‘it's easy to imagine The Lives of Z joining the likes of Christensen's alphabet (1981) as an essential text ecopoetry for years to come‘ Wonderful review of ‘Lives of Z’ by @oliviamcc.bsky.social @pavilionpoetry.bsky.social in this issue of Poetry Review

Tomorrow! Join @sashadugdale.bsky.social from 2.30pm at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, where she will be reading from some of her work. The event is free to attend, but for more information see here:⬇️ poetsandplayers.co/2025/09/04/s...

John Lucas (1937-2025) — poet, novelist, critic, teacher, editor of the incredible Shoestring Press…cornet player, cricket lover, socialist, enabler, and kindest and dearest of friends

Native to the waterways of Britain

On Saturday 27th September, please join @sashadugdale.bsky.social will be at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, where she will be reading from some of her work. The event is free to attend, but for more information see here:⬇️ poetsandplayers.co/2025/09/04/s...

Grief makes us werewolves ‘In the Eyrie Room’ by Hilary Davies from her new collection Compass Light, published by Renard Press. Hilary is reading at Winchester Poetry Festival on 7 October at 7pm in the Railway Inn www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poetry-pla...

A first reading for #HotelAmour on 27th September and in such great company at the Anthony Burgess Foundation. Free and no need to book! More information here poetsandplayers.co

Reading with @notjustdancing.bsky.social & Louise Machen on Saturday 27 September with music from Li Lu & Lulu Yang. What fabulous company!! 🤩https://poetsandplayers.co/2025/09/04/sasha-dugdale-louise-machen-with-music-from-li-lu-lulu-yang-27-september-2025/

Getting the full thousand-yard lurcher stare

high energy holidays

Listening now www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrUk...

Dropped off a vacuum cleaner and some dog treats at a dog rescue yesterday and got some love from a deerhound who put her paws on my shoulders and kissed me like a furry queen awarding me the Hound Cross.

Dear friends. My new book of poetry, Men of the Same Name, is out in the world next month and you can preorder it from the publisher. To order your copy of Men of the Same Name with 15% off the cover price and free UK postage, go to www.carcanet.co.uk and at the checkout enter the code: EJMOTSN15

this book is a delight. Jackie Wills is a wonderful poet and she writes invigorating prose on poems that have inspired her (she also has lots of workshop tips and exercises if you are teaching or workshopping poetry: poetrybusiness.co.uk/product/on-p...

Please join Carcanet poet @sashadugdale.bsky.social on Saturday 27th September at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, where she will be reading from some of her work. The event is free to attend, but for more information see here:⬇️ poetsandplayers.co/2025/09/04/s...

READ ONLINE: My heart is an active volcano Begoña Ugalde, translated from Chilean Spanish by Drago Yurac 🔉Including audio recordings from Begoña Ugalde and Drago Yurac modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/my-hear...

Living the nature morte

Just a month to the Winchester Poetry Festival get booking! www.winchesterpoetryfestival.org/what-s-on

Hymn to the photocopier in Peter Brown’s ‘Journeys of the Mind’: ‘impossible to overstate its importance for the freeing-up of scholarship in the late 60s & 70s. It both multiplied and delocalised knowledge.’ I remember hours by copier in the Slavonic Library, its light hotly whizzing back & forth.

I am reading in Manchester for Poets & Players on afternoon of 27 September @anthonyburgess.bsky.social @carcanet.bsky.social – all details below. Please come if you are around. it would be brilliant to see everyone: poetsandplayers.co/2025/09/04/s...

‘…being a poet means being at the mercy of one’s own impotential.’ Indeed. Agamben (‘Creation and Anarchy’)

'Even on a quick initial reading, The Strongbox by Sasha Dugdale will take the reader's imagination in many different directions and offer immediate pleasures of many kinds.' Edmund Prestwich on Sasha Dugdale's The Strongbox, for The North Magazine. Read more: poetrybusiness.co.uk/product/the-...

I’m very grateful to Edmund Prestwich for his review of The Strongbox. What a super-attentive and scrupulous reading… he even spots the Pindar in the Box!

'A poet with his feet firmly planted on the blood-stained earth who, not naively but stubbornly, keeps looking toward optimism is a beacon in these fraught times.' Lawrence Schimel on Nikola Madzirov tr Peggy & Graham Reid in our latest #FromTheArchive modernpoetryintranslation.com/from-the-arc...

You jolted her awake: challenging her to live every minute left to her, to burst into flower like a cactus in the desert. from 'Ode to Parkinson's' Opening poem in a wonderful new pamphlet by Vicki Feaver 'The Yellow Kite' (Mariscat Press) on life with #parkinsons

I rest my gaze on the brilliance that sustains the river and its transparent songs on the shore I have a long talk with me I understand myself part of the invisible mineral plant and animal kingdoms Begoña Ugalde tr. Drago Yurac modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/my-hear...

Extract from ‘Cow’ – six poems by Uruguayan poet Claudia Magliano in @mptmagazine.bsky.social tr. Jesse Lee Kercheval & Jeannine Marie Pitas. Have a look! 🐄

‘In any truly significant conversation with a person or reading of a book, the intensity of the first dawning of ideas scours the memory like the ground zero of an explosion’ – historian Peter Brown on meeting anthropologist Mary Douglas in 1967 (‘Journeys of the Mind @princetonupress.bsky.social’)

If you haven't read Angela Livingstone's selection of prose essays and criticism by Tsvetaeva 'Art in the Light of Conscience' @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social then I recommend it wholeheartedly: www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category...

Very sad to hear of the death of Angela Livingstone, an extremely fine translator & poet, whose work on Tsvetaeva and Pasternak lit the way for us. She produced wonderful translations herself, and provided literals & notes on Tsvetaeva for Elaine Feinstein. www.essex.ac.uk/blog/posts/2...

Great year for new books by women poets. Here’s a non-exhaustive list: Stav Poleg’s The Banquet @carcanet.bsky.social Hotel Amour by @notjustdancing.bsky.social @serenbooks.bsky.social, Gillian Allnutt @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social & @oliviamcc.bsky.social Lives of Z @pavilionpoetry.bsky.social

Such an impressive long read by Clair Wills @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘And yet, the fascination with accomplishing that which is proven impossible stubbornly persists in the human imagination’ - from Alberto Manguel’s feature in @pnreview.bsky.social on libraries where the imagination feels at home.

‘The aftermath of the earthquake stripped away what little loyalty to Assad remained in the city. Aid trickled in, sporadic and insufficient. People fought over food and basic supplies.’ @loubnamrie.bsky.social on the Syrian city of Jableh, before and after Assad: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"an eye unmoored, a language building itself"

PN Review 284 is here! See below for some highlights… To buy the issue: www.pnreview.co.uk/current-issue

Featuring: Alberto Manguel’s lecture celebrating the National Library of France. Sasha Dugdale on Moscow and the literature of this and last century. Gregory O’Brien’s dedication to Japan and its culture. Read Sasha Dugdale’s ‘Benjamin in Moscow’ for free: www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/benj...

This was a really important book for me too! Brutal and vivid and unforgettable.

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...

The Syrian artist Walid El-Masri, whose beautiful tree became a cover for @mptmagazine.bsky.social is on hunger strike to protest the atrocities happening in Sweida’s current humanitarian crisis and the ongoing siege.

I have a huge soft spot for Graeber and this @lrb.co.uk piece is grist to the anarchist mill. He was having a lot of fun.

My prose piece on Walter Benjamin in 1920s Moscow and my own time in 1990s Moscow is online and fully accessible (although perhaps not for long) @pnreview.bsky.social www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/benj...

Sitting on a stile watching the turn of the year

Very excited to be recording a special edition of The Ukraine Shelf at @edbookfest.bsky.social with my co-host @okhromeychuk.bsky.social and the brilliant Oksana Maksymchuk and Phillipe Sands! Ticketes here: www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival...

Posting this in the spirit of early-bird-catches-the-worm: October is still a way off but please put this in your diaries as Oksana is a star ⭐ and it will be enlightening to read and talk with her harriman.columbia.edu/event/women-...

Frankly, I'm astonished that she kept so calm. "How much help did you have writing the play?" "...rather sordid..." and he emphasises as much distaste as he possibly can for the phrase "in your native Lancashire".

I think I'd like to buy all the books Silver Press publish

🎂 Today would be #PercyByssheShelley 233rd birthday, Horsham’s most famous son & one of the greatest Romantic poets. “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” We’re building a public memorial in his birthplace to honour his legacy. 💛 Donate: www.shelleymemorialproject.co.uk/donate

Hogwash lane in Summer

Thanks to all who have bought tickets for Sounds Poetic with @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social, @sashadugdale.bsky.social, Barry Smith and Linda Kelsall-Barnett, tomorrow in St Margaret's Church Warnham. It's going to be a fantastic celebration. Tickets on the door or wegottickets.com/event/666643/