Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jay Whittaker: Utility piece

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 8d

So we were very pleased to include Jay Whittaker’s ‘Utility piece’, a moving meditation on loss from her award-winning collection, Wristwatch:

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2025/09/30/j...

(3/3)

It’s time to rehome you,Hippopotamus,squat in the cornerscuffed veneerthe colour of the eighty a dayyou absorbed for decades.I never liked you.I can say that now.You came when I marriedthe youngest…

1 3

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 8d

The other thing we especially delight in is the utterly mundane name, as though no-one bothered beyond the most basic categorisation. (We love ‘stuff’, we love ‘things’, and don’t ask us to decide between ‘stuff about things’ and ‘the thing about stuff’!) (2/2)

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 8d

One of the items we love most in the #GhostFurnitureCatalogue is that piece of furniture which, unnoticed and seemingly uncared-for, simply gets on with its task of bearing, preparing, cleaning, preserving, or containing. (1/2)

Reposted by Bill Herbert

Sasha Dugdale @sashadugdale.bsky.social · 10d

‘it's easy to imagine The Lives of Z joining the likes of Christensen's alphabet (1981) as an essential text ecopoetry for years to come‘

Wonderful review of ‘Lives of Z’ by @oliviamcc.bsky.social @pavilionpoetry.bsky.social in this issue of Poetry Review

3 5

Reposted by Bill Herbert

Robert Fergusson (1750-74) @rfergussonpoet.bsky.social · 16d

Free tickets are still available for our online launch, taking place this Thursday at 6pm!
www.eventbrite.com/e/online-boo...

5 6

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 16d

Jay Morton’s explanation as to why her collage portrait of her partner is a tiramisu will, I feel, resonate with many couples: ‘…tiramisu is home to him: food is the heart. When I met him he did not go home because I fed him. Nearly twenty years on he is still here.’

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Jay Morton is a Director at Bell Phillips Architects, architect and political thinker. Founder of Architects for Labour and host of the Architects for Change podcast, she explores how design and po…

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 16d

It’s Double Collage Monday! Jay Morton’s portraits of her son and partner both complement each other and contrast, right down to the square window/round window framing:

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2025/09/22/t...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Jay Morton: Two Collages

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 23d

I may be stirring it, but it seems to me the controversity continues, @imogenforster.bsky.social!

Dictionaries of the Scots Language:: SND :: spurtle

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 23d

The SND is also inclined toward ‘spurtle’, but lists both - and ither variants aside:

share.google/fjWi5DiBAhTK...

share.google

Anne Macaulay is a London Scot who came late to poetry when she retired from education. Her poetry and reviews have been published in magazines, print and online, and in anthologies, including one…

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 23d

Isn’t there a line in The Scottish Play where this spelling is debated? ‘Is this a spirtle that I see afore me?/Or is it spelt wi a “u”?’ - something like that…

1 1

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 24d

Wand-like, it also conjures dear departed #RoddyLumsden, who said before a reading at #TheBetsyTrotwood, ‘Anne, you can’t read a poem called “Spirtle”, you’ll scare the audience off!’

We venture to disagree. As she notes, ‘Luckily, when I did he was late to arrive!’

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue (2/2)

2 1

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 24d

Welcome back @annermacaulay.bsky.social with a poem re that key Scottish kitchen implement, the spirtle, also used for unlocking doors in the memory. As she says, ‘It conjures my Dad at the Rayburn every morning’.

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2025/09/15/a...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue (1/2)

Anne Macaulay: Spirtle

1 3 9

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Sep 8

‘I wanted to use textures in unexpected ways, even down to a single line of text… I chose colours that could be combined to suggest the sense of a house: I love classical and vernacular architecture… it has a scale and quality that speaks directly to our humanity.’

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue (2/2)

‘I wanted to use textures in unexpected ways, even down to a single line of text. I wanted to create something that could intrigue people while also making them smile. I chose colours that could be…

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Sep 8

Andrea Albanese, being an architect, naturally made a collage of a house - or the idea of a house. How and why, however, those things we may not verbalise when working with collage, is almost as interesting…

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue (1/2)

1 1

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Sep 8

Collage, mes braves - or indeed ragazzi: it’s Monday, and so it’s time to post this ghost of a house by Andrea Albanese.

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2025/09/08/c...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Collage: Andrea Albanese

Sean O’Brien: For the Record

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Sep 1

Let the record show that the record shows, says #SeanOBrien, or so it says here:

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2025/09/01/s...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue @picadorbooks.bsky.social

(for Roy Fisher) Sean O’Brien’s twelfth collection, The Bonfire Party, will be published in January 2026 by Picador. Other recent work includes a book of supernatural tales The Long Gla…

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Sep 1

#LindaFrance:

‘Our chain has a cinematic quality – each individual sonnet a scene, directed by another eye. In the looking, the poets help us see more clearly, stay more present and alert ourselves.’

#EcoSonnetChain (2/2)

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Sep 1

#LindaFrance:

‘If offering careful attention is a gesture of love – a prayer, according to Simone Weil, and the original source of the sonnet form – these poets have all gazed intensely at a challenging subject most of us would prefer to look away from.’

#EcoSonnetChain

...It's an eco-sonnet chain

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Sep 1

Here’s #LindaFrance’s generous and thought-provoking post on the #EcoSonnetChain on her Substack. As she says:

‘Our chain has a cinematic quality – each individual sonnet a scene, directed by another eye.’

open.substack.com/pub/lindafra...

Holy Corona!

open.substack.com

1 1 3

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Aug 28

Penman not only praises #Satie but also ‘glances…at the films of Jacques Tati, the music of Bill Evans, the work of Hockney, Queneau, Glenn Gould, Shostakovich, Jean Rhys, Federico Mompou, Carla Bley, René Clair, Mallarmé, Cocteau, Burt Bacharach and a few dozen others…not a bad pantheon…’ (2/2)

Diane Cockburn: Disused Warehouse

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Aug 28

As #Satie gleefully remarks, ‘Anyone will tell you that I am not a musician. They are right... The first time I used a phonoscope, I examined a middling-sized B flat. I can assure you, I have never seen anything more revolting. I called my servant to have him look.’ (1/2)

1 1

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Aug 28

A-furniture haunting we would have gone on Monday, but we forgot to charge our psychokinetic energy meter or something. Fortunately, here's an entity #DianeCockburn detected in the old disused warehouse:

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2025/08/28/d...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue #Ghostbusters

The hungry ghost strolls in buckled silk, seeking sherbet,tripping up over demilunes with 25 guinea labels.She’s hungry for toppings, anxious over endings.Heart rot hurts her, but those snapped com…

Eco Sonnet Chain Crown – Linda France

Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · Aug 28

As the old mnemonic goes, ESCDAC (Every Sonnet Chain Deserves A Crown), and the Eco Chain has acquired an excellent example thanks to the brilliance of its co-editor, #LindaFrance. Read it here:

newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com/2025/08/28/e...

#EcoSonnetChain 15/14

despite the thing beginning to unravel, she knowsherself, while we’ve ceased to sing her name,fall to the ground, weep that darkness has come,time sifting through our fingers, a thrum of light.rave…

newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com