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Karl Knights

@inadarkwood.bsky.social

720 followers 140 following 210 posts

Queer autistic writer with cerebral palsy. @inadarkwood from Twitter. My debut pamphlet, Kin (2022) is out now. Mostly screaming about the pandemic. He/him

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Jun 9

Very excited to say that my piece in the Poetry Foundation's series on places is live! A piece for pride, a piece for rural queers, a piece for my neighbour, and my Blythburgh self. Excited to have gotten a slice of a little seen Suffolk onto a world stage!

www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/169...

This Be the Place: My Actual Huh

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

www.poetryfoundation.org

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · 6d

I can't remember much about the film, as I haven't seen it again since it came out, but some sequences are still in my mind, which perhaps says more than my movie verdict. What I do remember, though, is Ginsberg was my 'first' poet in a sense, his was the very first Collected I bought

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · 6d

And to think, there was a lot of griping when Daniel Radcliffe was cast as Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings just over a decade ago, as he was too 'pretty.'

This pic of Ginsberg with a cat is a favourite, also! It's from a brief period where the beard was full, but short.

Allen Ginsberg in 1960 or so. Ginsberg is a fellow with glasses, short black hair and a shortish beard. He's holding a cat. The cat and Ginsberg stare at each other.

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · 7d

Oh this is cool, what is the collection of writings called? Apparently, the only line of Ian Dury's memoir was 'Hullo Sausages' (as he was too ill to complete it). Hopefully I can get ahold of the collection book and say hello sosajis instead

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · 9d

He probably wanted to be left in peace, and he would've had every right to tell me to sod off, but no. He was friendly the whole way, and so kind to the stammering and sweaty bundle of nerves sitting beside him.

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · 9d

I met Brian shortly before his reading, on a bus. I was eighteen, and I can't recall what possessed me to sit next to him (was the bus full?) I talked his ear off about poems, and he recommended me a book of Robert Lowell's, Imitations. Brian was so kind to me.

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · 9d

Genuinely gutted to read that Brian Patten has died at 79. I adored his work, and his reading at Aldeburgh is still the best reading I've seen. He emailed me shortly afterwards, to wish me luck with my writing. Here's a favourite Patten poem, from Armada, without question his best collection.

Stepfather

I cannot pick him out the air,
he is not there,

nor out the soil,
the worm was not his style.

I cannot pick him out the fire,
there's not a cinder's worth left.

So why do I still feel bereft
when no love was lost?

Perhaps for what might have been
had he not been.

In the coffin he seems a replica,
a terrible dummy,

still wreaking havoc,
still beating up the living.

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · 12d

Sorry to hear that Tony Harrison has died. In a conversation with Simon Armitage, filmed by the BBC, Harrison spoke about how he regretted that he couldn't write anything his parents might've enjoyed until after they died. Here's one of the poems in memory of his dad, among his best work for me:

Long Distance II

Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.

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Reposted by Karl Knights

Endless Screaming @infinitescream.bsky.social · 15d

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Aug 28

Neurodivergent writers, how do you guard against procrastinating immensely? I'll have a writing room for a month soon. I usually write in dribs and drabs, amidst the hubbub of life. I've never had such a large slab of time solely for writing. How to make sure I don't dawdle the time away?

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Aug 22

In my infinite wisdom I forgot the source, that Levine quote is from his interview with John Amen, available to read here:

www.modernamericanpoetry.org/john-amen-in...

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Aug 22

I'm reminded, also, of something Philip Levine said in an interview, about having an 'inner sense of applause'. He says,

'I do have an inner sense of applause, a sense that I did it, I got what I was after[...]there is a kind of inner applause, and I think that that´s what keeps me going.'

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Aug 22

This reminds me of a poem by W.S. Graham, called 'Johann Joachim Quantz's Five Lessons'. In the last lesson, the instructor says to his student,

'One last thing, Karl [...]
Do not be sentimental or in your Art.
I will miss you. Do not expect applause.'

people.umass.edu/~krueger/Doc...

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Aug 14

Lane wrote some great books of poems, too. Alas, most of them are out of print, so they're a bit hard to get ahold of. I'm hoping for some justice for his poems soon 🙏

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Aug 14

Difficult to express how much I despise seeing this note on AI use underneath a BBC News article, and not for the first time.

Text on a white background which reads, 'BBC News used AI to help write the summary at the top of this article. It was edited by BBC journalists. Find out more'

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Aug 3

For anyone who doesn't know, the Warsaw Uprising was an effort by the Polish resistance to take back their city from the nazis. The poems of Building the Barricade (comprised of what Świrszczyńska's friend and sometime translator Czeslaw Milosz called 'poem-pictures') took 30 years to write.

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Aug 3

Two poems from Anna Świrszczyńska (known to American readers as Anna Swir) from her astonishing book, Building the Barricade, an account of the Warsaw Uprising. The poems, translated here by Piotr Florczyk, speak so painfully to the genocide and forced starvation happening right now in Gaza.

Lives One More Hour

The child is two months old.
The doctor says:
without milk, the child will die.

Mother wanders all day through basements
to the other side of town.
In Czerniakow
a baker has a cow.
Mother crawls on her stomach
among rubble, mud, corpses.

She brings back three spoons of milk.
The child lives
one more hour.

Two Potatoes

I carried two potatoes
a woman came up to me.

She wants to buy two potatoes
she had children.

I didn't give her two potatoes
I hid two potatoes.

I had a mother.

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Aug 1

I had forgotten that bubblegum poem, but I remember really laughing at the word 'worser', as I have after seeing it again. I love a poem called 'Scabs', too, that's a little too long for Bluesky. One verse goes,

The scab on Eric's knee
is economical.
£2.50:
second-hand skates.

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Jul 31

Farewell to Allan Ahlberg, at age 87. Here's a favourite poem, from 1983's Please Mrs Butler. The illustration is by Fritz Wegner. Ahlberg poems are often funny, but underpinning every word and line break is a very deep sympathy for the pains of childhood that never wavers, as in this poem.

Slow Reader

I - am - in - the - slow
read-ers -group - my -broth
- er - is - in - the -foot
ball - team - my - sis -ter
is - a - ser - ver - my
lit - tle- brother - er - was
a - wise - man - in - the
in - fants - christ - mas - play
I - am - in - the - slow
read - ers - group - that is
all - I - am - in - I
hate - it.

A picture below the poem shows a show hunched over a book. Between two clocks, the words 'I am in the slow readers' floats above his head.

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Jul 26

Thanks for sending this over, I didn't know these grants existed! I'll have a look now

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Jul 26

I expected the papers to be an odd page or two of correspondence about the book, and that would be that. Nope, it's an enormous folder. Princeton charge the quite low rate of two bucks per page, but of course over hundreds of pages, that adds up. If you can help a poor writer out, I'd appreciate it!

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Jul 26

A long shot, but I'll give it a whirl - do I know anyone at Princeton University? I'm looking to unearth the story of a rare, historical memoir from a queer writer in my hometown, but the papers are much larger than I anticipated, and the first 300 pages are free to students and faculty

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Jul 22

Look Ma, it's me (bottom left) with the mighty Bloodaxe 🙏 Being in a Bloodaxe anthology has been on my bucket list for as long as I've been a writer. We did it! And I'm in great company, too. Special thanks to Rachael and Bloodaxe for putting this reading together, and making an essential book

Bloodaxe Books @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social · Jul 22

Now on our Vimeo: a new compilation video for our Versus Versus anthology, featuring 23 of the contributing poets reading their work: vimeo.com/1102502312

Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets, edited by Rachael Boast - www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/...

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Jul 10

Me, looking at my manuscript after cooking too close to the sun: the burnt bits add flavour

Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Jul 10

Makes me wonder, though, are poems more prone to being burnt and overdone/overwritten than other things? Maybe. It feels that way, at any rate.

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Karl Knights @inadarkwood.bsky.social · Jul 10

Me holding my poem:

A screenshot from Spongebob. A green fish looks aghast at their hand, their mouth open as if in shock. They're holding what used to be their drink cup, burnt to a crisp. The straw is pristine.

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