Some great reviews of Ukraine Unbroken @arcolatheatre.bsky.social in the press (and lots that mention Natalya Vorozhbit’s Three Mates as outstanding). A couple of weeks left to see the show.

Read an excerpt of THE DISAPPEARING ACT (@bookhugpress.bsky.social) by Maria Stepanova (translated by Sasha Dugdale), and take a closer look at this spellbinding novel-in-translation! #AmReading #Novel #Translation #Fiction open-book.ca/News/Read-an...

17B Kingsland Road Shoreditch 5-12 March 🌸🌸🌸

I have two poems in the new @pnreview.bsky.social 288. One is a Propertius (via Grigory Dashevsky). You can read it here: www.pnreview.co.uk/archive/two-...

Publication day for @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social edition of The Disappearing Act, a beautiful reflection on grief and identity in a time of conflict by Maria Stepanova.

On 3 March Maxine Peake is reading @oliviamcc.bsky.social wonderful version of Beauty and the Beast at Hay Castle as part of a celebration of illustrator Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Tickets for ‘Redefining Beauty’ via www.haycastletrust.org/m-1-hay-cast...

Heart looking backwards with the fading of the witch hazel and forward with the crazy bloomin daffs

‘My own personal choice is to continue writing – simply because that is the only thing I can do to counterbalance the distortion. Someone has to use Russian as a language of love’ - Maria Stepanova on Disappearing Act @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social shop.pushkinhouse.org/blogs/booksh...

Natalia Vorozhbit’s Three Mates is part of Ukraine Unbroken at the Arcola opening next week. This short play looks at survivor guilt, shame and conscription in Ukraine and it’s compassionate, funny & human: www.arcolatheatre.com/event/ukrain...

The birds have been so loud these last few dawnbreaks they must know something

If you’d like to hear Maria Stepanova and me talk about The Disappearing Act you could sign up for this online conversation: 21 March 12pm EST / 5pm GMT brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2026-0...

Stepanova’s The Disappearing Act treats exile as a moral condition, not an escape but a reckoning. Spare, haunting prose on Russian guilt, language, and complicity, where forgetting is just another crime and disappearance isn’t innocence.

The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova review – a poetic exploration of Russian guilt

There is a link in the @rferl.org.web.brid.gy article to the online museum of Ukrainian artefacts currently in safe storage and/or inaccessible to the public.

And that is in truth what I never quite say: Those trashed slopes are home to the foxglove An ancient restorer of the heart’s beat, my love. (My only Valentine’s poem is here for anyone who prefers them unsweetened) poets.org/poem/valenti...

‘For me, Erato and Hôtel Amour […] take us to a place somewhere close to where Eliot takes us in Four Quartets.’ From a sustained & thoughtful review of @notjustdancing.bsky.social recent @serenbooks.bsky.social collection Hotel Amour: woodbeepoet.com

This book meant a huge amount to me when I first read it as a young mother – and now, as a carer for different generations, it continues to resound.

This is the most delightful book! Danny Hahn takes the reader through Shakespeare’s many translations (en route telling you a great deal about plays) in a generous, personal & extremely readable way. I love his footnotes (an apology to his editor for the lateness of ms - he was counting syllables…)

Deep and everlasting regret I didn’t just abscond to Florence to see this in January. Who needs dry when you can drink Beato Angelico… www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

@sofkazinovieff.bsky.social on my Willow walk recently. Happy memories!

Definite coup de foudre 🎪 @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social

‘The older you get the sharper King Lear comes into bifocals…’

Getting through the blue weeks of January gracelessly with the help of thermal fleeces and a Christmas gift candle misleadingly called ‘optimism’.

The artist Gabrielle Goliath and the curator Ingrid Masondo are pursuing urgent legal action in South Africa's high court against the country's culture minister Gayton McKenzie, with the aim of overturning his decision to cancel their Venice Biennale pavilion. buff.ly/zO6ROlf

Conceived & dir by Nicolas Kent, the Ukraine Unbroken season runs at the @arcolatheatre.bsky.social from 26 Feb-26 Mar. The featured plays are by David Edgar, Cat Goscovitch, David Greig, Jonathan Myerson & Natalka Vorozhbit (translated by Sasha Dugdale). Co-produced by Nick of Time Productions.

It is difficult to remember what it feels like to be in any conditions except the ones we’re in. It is almost impossible to pack the right things for a different climate. Alexandra Harris, Weatherland

So much happiness in the little word “clasp” - from Penitential Cries, Susan Howe

This is a really fascinating book. I particularly liked his description of childhood in 40s Dublin, his formative years, the drawing of anthropology into his thinking, and his travels in Iran. But it was full of riches and revelations, & I now have a pile of related articles and books to read.

Grace Nichols' poem 'Like a Beacon' was one of the first five poems to be featured on @poemsonthetube.bsky.social posters 40 years ago. It's included in her Bloodaxe retrospective I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems. A clip from it was included on Radio 4 (at 9:55): www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

This is all right and fair, says Willow from her thermal throw over a velvet divan.

Some real delights approaching!

What a big, what a devilish big artist you are, Marina! (Pasternak does a wonderful job of the genius read)

Many thanks @olgaz.bsky.social for this early review of Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social - it’s such a humane and real response to the book it made me see it differently again.

Bleak and nameless terror making a sort of static noise over my head like a scene from an 80s film

Very keen to see this. baltic.art/whats-on/oX-...

About five metres short of shelf at the moment

The clouds were lower than the hills the other day – like being on an island surrounded by broiling misty seas

Feels like I have been reading Peter Brown’s ‘Journeys of the Mind’ – the history of an intellectual life devoted to Early Christianity and Late Antiquity – in real time but finally nearing the end. Another book that has changed things for me in numerous subtle ways.

Sun like the tiny bright pupil in the fog’s eye

Shoah (A Forest), 2003, by Polish painter, photographer,poster artist, illustrator and filmmaker, Wilhelm Sasnal.Born 1972 Oil on canvas 46 x 46 cm Wilhelm Sasnal is considered one of the most prominent and internationally successful Polish contemporary artists #art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social in UK and New Directions in US (and translated by me) is a book recommendation for 2026 @financialtimes.com

Georgia O'Keeffe, American (1887-1986), Eagle Claw and Bean Necklace, 1934, charcoal on paper, 48.5 x 63.9 cm, MoMA, New York City, New York, USA

Wolstonbury Hill at the end of the afternoon today. Bitterly cold but that magic solstice light.

Ah the old Christmas morning tradition of suturing the orange

Keep walking, and if there’s a hill climb it. Someone sent me ‘Christmas Garland’ @candlestickpress.bsky.social and I was entertained to find I had a poem in it…

0840 sunrise – follow the link to see it at Newgrange!

Ukraine Unbroken @arcolatheatre.bsky.social includes a short play by Natalia Vorozhbit (in my translation) about men facing conscription. She’s a brilliant writer & this is unmissable: www.arcolatheatre.com/event/ukrain...

Ukraine Unbroken @arcolatheatre.bsky.social includes a short play by Natalia Vorozhbit (in my translation) about men facing conscription. She’s a brilliant writer & this is unmissable: www.arcolatheatre.com/event/ukrain...

Paul Klee, Swiss-German (1879-1940), Figurine Of The Colorful Devil, 1927, tempera, paper mounted on card, 47.7 x 30.5 cm, Franz Marc Museum, Kochel am See, Germany 18 December 1879 - 29 June 1940