Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Aug 30

Have some new designs up in the store.

Currently free UK shipping until midnight on Sunday.

Grab a tee or a hoodie

Or don't...it's all good.

www.triedfailed.com

Tried Failed | The Tried Failed Online Store

t-shirts, hoodies & prints. For outsiders, always....

www.triedfailed.com

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Aug 22

Had a day off work

Drew someone hitting themselves with a hammer

You're welcome

www.triedfailed.com

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Aug 20

Thanks Ryan!

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Aug 20

BOOK NEWS!

Coming December 2025

THE AUREATE TROPHIES OF PROFIT & LOSS (and other lyrics for a cold world)

Published via @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social this will be my third collection of poetry.

Pre-orders will open up sometime in late October/ early November.

#poetry #poetsonbluesky #poems

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Aug 12

New sticker design for my pals in San Fran.

A fun one to draw.

I always like doing stuff for friends.

Friendship over everything

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Aug 8

Most absurd design I've ever drawn....

But it's fun, and it was fun to do, and that's really all that matters!

www.triedfailed.com

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Aug 7

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles" Walt Whitman

Took this photo the other day and it seemed fitting to accompany it with a quote from W.W, and Leaves of Grass in particular

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Aug 1

That sinking feeling when someone you work with sends you a line from one of your poems.....🤢

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Jul 27

Nope, England supporter

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Jul 26

Thanks for sharing @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social !

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Reposted by Stuart McPherson

Matthew M C Smith @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social · Jul 26

‘Evening contemplation is a sad hammer’

On #sharingsaturday ‘Night Sonnet #1’ by Aaron Kent and Stuart McPherson @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social @godzillakent.bsky.social @stumcpherson.bsky.social

Share your poetic inspirations using the top hashtag.

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Jul 21

Strange the things you see out of your window.

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Reposted by Stuart McPherson

Black Bough Poetry @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social · Jul 13

Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social - a guest reader at @louloumach.bsky.social’s online launch.

@brokensleepbooks.bsky.social

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Jul 5

Thanks for sharing!

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Reposted by Stuart McPherson

Black Bough Poetry @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social · Jul 5

'The wind cupped us in its /hands, with taillights'

On sharing Saturday, a poem by Stuart McPherson from his 'Silver Branch feature in 2022. @stumcpherson.bsky.social

www.blackboughpoetry.com/stuart-mcpherson-november-2022

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Jul 2

If I can recommend one poetry book for you to buy over these next few months, it's this one by Martin Hayes and published by @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social

Just world class, working class writing.

As real as it gets. Exceptional.

www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

#poetsonbluesky #poetry

Martin Hayes - A Few More Sunrises Yet Before It Ends, Selected Poems | Broken Sleep Books

Martin Hayes’ A Few More Sunrises Yet Before It Ends gathers together decades of sharp, unsparing poetry that documents the underpaid, overworked lives of Britain’s contemporary working class. Hayes’ ...

www.brokensleepbooks.com

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Reposted by Stuart McPherson

Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · Jun 25

PREORDER (31.08.2025):

Adam Barrett’s The First Thirty Years EP is a taut, propulsive collection that fuses poetic memoir with political indictment, navigating masculinity, class, and grief through the lens of North East England.

www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

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Reposted by Stuart McPherson

Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · Jun 26

PREORDER (31.08.2025):

Will Alexander’s Texas Blind Salamander Feelings is a recovered early work whose language pulses with hallucinatory velocity and psychic intensity.

www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

A vibrant, abstract illustration resembling a symmetrical, plant-like organism rendered in crayon-textured orange, yellow, red, green, and blue occupies the centre of a tan background. The title and author’s name appear at the top in dark red serif text, with the publisher’s name at the bottom in a lighter red.

Introduction as present assessment

Texas Blind Salamander Feelings was my second book after Vertical Rainbow Climber the latter being my first foray into print. Its total content has remained obscured and thought lost for the greater part of forty years. During that period I was empowered by the lingual pulsation that inscribed the work of Bob Kaufman. Aime Cesaire, Octavio Paz, and the lingual/visual grammar of Roberto Matta. Writhing in the wake their collective psychic torrent I began to improvise my own lingual element that had been self-seasoned by my own subliminal tonic inspired by ingesting their essence. Not empowered by principles condoned by rote recall but absorption in the depths of my own imaginative arc as it burgeoned from my own lingual foundation. This document accessed from present distance seemed as one of inevitability. As I go over the original manuscript there were indeed oddities and mixtures that in present seeing having now lost any personal patriotism concerning any personal priority as regards the original scripting. Indeed, the language continues to possess interest for me and persists as susurration not unlike that of unfixed glass capable of forming into fresh shape and formation. In this sense I am reviving Lorca’s adage to allow the work time to mature in light of a more mature and lingually balanced maturation. My thanks to the little known Texas Blind Salamander who dwells from birth via blindness in the San Marcos Pool of the Edwards Aquifer native to San Marcos, Hays County Texas. Hearing its curious odyssey immediately propelled me along what I consider a blind automatic expression paralleling what I know of the interesting shapes that blind photographers visually inscribe. Here after protracted sublimation these works have arisen as a new unexpected formation.

$The spirit of the opening section as well as throughout the field of the volume more akin to the little known Peruvian abstractionist Fernando de Sysyslo alive with his mysterious colorful magnetic. They emanate via a vocabulary of inner whirlwinds, fractionless novae, never by some distilled pedantic. A field that emanates spontaneous blazing. Not as oblate emblems poised by sterile structural incessance but a structural somnambulism cognitively rendered by a neutral tapestry that condones its own alacrity by lessening. Not in these works the colorless neural register of Robert Motherwell that transpires symbolized by his great work ( )* that I continue to admire. But the praxis of colored works of de Syslyslo seems shadowed by coloured field that continuously roils the imaginal of fields of late Vlamincik not as some strict coherence, but via irregular provenance. The latter power has prevailed implied by the forces of this eyeless Salamander known to the general mind as the Texas Bl$

The Dust of Green Infinity Callipers

A voluptuous nightingale of rum
solar osmosis causing moon pressure
spleens of yellowed tar morph to darkened camphor
enjambment embracing me with the dust of green infinity
calipers
your being an arc of ghostly cunning
being scores & scores of manipulated edens
being demonic crosses ingrained in your complication via a darkened valley of diamonds not unlike an eel that swims through an arch of sound like a Cassowary magnet
burning like a golden sun under water
being a dietetic aurum
being cobalt samsaras tied to inky eyelid astonishment

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Reposted by Stuart McPherson

Black Bough Poetry @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social · Jun 18

A review by stellar poet @stumcpherson.bsky.social of @louloumach.bsky.social’s ‘I Am Not Light’ - get Louise’s must-have poetry collection

www.blackboughpoetry.com/copy-of-regi...

#poetry #books #bookclub #poetic #poet #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #writers #writing

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Jun 14

December 2025

Sound on!

@brokensleepbooks.bsky.social

#poetsonbluesky #poetry #poems

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · Jun 8

He is one of the greats for sure. Criminally overlooked.

Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · May 30

New design for all you bookheads....

www.triedfailed.com

#poetsonbluesky

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Reposted by Stuart McPherson

Dr Patrick Wright @arainbowpoet.bsky.social · May 25

Many thanks to Ian Pople for this review of Exit Strategy

thehighwindowpress.com/category/rev...?

@brokensleepbooks.bsky.social
@godzillakent.bsky.social

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Reposted by Stuart McPherson

Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · May 24

PREORDER (31.07.2025, @richardnskinner.bsky.social):

Richard Skinner’s Undercurrents is a hybrid essay collection that brings together literary criticism, memoir, cultural commentary, and music writing in a loose, associative structure.

www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

A book cover with a pale blue background. At the top, the title Undercurrents is written in dark blue serif font, with the author’s name, Richard Skinner, beneath it in a smaller, bright orange serif font. The central artwork is an abstract geometric composition in shades of blue, orange, pink, and white, evoking the shapes of musical instruments like a guitar, trombone, and tambourine, intertwined with circles and angular forms. At the bottom, the publisher’s name, Broken Sleep Books, appears in small pink serif text

The Narrative Triangle

In every text, there is a set of three relationships – that between the narrator and character, between character and the reader, and between the reader and the narrator. According to whichever one of those three relationships you wish to highlight, you will have to use your narrator in different ways and to different degrees.
So, if you want the closest possible relationship between character and your reader, you will have to use your narrator like a stenographer – someone present in the story-world whose sole job is to relay to the reader what the characters say and do. The narrator-as-stenographer has no voice of their own, they offer no opinions or value judgements on any of those words or actions, they are just silent recorders.

The early short stories by Hemingway that feature a character called Nick Adams are a good example of this kind of role for the narrator. In story after story, we see Nick Adams go hunting, or fishing, putting up a tent and taking it down the next morning. We are offered no commentary on any of this by the narrator – the stories are pure transcripts of word and action. If we want to know what Nick Adams is thinking or how he feels, we will have to infer it for ourselves purely from what Nick Adams says and does. In this type of narration, we have direct, first-hand access to what the characters say and do. There is no ‘interiority’. This is ‘showing’ at its purest – so stripped down and without any narratorial comment, Hemingway’s early stories could almost read like a film scripts. Dashiel Hammet’s stories and novels are another good example. Acting purely as a pane of glass, the narrator-as-stenographer is nowhere to be seen or heard. A good, more recent example of this style of narration is John William’s fine novel Stoner.
At some point, however, the narrator may pierce the body of a character and enter their hearts and minds, revealing to the reader what the character is feeling and thinking. This could be done only occasionally, and very briefly, via ‘free indirect style’, those moments when the narrator climbs inside the head of a character and allows us to hear what they are thinking. Take this extract from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway:

He dropped her hand. Their marriage was over, he thought, with agony, with relief. The rope was cut; he mounted; he was free, as it was decreed that he, Septimus, the lord of men, should be free, alone (since his wife had thrown away her wedding ring; since she had left him), he, Septimus, was alone, called forth in advance of the mass of men to hear the truth, to learn the meaning, which now at last, after all the toils of civilization – Greeks, Romans, Shakespeare, Darwin, and now himself – was to be given whole to…

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Reposted by Stuart McPherson

Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · May 14

PREORDER (30.06.2025):

Sue Vickerman’s a suitcaseful of dog is a sharp, darkly funny, and unsentimentally lyrical collection that captures life’s absurdities and devastations with equal intensity.

www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

A book cover with a muted brown background. The title, a suitcaseful of dog, is displayed at the top in lowercase burnt orange serif font, with the author’s name, Sue Vickerman, in a smaller dark brown serif font beneath it. The central image is a vintage brown leather suitcase adorned with colourful travel stickers from various locations, including Venice, Paris, Moscow, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro. At the bottom, the publisher’s name, Broken Sleep Books, is printed in brown serif font.

My tree swing

After the storm our sycamore’s
left limb is still double-shackled as before
with offcuts of zinc-plated chain
nicked by my Opa from the steelworks
he jobbed at after they got here

but the tree is now uprooted
(Oma’s and Opa’s fate) and slung
across the torrent that yesterday
was a pavement, like an arm to escape on.
Gone, my childhood swing from way back when.

Fact is, the tree was never destined to last,
fated by a fungus attack two decades ago.
How Oma cried on finding it to be hollow,
like a dream gone. Now the whole thing’s gone,
tackled down, drowned, gone to where they’ve gone.

I spot something black, the seat of my swing,
inhumanly swollen, and more storms to come.

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