I LOVE @overleaf.bsky.social's writing, both critical and creative. Now you can read it too! Her article is now out OA, exploring C19 poet Eliza Cook, the Slaugham Yew, and their C21 traces/resonances. doi.org/10.3197/WHPP... #19thcentury #poetry #ecopoetry #arborealhumanities #academia

Awww, thanks for this 🥰

Chuffed to be in vol.2 of @plantperspectives.bsky.social.
Thanks to all at the journal & @rbgkew.bsky.social for including my weird little piece about working-class C19th poet Eliza Cook, trees, illness& intertemporal weirdness.

Read it here:
www.whp-journals.co.uk/PP/issue/vie...

There's a lot to be said about identity, solidarity. But a simple place to start: the people who are willing to fight for their neighbors when their neighbors have different problems have a very, very good chance of having neighbors to fight with when you all share problems

Statistically in Britain if you are a cis man and you rape someone you are overwhelmingly likely to get away with it, there is a vanishingly small likelihood that you will be convicted. That is a feminist issue. Trans women wanting to use women’s toilets or play women’s football: not so much.

this is a staggering amount of money to build camps—suggesting that building & running a gulag will be the primary function of the otherwise gutted Trump-state

in last fiscal yr: "D.H.S. allocated about $3.4 billion for the entire custody operation overseen by ICE"

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/u...

Brexit cost me my job. Now Trump’s tariffs could take the next — and once again, it’s working people who pay the price

Ted Lasso was great when the show’s thesis was that relentless positivity is a thin veneer over a desperate, near-nihilistic sadness, but that it may nonetheless still be the “best” available option in an otherwise heartless world.

Well, *now* I want one…

Look at this big handsome bastard. I nickname him ‘Creeper’.

NB: this windowsill is much shadier than the picture makes it look. Also, am almost as excited about this plant as I would be about a new kitten.

'They fuck you up, your mum and dad'

Whenever I speak up about being working-class in the arts, or share my experiences, I always get some classplaining back. People who aren't working-class keen to tell me how I should feel or tell me they're middle-class but have 'struggled with money' in the past

www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Percy Shelley: I propose a ghost story contest! What is the SCARIEST story concept???

Mary Shelley: a guy creates another guy

Byron: I don’t get it

Mary Shelley: (*looks directly into the camera)

This is happening, right now.
The great "arribada" (arrival) of mother Olive Ridley sea turtles on the Odisha coast, where they dig sand-nests & lay their eggs, driven by ancient instinct.
Heart-lifting, magnificent, moving: part of a geography of hope.
🎞️ by Bivash Pandav via my friend Yuvan Aves.

1825: Saw a large bunch of blue violets in flower & a root of the Bedlam cowslip

You're supposed to be honoured and delighted 'just to be nominated' for awards, but when you're working class you can't afford to be happy missing out on a cash prize. The money means more than the recognition. We can't pay the water bill with recognition.

I was planning my Arvon Masterclass on pacing this afternoon.

Got quite excited, as it isn't something I've taught exactly like this before.

Still places available for Friday. Why don't you join us?

www.arvon.org/writing-cour...

@arvonfoundation.bsky.social

'On the nights she struggled to breathe, she was forced to stay awake and hold the mask to her face in the dark. The NHS’s solution?...one assessor suggested her 14-yr-old daughter fill in as a child carer...being on call for the ventilator throughout the night.' www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I’m fascinated by the ‘shrinking’ quality of the stanza used by Robert Burns in which longer lines give way to shorter ones in a kind of funnel for the celebration of smallness. A nice example here by Norfolk dialect poet John Kett, on looking at the stars someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/wee-sleeket

I was recently diagnosed with MS; a relapse has kept me from working. It’s made me ponder my profession’s overemphasis on ‘productivity’, & the lack of (self) compassion that attends it.

Managed to read this morning for the first time in weeks- fitting that the book is about ‘generous relenting’.

Yeah I’m with you- &don’t think Star Trek needs to talk down to its viewers, which sexy action revamps often seem to do. My favourite episodes are full of talking in rooms abt ethical problems- cf ‘The Measure of a Man’. They’re already considering complex injustices more subtly- I prefer that way.

I feel like Star Trek has had an increasing sense (since TNG) of questioning the motivations of Star Fleet & its limitations that reflects the writers’ sense of the US at the time. This could be a reflection of a (justifiably) pessimistic time, or just maybe a sexy Yeoh moneymaker…

collections often are criticised for “unevenness” but isn’t that also part of their charm? that the workings of a poet “becoming” are also on the page, next to poems that feel crystallised? don’t we love process and learning and error more than the language of product & perfection? or shouldn’t we?

This is spot on; there’s a difference between a collection that lacks intention or craft-graft & one that simply reflects the unevenness that characterises everything.

Besides, irregularity is a kind of beauty- resistance to the notion of ‘perfection’ that tries to keep us running ourselves ragged.