An established figure on the East Midlands literary scene as one half (with Birgit Friedrich) of the poetry collective Dandelions, Caroline Stancer makes her publishing debut with Full Body Reclaim, a handsomely produced pamphlet in Five Leaves’ New Poetry series. Whereas many first volumes hint at a voice beginning to find itself, or something taking shape that points towards the promise of the future (“Critics, hold your fire,” as Vernon Scannell put it: “the best is yet to come”), what we have here is more like a showreel: a confident demonstration of Stancer’s talent and capabilities.

‘BATMAN AND BATWOMAN ROB THE POUNDSTRETCHER STORE!’ We could set up a graffiti school,get commissions from gangs, let students practicein the basement car park before allocating billboards, churches, banks. We could start up a skunk farm.There are enough empty flats in this block.Police dogs would get doped up finding their way round here. Let’s set up a personal shopping service.

WAITING FOR THE RAPTURE When I visit I walk throughcorridors created by everything from your mother’s flat(she was a hoarder too). The sealed boxesare draped with clothes,empty cans, takeaway containers full of ashy slimeand a syringe abandoned by a temporary lodger. You are keeping these stacked packages so carefully,they must be for your life in heaven—

Although well-received in some quarters (“Sillitoe scores a hat trick” - Punch), The General confounded many people. Highly anticipated after the one-two of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, here was a curious fable, miles removed from the back-streets of Nottingham, its twin protagonists the titular military type and a standoffish orchestra conductor who ends up as his prisoner.

Forthcoming from Broken Sleep in 2027, Andy Croft’s Escape to Moribundia is a verse-novel in Pushkin sonnets. A black comedy about the colonisation of the Future, a study in Hauntology and a bad dream featuring Trump, Musk, Farage, Palaeolithic hunters, US cops, public schoolboys, merchant bankers, Fascists, Daleks, a pack of wolves and a minotaur, it is based on Patrick Hamilton’s 1939 science-fiction satire…

“Hallo!” The word came out of the fog, followed only a second or two later by thevague outline of the man who had shouted it, the more substantial outline of abuilding of some description behind him, and a smudge of grubby yellow-orangewhich seemed to be hanging in shaky suspension next to his head. It was only as I…

Trailer Star's Chuck Out Bin Special or COB to you...

What been chucked out and what been hid....

I am known as Tenner in Fac1968 my local independent record emporium for my tendency not to push the boat out when consuming vinyl.

Melbourne Monash University researchers have found that listening to music can reduce dementia risk by 39 per cent in older adults.

WHATS BEEN HID....

DIET This is where I am right now, feeling likeI’m in some loose-limbed American poemby one of those hard-living American poets.Mentioning no names, but … those poets,who casually toss their cookiesin the car park of a roadhouse then go back inside.Who work their way through brands of mouthwashlike fresh-breath sommeliers, coming downoff the Scotch.

LEAFE PRESS Leafe Press publishes poetry, mainly of the modernist / post-modernist variety. It's a 21st century press and a digital press; it was founded in April 2000 with a launch at Nottingham Central Library and was run with digital printing and desk-top publishing software, which was still new, and which was helped by my working in the IT industry. The press is named after Leafe Close, the street I was living in at the time, and that was named after James Leafe, one of the munitions workers killed in the Chilwell explosion of 1918 who would probably be bemused that a poetry publisher was named after him.

Songs and poems from the Thames Valley Texas 'tour' supporting The Dreaming Spires launch of 'Normal Town'.

YouTube video by Trailer Star

12 track album

The Great Stink ‘But the Dragon was loose at the time . . .No one had challenged him lately . . .He got to our part of the world; nobody saw him ofcourse, there was just like a bad smell in the airand everything went sour; people’s mouths and eyeschanged their look overnight – and the government…

In the heart of a stolen starWe are back to wigwams againNames on limbs just incase it comesHurricane Benjamin destroyer of tents,Destroyer of children and whole bloodlines. Fuck it, lets get back to relatable world events -Someone in England died from the skinny jabAlan misgendered Beth again raise a low-level concernAnd don't worry about Sudan it's a mythical place…

This year marks the 50th anniversary since the original broadcast of one of the most beloved of British television series, The Good Life. Created and written by John Esmonde and Bob Larby, the series' premise is well known: namely the highs and lows of a middle-aged suburban couple who decide to quit the rat race and become self sufficient in contrast to the affluent, acquisitive lifestyle of their upwardly mobile neighbours.

Fifty years is a long time in politics... and it was fifty years ago that four young anti-militarists in Aberdeen were arrested under the arcane charge of Incitement to Disaffection. I was one of those accused of trying "to seduce a member of Her Majesty's Forces from their duty". Though I doubt whether I've ever seduced anyone in my life, in this case it was for giving members of the armed forces the leaflet…