Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 2h

There’s a フン / NO FUN pun on a sign urging you to pick up your dog’s poo in our local park so simple and yet so earth-shatteringly chaotic I need to avert my eyes on my way to ラジオ体操 every morning.

Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 10h

I’ll gladly cede “content creation” to whoever wants it if it means I can watch actual films, read books, listen to music, respond to, uh, human design and form!

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 11h

Nice thing about editing other people’s wonderful work: I can agree and say I think so too without seeming too arrogant.

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 14h

Our book is released today. It's edited following the "grand elementary principle of pleasure". I love all the poems and critical essays we've gathered together, found much insight & delight in my co-editors' insights as poets, & hope youse can too. aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz/te-whariki/

Te Whāriki: Reading Ten New Poets from Aotearoa

Chris Tse to Tayi Tibble – what New Zealand poetry looks like now.

aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 14h

Yes please!

Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 1d

“It's not an album. It's a product for sale, and it sounds like one”: defector.com/taylor-swift...

No Good Art Comes From Greed | Defector

The packages arrived square and thin and carefully wrapped on Saturday afternoon. There were three of them, but only one was mine. If I could have rejected my package, sent it back from whence it came...

defector.com

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Reposted by Dougal McNeill

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 2d

Aifter the boombers cleck
and the sodgers traik thro the skau
there’s an auld air sterts up –
bubblin and greetin.

It’s a ballant mithers sing
on their hunkers i the stour
for a bairn deid.

They ken it by hert.

—Alastair Mackie, “Pietà”
The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse, @canongate.co.uk 2021

Pietà
Alastair Mackie

Her face was thrawed.
She wisna aa come.

In the trams o her airms
the wummin held oot her first bairn.
It micht hae been a mercat day
and him for sale.
Naebody stoppit tae niffer.

His life bluid cled his breast
wi a new reid semmit.
He’d hippens for deid claes.

Aifter the boombers cleck
and the sodgers traik thro the skau
there’s an auld air sterts up –
bubblin and greetin.

It’s a ballant mithers sing
on their hunkers i the stour
for a bairn deid.

They ken it by hert.

It’s the cauldest grue i the universe
yon skelloch.
It niver waukens the deid.

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 2d

Brava!

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 2d

Scandal: “occasions of sin that lead others into moral error” www.americamagazine.org/faith-and-re...

What are Black Catholics hearing when church leaders praise Charlie Kirk?

For many Black Catholics familiar with Charlie Kirk's full record, endorsements of his message by Catholic leaders can be devastating.

www.americamagazine.org

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 2d

“The question becomes how to protect our ability to respond, even if it means protecting a physical and psychological symptom like restlessness. Perhaps, even, how to attend to the symptom in ways that shape our political action” www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/on-...

On Restlessness — Parapraxis

Diaspora’s Nervous Energies Yasmin el-rifae

www.parapraxismagazine.com

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Reposted by Dougal McNeill

Min Hyoung Song @minsong.bsky.social · Aug 13

Some things I've been working on as chair of my department - sharing in case anyone finds its useful.

1. A GenAI Framework for English Courses

BC English GenAI Framework

Min Hyoung Song, Chair Department of English Boston College, August 2025 GenAI FRAMEWORK FOR BC ENGLISH COURSES While Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) programs have become ubiquitous as ...

docs.google.com

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 2d

Claiming that the “substantive content” is unchanged makes this worse. It suggests the references followed the conclusions, rather than the conclusions following the evidence. Another example of why those pushing this rubbish in universities are so irresponsible. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Deloitte to pay money back to Albanese government after using AI in $440,000 report

Partial refund to be issued after several errors were found in a report into a department’s compliance framework

www.theguardian.com

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 3d

Today’s mail!

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 5d

When these started going up over the summer I was struck by how the message was both formally totally uncontroversial and honourably liberal and also of course, at the same time, totally marginal.

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 5d

I did enjoy the vote airing live on TV though. I wouldn’t have the facial discipline to be an MP! Interesting to see in real time some almost split-second smoothing out of certain reactions.

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 5d

I remember the first time I heard a recording of Auden saying “he disappeared in the dead of winter” and just goggling that ‘winter’ might have so many variant pronunciations. So much more for sure with azure.

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 5d

“these ragged-edged household gods were meant to serve as a reminder that we are all shards of a larger whole that transcends our ken. That the edge of our skin is not an end but a beginning, not a closing off but an opening up, not an answer but a mystery” www.commonwealmagazine.org/corpus-chris...

Corpus Christi

Understanding the Eucharist literally can help us understand the deeper truth of our own broken one-ness.

www.commonwealmagazine.org

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 5d

It’s a wonderful book I’m still thinking about many months after finishing, and it’s changed (for the good!) how I listen to Cohen. Thank you.

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 7d

Nau mai 来てください❣️

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 7d

Our book gets launched in Wellington in a few weeks and youse are all welcome. The Tokyo launch is in November!

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 7d

Jackson McCarthy taking a turn: nzpoetryshelf.com/2025/10/01/p...

Poetry Shelf Playing Favourites: Jackson McCarthy

Uniform Louis and I had this theory that nobody knewwe were fucking. Uniforms could do that to a bloke — help him blend in with a crowd. Only once, at a party,did I ever see him without the shirt, …

nzpoetryshelf.com

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Reposted by Dougal McNeill

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 8d

For want o luve we live on hate,
For want o Heven praise the State,
For want o richts we worship rules,
For want o gods the glibbest fules…

—Sydney Goodsir Smith, “Prolegomenon: The Deevil’s Waltz”
in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS
#Scots #poem #poetry #Scotstober #richts
asls.org.uk/publications...

Sydney Goodsir Smith
Prolegomenon
The Deevil’s Waltz

Rin an rout, rin an rout,
Mahoun gars us birl about,
He skirls his pipes, he stamps his heel
The globe’s gane gyte in a haliket reel.

There, the statesman’s silken cheats,
Here, the bairnless mither greits,
There, a tyrant turns the screw,
Here, twa luvers’ broken vows.

Enemies out, enemies in,
Truth a hure wi the pox gane blinn,
Nou luvers’ lips deny luve’s name
An get for breid a chuckie-stane,

We kenna hert, we kenna heid,
The deevil’s thirled baith quick an deid,
Jehovah snores, and Christ himsel
Lowps in the airms o Jezebel.

The sweit that rins frae his thorned brou
Is black as the staunan teats o his cou
In the waltz o tears, an daith, an lies,
Juliet’s fyled wi harlotries.

O luve itsel at Hornie’s lauch
Skeers lik a caunel i the draucht,
The dance is on, the waltz o hell,
The wund frae its fleean skirts is snell.

It whups black storm frae lochan’s calm,
Sets banshees in the house o dwaum,
Gars black bluid spate the hert o me
—An watters guid-sirs’ barley bree!

A few damned feckless fanatics
Wad halt the borneheid dance o Styx,
Their cry o truth the whirlwind reaps,
For pity’s deid, and mercy sleeps.

Orpheus alane dow sauve frae deid
His ravished Bride gin but she’d heed—
Ay, truth an luve like Albyn’s life
Hing wi a threid, kissed be a knife.

Ilk derkenin owre some huddered toun
The pipes an fiddles screich an boom,
The cauldron’s steered by Maestro Nick
Wi a sanct’s shin-bane for parritch-stick.

He lauchs his lauch, the angels greit
Wi joy as they dine on carrion meat;
Ablow, bumbazed, dumfounered cods,
We seek the starns in dubs an bogs.

Oor ingyne’s deaved, oor mous are shut,
Oor saul contract like a runkled nut,
Een cannae see the trees for the wuid
An hert is cauld for want o bluid.

For want o luve we live on hate,
For want o Heven praise the State,
For want o richts we worship rules,
For want o gods the glibbest fules.

Obey, Obey; ye maunna spier!
(Libertie’s disjaskit lear!)
While Cloutie pipes it’s crime tae think,
—It’s taxed e’en higher nor the drink!

O, rin an rout, we birl about,
Tae the rhythm o the Deil’s jack-boot,
Black as auld widdie-fruit, Mahoun
Bestrides a kenless mappamound.

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 8d

“It’s also easy to forget that the convergence and mutual support between the Palestine solidarity campaign, Māori resistance, and the trade union movement in 2025 – which now seems like common sense – is also completely unprecedented” iso.org.nz/2025/10/01/t...

The year of the strike is a year like no other

“The year of the strike? Perfect pay storm looms over public sector.” This was the headline of an article back in February by a prescient Stuff journalist. This perfect storm has arrived, though it’s ...

iso.org.nz

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 8d

Bit glum reading two reviews in a row praising a new collection’s “lack of pretension”, “unpretentious” verse & “non-poetic” vocabulation, esp when examples they quote are gloriously razzle dazzling. If I owned a beret or a cravat I’d be wearing them today as a personal protest.

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Dougal McNeill @dougalmcneill.bsky.social · 9d

Got me thinking when Tomoko Ohtake’s article on this came out in the Japan Times about the edition of Frank’s diary in the 90s restoring some of the body talk that hadn’t fit the image earlier editors crafted of her. The Japanese usage anticipates or highlights something English was minimising.

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