Huge congratulations to Dr Karen McCarthy Woolf @karenmccarthywoolf.bsky.social, Associate Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, who has been awarded a Cholmondeley Award for her contribution to poetry. societyofauthors.org/prizes/the-s...

Today the latest 'Callaloo' landed ‘New Dimensions: Black British Literatures and Creative Communities’ A special Issue edited and curated beautifully by @jallenpaisant.bsky.social & @karenmccarthywoolf.bsky.social - I have one of my grotesque horror short stories ‘Rapier’ included here! Thank you!

Earth Versed: 10 New Poetry Books About Our Relationship With Nature -- by me @therevelator.org featuring @mahaila.bsky.social @maidervang.bsky.social @monaarshiwrites.bsky.social @karenmccarthywoolf.bsky.social @whitneyhanson.bsky.social @mariaschrater.bsky.social therevelator.org/environmenta...

Thrilled to have ‘Self-Portrait with Fire Ants’ in this special anthology Nature Matters edited by @monaarshiwrites.bsky.social & @karenmccarthywoolf.bsky.social a go-to text for teaching. Published by @faberbooks.bsky.social My poem is from my 2nd collection The Zoo Father @serenbooks.bsky.social

Still some extra time to catch up on your reading before the semester starts? Here are two inspiring books for late summer! www.promiseeurope.law.ucla.edu/news/two-inspiring-books-for-late-summer @karenmccarthywoolf.bsky.social @monaarshiwrites.bsky.social

My work has been pirated along w countless others— a @societyofauthors.bsky.social guide on what you can do…

This World Poetry Day, introducing Nature Matters: Vital Poems from the Global Majority, a new gathering of African, Asian and Caribbean diaspora voices on nature. Edited by Mona Arshi and @karenmccarthywoolf.bsky.social , Nature Matters is out in May 2025 and available to pre-order now.

I’m thrilled to have work in this new anthology edited Mona Arshi and @karenmccarthywoolf.bsky.social

Hungary bans Pride, mandates $540 fines for attendees. Will use facial recognition to ID people

Top Doll signing after my @poetrylondon.bsky.social reading at StAnza w @paulfarley.bsky.social & Janette Achariya 💗

Fascism is here. The list of words Trump is banning from government is the most stunning document of our time. Click the image below to see how many words Trump and Musk have canceled as part of their new Reich. 🔗: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Looking forward to this! Poet Michael Symmons Roberts explores composer Olivier #Messiaen's obsession with birdsong in this imaginative sonic trip 8pm Sun 23rd Feb @BBCRadio3 or catch up @BBCSounds Producer @nadiamolinari.bsky.social #classicalmusic #audiodrama www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

I had moments of sadness this week. I spoke at a press freedom conference about the corporate capture of the Observer. This is one of my last pieces. I'll miss my brilliant colleagues. But I'm rebuilding from the ground up, truly independent media. Please join me 🙏 broligarchy.substack.com

Dates for Top Doll out & about this Spring 🌼

Reading w @ellafrears.bsky.social & others at @sohopolypoetry on 7 March. Come thru!!! 🎶✨🎶

They tried to cancel John Crace from covering the right-wing jamboree at ExCel but no one can stop him filing copy this good www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

USS: *chef’s kiss*

Am interviewing poetic mythmaker @nickmakoha at the @goldsmithsenglish.bsky.social Goldsmiths Writers Centre on 26 February — also big up @richardscott whose crystal poems glint in the light!

Are Bloomsbury standing up to Amazon’s ridiculous demands??? Huge if so. Anyone know the inside gossip?

No more Bloomsbury books available on Amazon 👀👀

The great Michael Longely has died. We have lost a poet of immense stature. This recent BBC doc will give you a flavour of how he made made words sing: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

As best you can, ignore him.

'Top Doll', @karenmccarthywoolf.bsky.social's T.S. Eliot Prize short-listed novel-in-verse – a bravura, polyphonic exploration of obsession, mortality and an unflinching look at the history of slavery in America. My review: tseliot.com/prize/the-t-... #poetry #TSEliots

Full moon in Gemini from the Master Shipwrights House ✨

May her spirit soar. I was also just about to post this! Sharing in solidarity and BIGlove Xx

I hope I die warmed by the life that I tried to live — Nikki Giovanni 🖤🙏🏾

Even Santa’s feeling it 👀

Biggest thanks to @betarish.bsky.social for including Too Doll in this stellar list ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My poetry books of the year for @theguardian.com; it was v tricky to get it down to this selection. But a rich year all told: www.theguardian.com/books/2024/d...

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. 🇹🇹

Nostalgia

At the launch of @afropean.bsky.social photobook with Home is Not a Place collaborator Roger Robinson! 💎✨🪽

Top Doll also out n about!! 👀 w the T S Eliot crew 👻🪽✨

There are now a few signed copies of Lapwing on the T.S Eliot Prize display at @poetrypharmacy.bsky.social I could spend all day in there 💚

Hope & the Fountain of Youth.

Dear friends, please take this with you on your commute; listen while walking your dog; find minutes in the blur of our busyness to hear Lena and Fady talk to Diana Buttu about the genocide that the US Congress refused to stop arming today. I beg you to listen.

Hello––I'm interested in poetry & songs written to protest against harm to rivers or to protect them from harm. Not just paeans to rivers, of which there are many. But words to protest or protect. Can you recommend anything? I’d really like to grow a list. Any century, language, culture, custom.

I’m here on socials when I could be reading this ! 🔥 Jason-Allen Paisant’s The Possibility of Tenderness - a memoir of Plants & Dreams. On the magical properties of bush tea amongst other revelations 🌎

I’ve not cooked this before but it sounds delicious. I only wish the Palestinian farmers that grew it were able to continue growing and eating it themselves.

Yes. It was delicious.

In The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, after hearing about a massive & deadly scapegoating, the narrator asks why the peasants didn't attack the landlords, their true enemies, & is told, "When your real enemies are too strong, you get weaker enemies," & every day I think about this & also see it