Enjoying being on Substack - and probably clicking with it / finding my algorithm more there than here, if I'm honest - but man there are a lot of diatribes about the publishing industry, makes you wonder how we ever get anything done.

Unsettling realisation that, at the current rate, I am not allowed to buy any more books in my lifetime if I'm to make good on a self-promise that I would read everything on my to-read shelf + good shit on my parents' shelves before buying new gear.

I ate some cherries that were being saved for decorating cupcakes, and I can report that playfully citing William Carlos Williams does not help one's case.

Feeling miserable about the rise of Reform and the far-right, and realised it was a self-centred feeling, in part, about what *I* stand to lose if they had their way. Brits need to start talking about migration as if we have skin in the game. open.substack.com/pub/beyondme...

As of this week, I have a Substack. Would be great to have you along for the ride. open.substack.com/pub/beyondme...

As of this week, I have a Substack. Would be great to have you along for the ride. open.substack.com/pub/beyondme...

I mean, I really am

Be warned, I'm writing a long creative-critical verse essay called 'Homage to Brian Wilson'

Proud to have signed this. Free Palestine ✊🏻 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Talking with a colleague about this. Planning to develop this into a paper / essay. Any suggestions for further reading?

What's your least favourite publishing cliché / euphemism? Mine's probably 'luminous prose', a sure sign I will find the book precious and boring, with ironically little va va voom in the prose.

From Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Toddler I do not know which to prefer, The tantrum with the yoghurt Or the tantrum with the choo choo, The toddler going apeshit Or just after.

Obviously things have got dramatically worse in the US recently, and I don't want to diminish that, but I've been at *so many* conferences in the UK on topics like empire, humanitarianism and development where multiple speakers from the Global South have been denied visas or held at the border

Deathly dull content but I recently bought a block of mild cheddar for the 2yo, worrying abt the salt content of the usual Cornish crunchers we have in the house, and WHAT THE HELL IS THIS STUFF. Weird lactic playdough, never once laid hands on it till now.

You make me dizzy, Peter Gizzi

What's the best book to read about the expansion and (sub)urbanisation of London? Something that tells me how Finchley Road went from being fields to city in the 19th C. Growth of the railroads and the rise of Metroland - all that.

Happy Mothers Day!

Also this 😅

I had a bad review in the TLS a few months back. Read it for the first time today and gotta admit it's knocked me. Ah well - important to acknowledge these things. Here it is, for those with access. www.the-tls.co.uk/literature/p...

In unreasonable times, art cannot be expected to appear in reasonable forms in reasonable speech acts in league with the official language when there is nothing official about language and there are no boundaries to what can be uttered officially official language itself a way of kidnapping meaning.

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept.

The ‘can machines do creative writing’ thing is mostly a distraction from the use of the machines to go through text and images to cancel grants and put people on deportation lists

What are your favourite history books? History books with spark, flair, literary panache - history that eschews the 'three major factors in the rise of the Medici were xyz. To start with x...' style of writing that I find such a snooze and highly prevalent.

This deeply fascistic power move scares the hell out of me. It isn't my country, there's a limit to what I can do, but it can't be allowed to stand. nymag.com/intelligence...

Poem by Suzanne Buffam

To be honest, this makes just as much sense as the sorry excuse for a Pip & Posy outfit I sent the kid out wearing today.

Up with son having a flannel fight at 1am, having finally admitted defeat in the pursuit of sleepiness. How bout u?

Here's a question I don't often see asked. Would it have been better for Trump to win in 2020? Keeping chaotic sleazy shit show MAGA spluttering in power for another four years, rather than letting this turbo-charged version regroup.

Anne Carson on Parkinson's, handwriting, boxing, Catullus... The fact that such liquid virtuosity comes out of the experience of impairment and mortality is one of those sublime ironic victories of art. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Stopped listening to the Today Programme, partly due to family routines, partly tiring of the centrist groupthink, but I'm tuned in now and it's just glaring how little there is in current affairs that speaks to any part of my values. The rightward shift is massive.

Guy next to me on the train is eating the meatiest greasiest-smelling Burger King meal deal - some kind of 'dirty fries' situation - while watching other people play a football video game on his phone, waaaaah

I'm in Cardiff tomorrow night. Do I know anyone here in Cardiff? A part of me is always in Cardiff, so it would be nice to be in Cardiff, in body and spirit, together. In conversation with top poet and human @tazrahman.bsky.social www.bookspacecardiff.co.uk/products/thi...

This is happening on Monday - an online class at 7pm GMT. Would love to see you! I'm polishing up some slides as we speak, on ways of looking at a blackbird, playing tennis without a net, and other fun curiosities of the poetic mind.

What is a Pushcart Prize? What does it mean to get one / to be nominated? Realise I've gone through my writing life without really having a clue. Feels like baseball or congressional politics - something I kind of know about but mostly don't, if you know what I mean.

It’s not too late to register for @daigeorge.bsky.social's online Writers & Artists workshop ‘How to Think Like a Poet’ on Monday 17th February. Book online here www.writersandartists.co.uk/events-and-c...

I took a bad photo of the brilliant crowd at the Heath Bookshop in Birmingham who came out tonight to hear me spiel about HOW TO THINK LIKE A POET. Love Brum 💚

Looking forward to leading this masterclass for Writers & Artists, which will build on the themes of the book as a spur to creativity. Online, so a good chance to connect with you wherever you may be -- www.writersandartists.co.uk/events-and-c...

Does anyone else get nervous on Dylan's behalf when he sings 'One More Cup of Coffee'? Like, I know this an erotic pretext but even so - the encroaching caffeine headache, the coffee breath, the impossibility of sleep should the pretext fail. Seems like a high stakes gamble to me!

You can upsell me anything and I'll regret it straight afterwards. Bad combination. I'm a gullible skinflint, Mr Tighty McDaft.

Watching footage of the inauguration, I don't think the peril to any sort of leftist politics can be overestimated. I think back to 2016, when there was a sense of having a fight on our hands. It's the difference between getting punched in the face and laughed at - the latter is worse.

Another great piece on food, drink and cultural memory from the @vittles.bsky.social stable. Momtaza Mehri on beverages was always going to be a winner. www.vittlesmagazine.com/p/chugging-a...

Superb. Can't think of a book that comes closer to catching the feeling of music. In this case, dub and roots - the ghosts in the grooves.

Confession: I enjoy browsing the catalogues of prestige imprints. Penguin Modern Classics, Fitzcarraldo, NYRB... sniffing out the scholarly editions of Emile Zola, in case I need them. I'll read maybe 0.05% of these shimmering hoards in my lifetime. Enough, though, just to know they're there...!

T.S. Eliot died on this day in 1965. This photo of his mustard, from the Faber staff fridge in Russell Square, was taken not long afterwards

Lovely write-up of How To Think Like a Poet in John Geraint's highlights of 2024 for Nation.Cymru nation.cymru/culture/cult...

More serious NY post. I don't read enough in volume atm to do a stack of fave books, but I hope that when I read I really *read*. And no book changed me more in '24 than Erasure. Hard to say why. I'd do a thread, but see previous post with resolution not to.

Happy New Year. Tbh in a year when I published a book I'm proud of I'm not sure I have a greater achievement than this splenetic, sleep-deprived thread on Gavin & Stacey. Why is James Corden living rent-free in my head?

Gavin and Stacey. How is it possible to have such conflicted feelings about something so majoritarian and fun and middle of the road? Yet conflicted feelings I have. Brace yourselves!

Having your toddler smash a glass door at Christmas is good luck, right? Like the opposite of a mirror

Sherry in a plastic glass with Carols from King's, keeping a fragment of Christmas tradition alive in a year of moving and upheaval. (Who knows where the glassware is.) Without being fatuous, I hope, I'm saying a small prayer of thanks for my comfort and security in a blasted world.