through maelstroms. *She* is just as remarkable. Read online: www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-188/th...

Bring your queerest vibes to this @arvonfoundation.bsky.social Bi+ Poetry online masterclass with me! 📆 September 23rd, 2025 🕖 7-9 PM BST / 2-4 PM AST 💸 £40, or ≈ $360 TTD, or ≈ $53 USD 🌐 via Zoom webinar 🔗 bit.ly/bipluspoetry... Claim the bi+ poems that are your own. #BiPoems

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What a deep pleasure it will be to be with Anu + Alycia's words.

400 witches! *elated broom swish, potion pour and toad kiss* Thank you for being with me on Substack, where I'm now training my attention on making my infrequent updates more regular and sustained, fuelled by inquiry, curiosity, rage, and how we persist--

January Reads: A Knife in the Heart of Being Known A detailed, non-review-related, personal public diary of the books I've read the month previous. I talk about what it feels like to be revealed, utterly, to yourself -- and how one January book above all has shown me how much I've left to learn.

I know. It’s not what you expect from me. Herein, I unearth a poem that's almost a decade old, talk about two of my major tells, and ask you to join me for a week of love and relationships at @arvonfoundation.bsky.social with @ellafrears.bsky.social novelniche.substack.com/p/flank-and-...

In a ragged, treacherous world, I'm giving thanks for Han Kang and Deborah Smith. How astonishing, the gift of Kang in her own language. How remarkable, the conduit of Deborah Smith to bring her to so many of us, in English. I don't think I can ever stop being grateful. Not ever.

Writing romance is such a skillful navigation of desire + restraint, I remind myself as I reread passages across @joannachambers.bsky.social's Enlightenment series. There's something so clear + propulsive about Joanna's prose that makes holding its intensities of m/m love truly heady, irresistible.

You should read A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand if you are ready for your life to change. This is history. This is Black imagination. This is radical cartography. These are, as the book’s subtitle says, ‘notes on belonging.’

My poem "Plumeria", selected by Rajiv Mohabir and published in MANOA Journal, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In many ways, it's not an easy poem to take. I'm so grateful it found a home here.

Ten Days of 2025 Caribbean Books I'm Wildly Excited to Read - Day Three! I adored, without restraint, @claireadamwriter.bsky.social's Golden Child. Love Forms, her next, is *the* intense novel of 2025 I need. No one does emotional difficulty and distress like this. www.faber.co.uk/journal/fabe...

Ten Days of 2025 Caribbean Books I'm Wildly Excited to Read - Day Two! @camilleuadams.bsky.social's How to be Unmothered feels like it already has my heart. I know I'll be hurt *open* by this memoir, by its truth, and I welcome it. I want its uncompromising weight: restlessbooks.org/bookstore/ho...

Ten Days of 2025 Caribbean Books I'm Wildly Excited to Read - Day One! @laurenfsharma.bsky.social has written one of the most beautiful, moving novels I've *ever* read, so believe me when I say I can't wait for her Casualties of Truth, @groveatlantic.bsky.social: groveatlantic.com/book/casualt...

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's made me. @dboodoofortune.bsky.social's Doe Songs are poems I return to over and again, not because I use them to define the world, but because the world can be read *through* them, their feral eloquence, their greenheart.

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's made me. Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris taught me how to read without borders. How to obey no prescription or directive but the hinterland. When I need to account myself wild and unknowable, I come here again. 🇬🇾

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's made me. The Best of All Possible Worlds by @drkarenlord.bsky.social is visionary work, asking the largest of questions through the most intricate, devoted means. Lord is a true weaver of myths, realities, imaginings. 🇧🇧

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's shaped me. Golden Child, by Claire Adam, harrows me. An unsettling, achingly real novel about two young boys born into a society that prizes education to deathly ends, this is Trinidad on the page that hurts, blisters. 🇹🇹

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's shaped me. I no longer view Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys with the uncritical adoration I felt for it in my teens, but it remains rooted in my understanding of a primordial defiance, a bone-deep revolt against tyranny. 🇩🇲

*slides into your d(angerous) m(issive)s* Won't you join @ellafrears.bsky.social, Daniel Sluman + I on this Arvon online Love Poetry course? Weird, wondrous, wild - all types of poems, on all kinds of love, are welcome here. We can't wait to read your raw hearts. 🫀🫀🫀 www.arvon.org/writing-cour...

Reading the Caribbean means you read the world. I'm reflecting on what this mantra of mine means, especially now, when so many Caribbean writers occupy global favour. If we ever fall out of it, I want us to remember we are the centre of our worlds. We reside within us, and have always made story.

Here's "Matikoor", written in honour of the deep love I have for wild, ungovernable desire, in secretly dangerous-safe spaces. The matikoor was one of the first sites in which I became aware of women loosening their obediences, channelling their hips, tongues, hearts towards their own true freedom.

I have another book of poems firing within me.