Crawling out of my hole after being sick and miserable, #PoemsAbout seems like a good excuse to rejoin the world. We say #NeverAgain and it made me think of the war this country waged on its own children, and how the generational hurt that caused. @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

It feels good to roll over in bed, because it allows the dreams to flow from one half of the brain to the other—and images become language, and poem logic becomes clarified by the logic of rotating stars

For this week's #lifttothesky I'm going to direct your attention to Miss Leading - a spoken word/electronic music artist from Aotearoa who has done some incredible performances exploring the history of indentured servitude in the Pacific. Here's one of her newest compositions.

"The world's leading genocide scholars' association has passed a resolution saying that the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza" www.reuters.com/world/middle...

I'd like to thank insomnia for today's #PoemsAbout #Riot @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

While defending the luddite argument in Discord, I stumbled into this IMO succinct explanation for opposing generative AI: At every step in the process, it impoverishes us.

Time to share What I Did For My Birthday. Let's all agree that we won't tell my mother.

Shit, this is Tim Key. We're doomed.

Sneaking in my #PoemsAbout #Chandelier at the last minute, before I (hopefully) finish tomorrow's one. @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk

Because I've been all up in the annual conference and too busy to post my poem this week, I'll #lifttothesky the thing I've been doing: Romancing the Gothic @romgothsam.bsky.social Online talks every week, all kinds of eerie and odd stuff: from Romantic poetry to the cinematic language of K-drama.

Continuing the tradition of Elijah dressing up for the annual #RtG @romgothsam.bsky.social conference, here's this year's costume. Theme is M R James #WarningToTheCurious, so sheet ghost it is.

Getting properly stuck into @romgothsam.bsky.social 's annual conference, #WarningToTheCurious Fantastic panel about wells, lighthouses, and stained glass. Here's Elijah at a lighthouse for all the RtG people.

Went for a walk. Saw several white basket fungi. They might be my favourite. #FungiFriends

Here's my #PoemsAbout #Ceasefire contribution for this week. Taking a break from my regular themes and unhealthy coping mechanisms, because there was no way this wasn't going to be political. @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoetryForPalestine (more of it under this tag)

Announcing a NEW $2000 matching campaign for Sameer Project's South campaign 🌿 Funds help them purchase and distribute food, and work with/groups like Arab Group for the Protection of Nature to support farming and fishing in Gaza. open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com/collections/...

9. Words are not adequate, but Lean Against This Late Hour, Garoud Abdol Malekian trans. Nadalizadeh/Novey ...Your absence has altered the map of this house and no matter how much I search I can't find that mad corner of the room I can feel how the person who isn't overwhelms the person who is

The only reason you assassinate every Al Jazeera journalist left in Gaza is because you don’t want anyone to document the genocide you are about to accelerate. Any politician and any journalist who cannot call this genocide for what it is, is complicit, and I hope history remembers you as such.

Recognition in the genocide.

Anas Al Sharif had these words to publish if he was martyred which he was tonight as Israel starts the invasion of Gaza City

Barely an hour ago, Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif warned us all: “If this madness doesn’t end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.” Israel just killed him.

amazing short burst of beauty and horror today from Taylor Hamann Los "What the river takes belongs to the reeds, but what the river returns is haunted." https://www.havehashad.com/mcgsl

Every child in Gaza is me. Every mother and father in Gaza is me. Every house is my heart. Every tree is my leg. Every plant is my arm. Every flower is my eye. Every hole in the earth is my wound.

This is a thing that I love, that has been sustaining me and feeding my brain for years, that I would throw money at if I had money to throw. If you like learning about odd and spooky and strange stuff, you should check it out. If you also have throwing money, this is a good place to aim it.

Not on time for Friday, but less late than last week. #PoemsAbout #BlackSky for @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk Not too sure about this one, I might gut it for parts, but I like the way some of the words tumble into each other and those parts were fun to write.

audiofoundation.bandcamp.com/album/t-piki... favourite instrumental album at the moment

unsolicited writing advice: like i need people to know clichés don't suck cos they're over used (though that may contribute) nah they suck cos they mean ur selling ur own super specific experience of the world short

I said I'd post this one even though it's late: #PoemsAbout #Starcrossed for @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk Hopefully the next one will be posted on time. Going to go read some of the others I missed.

Donate to the Sameer Project, which continues to do crucial mutual aid work in Gaza: linktr.ee/thesameerpro... And join and support upcoming workshops that @workshops4gaza.bsky.social runs to benefit the Sameer Project. Writers, artists, and educators can also submit a proposal to teach a workshop:

Tickets are moving. Mic slots filling. If you’ve been waiting for a sign to read, to listen, to speak — this is it. #BeautifulLittleFools #PoemsAbout #OpenMic #BookLaunch 🎟️ shorturl.at/DeXSq

She had me at, "garlands of skulls," but honestly Cat has had me as a follower for years and you should join me if you have any interest at all in the Dance Macabre, ossuaries, or cute Beagle dogs.

READ.

You cannot address the starvation in Gaza without addressing the fact that Israel also destroyed all agriculture and fishing as part of this engineered famine. It's not just cutting off food aid, it is destroying all internal capability to feed people.

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Your daily horoscope: Today you will feel like an old pond in the forest - murky, stagnant, and holding on to secrets and old bones.

Everyone please tell @bsky.app to stop deleting Palestinian accounts in the middle of a genocide and level 5 famine thank you for your help

Been a rough couple of weeks creative-wise, social media break and breakdown awakening. But, you know, #PoemsAbout #Glamour for @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk This one is a lot of things and very few things all at once.

It doesn't matter if they are ever coming for you. It was always ever already too much that they were coming for anyone.

read more books, short stories, and poetry. Do it now. Not just the big sellers in the main shelves. Try someone new, something out of your comfort zone.

Every child in Gaza is me. Every mother and father in Gaza is me. Every house is my heart. Every tree is my leg. Every plant is my arm. Every flower is my eye. Every hole in the earth is my wound.

This is on at 7am Aotearoa time, and I'm going to be awake at 6:30 so the coffee kicks in before the jokes start. If I can be awake before daylight despite my hatred of mornings for the sake of comedy, the rest of you have no excuse.

Carmen et Error is one of my favourite things to read. Small, short, but impeccably curated. Like a perfect amuse bouche of words, but guaranteed to also be swampy.

Ian from @shrimpandcrits.com, Jonny of @monstersplaybook.bsky.social, Quinn at @monsterhourpod.bsky.social and myself have contributed our Monster of the Week mystery book to the very important #TTRPG #CharityBundle linked below. Please check it out, share and donate if you can! Heaps of TTRPGs!

Gaza has become a funeral home but there are no seats, no mourners, no bodies. In the caskets are nothing but what remained of the dead’s clothes, and on the wall is a clock that has not moved for twenty-one months.

Writers, describe your ongoing WIP in the worst way possible. Meat ghost teeth sex.

I think I'm done reworking this #PoemsAbout #BurnItDown for @brokenspinearts.bsky.social @alanparry83.bsky.social Not really sure if this one works or captures what it needs to, but I'll let it go and see what comes back.

This is also why you need to divest your attention from the entirety of Substack, whether as a writer or a reader. Any attention you spend there funds far right goals. This piece mentions Ghost, but there is also @buttondown.com, which has a migration tool that brings all your subscribers with you.

These are the #BDS consumer boycott targets named in the ground breaking report "From economy of occupation to economy of genocide" by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Read more: bdsmovement.net/news/naming-...

I will be getting up at fuck you o'clock NZ time to read spiralling insane poetry at this. If I can be AWAKE IN THE MORNING, you can chip in a few bucks (or grab a free ticket for those who genuinely can't afford it) and come hear some incredible poets do some incredible poeming.

I will be reading at this. Probably the thing I will read will have a disturbing amount of teeth in it. Have a night out at home and listen to a bunch of poets read (hopefully less fucked up than mine) poetry.

IMPORTANT: The more Israeli crimes are exposed, the more emboldened Israel becomes in committing even more. If you’re following the news & the lists of victims’ names, you’ll understand what I’m saying. Lately, every single day, Israel is killing over a hundred people—some of them entire families.