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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · 6d

'I love you for being a toad' Valentine's card incoming...

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 7d

Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse
squeeze under the rickety door and sit,
full of satisfaction, in a man’s house?

—Norman MacCaig, “Toad”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)
#poem #poetry #BookWormSat
birlinn.co.uk/product/the-...

Toad
by Norman MacCaig

Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse
squeeze under the rickety door and sit,
full of satisfaction, in a man’s house?

You clamber towards me on your four corners –
right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot.

I love you for being a toad,
for crawling like a Japanese wrestler,
and for not being frightened.

I put you in my purse hand, not shutting it,
and set you down outside directly under
every star.

A jewel in your head? Toad,
you’ve put one in mine,
a tiny radiance in a dark place.

Reposted by Isobel Cook

ICAN @nuclearban.bsky.social · Sep 9

The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not end World War II and here is why: merotribune.com/2025/08/25/t...

#NuclearBan #Disarmament #InternationalSecurity

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Sep 8

Being told 'stop making mistakes' never helped my piano playing, my maths homework, or anything else I've done. Changing who I got my advice from, on the other hand...

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Sep 8

Can't make it to today's discussion? Learn more about 'Heavy Water' and the (re)mediation of the Chernobyl disaster in my 2023 blog post: writingverbaboutwritingnoun.wordpress.com/2023/05/23/b...

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Sep 6

Got around to deleting my duolingo account (which I've used on and off since 2014) and it was... anticlimactic.

Reposted by Isobel Cook

Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Sep 2

On Monday 8th September 2025 the Art in the Nuclear Age reading group is meeting online.

Heavy Water by Mario Petrucci is a response to Svetlana Alexievich's haunting oral history of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Researchers, creatives, and #nuclearCulture enthusiasts welcome.

AiNA Reading Group: 'Heavy Water' by Mario Petrucci

A regular reading group with Art in the Nuclear Age: a UK-based arts hub exploring nuclear culture.

www.eventbrite.com

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Reposted by Isobel Cook

CND Peace Education @cndpeaceed.bsky.social · Sep 4

The start of September marks the anniversary of the Women of Greenham Common's Peace Camp. The camp began in 1981, opposing Britain’s nuclear policy and their decision to allow US Cruise Missiles to be stored in Greenham and lasted almost 20 years!

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Reposted by Isobel Cook

Vicki Lesley @vickilesley.bsky.social · Sep 6

A quick reminder: our next online meeting of The Film Thread film club is TOMORROW when we’ll be discussing this incredible anime about a young boy living in Hiroshima when the bomb drops. It’s just £8 to sign up - all details in the post. I’d love to see you there! open.substack.com/pub/vickiles...

10 Things to Know About... 'Barefoot Gen'

Your introductory primer, plus two companion shorts to watch

open.substack.com

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Reposted by Isobel Cook

Julie McDowall @nuclearwar.bsky.social · Sep 2

The French civil defence booklet from 1965, kindly sent to me by @jeremycartier.bsky.social I've uploaded it here and it's free to view.

Savoir Pour Vivre | Atomic Hobo

Get more from Atomic Hobo on Patreon

www.patreon.com

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Sep 2

On Monday 8th September 2025 the Art in the Nuclear Age reading group is meeting online.

Heavy Water by Mario Petrucci is a response to Svetlana Alexievich's haunting oral history of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Researchers, creatives, and #nuclearCulture enthusiasts welcome.

AiNA Reading Group: 'Heavy Water' by Mario Petrucci

A regular reading group with Art in the Nuclear Age: a UK-based arts hub exploring nuclear culture.

www.eventbrite.com

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Reposted by Isobel Cook

History Workshop @historyworkshop.org.uk · Aug 7

How did making banners help women to express themselves and support one another at Greenham Common Peace Camp?

Maisie Jepson (@girlinthewrongera.bsky.social) explores this creative process and explains why motherhood was such a prominent theme.

Motherhood and Banner-making at Greenham Women’s Peace Camp

How did making banners help women to express themselves at Greenham Common Peace Camp? Why was motherhood was such a prominent theme?

www.historyworkshop.org.uk

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jul 17

I've produced a reading guide in collaboration with @commonwealuk.bsky.social on the topic of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, site of Britain's largest antinuclear protest.

You can find it, and other guides to books about peace activism, here:
www.commonwealnonviolence.org/reading-lists

Reading lists - Commonweal

With over 14,000 books, pamphlets and journals in the Collection, sometimes it can be hard to know how to start so here are some reading lists to get you started! New lists will be added regularly, so...

www.commonwealnonviolence.org

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Reposted by Isobel Cook

CND Peace Education @cndpeaceed.bsky.social · Jul 16

Still not too late to submit poems for the National Peace Poetry Competition: Verses of Hope, 3 categories primary, secondary and FE/College. Deadline 23rd July. @peaceeduscot.bsky.social @facinghistoryuk.bsky.social @acitizenshipt.bsky.social

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 26

Write them down in a numbered list with the title 'Things I did not Google this week'. Instant poem. Not knowing the answers is *part of the art*.

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 26

Those moments of discovery are definitely worth celebrating! I have in the past compared research to panning for gold - a lot of wading through cold water in hope of finding something valuable.

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 6

In 2023, I organised an event marking 40 years since the comparable 1983 'Reflect the Base' event and celebrating antinuclear creativity:

Antinuclear creativity – looking back at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and ‘Reflect the Base’, 40 years on

On the evening of Tuesday 12th December 2023, I was pleased to cohost the University of Sheffield’s Centre for Poetry and Poetics event commemorating the Greenham Common Women’s Peace C…

writingverbaboutwritingnoun.wordpress.com

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 6

Happy to chat more about this another time - feel free to drop me a message if you want to know details. (3/3)

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 6

There is a wonderful collection 'Eve before the Holocaust', now out of print and quite tricky to get hold of - and poets Gillian Allnutt and Mary Michaels of the Sister Seven antinuclear group were also writing along these lines. Similar poems in other peace poetry and women's anthologies too. (2/3)

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 6

Sadly it's all rather under the radar, but I've been finding and reading women's 1980s antinuclear poems as part of my PhD research! Not all directly relating to Greenham, but Alison Fell wrote a poem celebrating an action breaking into the Greenham airbase dressed as witches, for example. (1/3)

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 6

I also like this very accessible YouTube video which has a quirky title but includes expert insight into AI ethics and goes on to introduce points about the transparency/accountability aspects of AI systems. Examples include the Covid-era A-Level algorithm, and miscarriages of justice.

i taught an AI to solve the trolley problem

YouTube video by Answer in Progress

www.youtube.com

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 6

I can't speak for @bethbpoet.bsky.social but there are other examples of feminist antinuclear poetry written by Greenham Women at the time - and some of them are quite like this poem!

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 6

Always nice to see a Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp poem out in the wild. 12th December 1982 was the date of the 'Embrace the Base' action, chosen to anticipate the arrival of US cruise missiles. 30,000 women formed a human chain around the airbase in nonviolent protest against nuclear weapons.

Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · Jun 6

Well #PoetsOfBluesky I am not sure if this qualifies as #PoemsAbout #Spectacle because I was actually a part of this particular spectacle. I know some people in my family thought that I was making a spectacle of myself by doing it.

12th December 1982, Greenham Common

December, that time of waiting,
when women came to Greenham Common.

We stood at the gates, linked arms,
made ourselves a chain of flesh,
sang our dissent, invited power to
see things differently.
We tied bright ribbons to the fence,
decorated it with photographs.

Some of us brought tokens of
the lives we wanted to protect:
children’s jackets, baby shoes,
terrycloth comforters; hung them
on the wire to make a rainbow.

We told each other tales of love
and celebration, knew how tired
we were of living stories written
by men without imagination,
who only found security
in the hard edges of a Kalashnikov,
or in the ticking hearts of bombs.

We stood, sang loud and strong,
on and on:
hope in the voices of women.

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Reposted by Isobel Cook

Venus Bivar @vbivar.bsky.social · Jun 6

I'm curating a collection of good reads on the horrors of AI that I can assign to students. So far I've got Teen Vogue on the environment, and the @guinz.bsky.social Substack piece. Any other recs? Needs to be short so that students will actually read it.

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · Jun 6

If you're looking for fiction, Roald Dahl wrote a short story back in the 1950s, 'The Great Automatic Grammatizator', which articulates the development and effects of LLMs for professional writers.

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Isobel Cook @isobelcook.bsky.social · May 28

Yes - I was lucky enough that it was on the exam syllabus when I was at school, so I was introduced to it then, and it's definitely a favourite of mine too. I think it's great, really powerful and haunting. This is maybe controversial but I think it's better than Farenheit 451.

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