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Jon Stone

@shotscarecrow.bsky.social

740 followers 670 following 530 posts

Undercover skeleton. 💀 Writer/researcher/lecturer. Ludokinetic/interactive poetry 🃏, collaborative and amalgamatic writing. Editor at @SidekickBooks. 📚 He/him. www.gojonstonego.com

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · Nov 22

Hey! I haven't really introduced myself properly on Bluesky since it all took off. I'm a poet, researcher and lecturer who writes semi-fantastical/dreamish sequences, experiments with game-poem crossover, and works with @kirstenirving.bsky.social to edit/make collaborative themed hybrid books. ✍️👹

A collage of many books: the Sidekick Hipflasks (Roll Again: A Book of Games to Play, You Again: A Book of Love-Hate Stories, Look Again: A Book of Hidden Messages, Say It Again: A Book of Misquotations), School of Forgery by Jon Stone, Sandsnarl by Jon Stone, Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Video Games by Jon Stone, Unravelanche by on Stone, the Sidekick Headbooks (No, Robot, No!; Aquanauts; Bad Kid Catullus; Battalion).

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 15h

It's not just that. In conservative ideology, the sole purpose of art is to confer cultural sophistication and prestige. By definition, it has to be something few can access, or do -- otherwise associating yourself with it does nothing to boost your status.

Nikita Gill @nikitagill.bsky.social · 1d

I am saying once again that the Conservative attack on the Arts is because they are incredibly envious of artists who they perceive as a group that has “too much” cultural power, a type of influence Conservatives crave but will never have because they’re anti-intellectuals with no imagination.

Reposted by Jon Stone

Eleanor Holmes | Eliot North @eleanorholmes.bsky.social · 1d

📣 Fabulous resources below from @poetrysociety.org.uk including a really lovely one on the theme of PLAY by Jon Stone
@shotscarecrow.bsky.social 📣

The Poetry Society @poetrysociety.org.uk · 6d

Visit bit.ly/NPC25Resources to read it, along with two other writing guides by Emma Purshouse and Anna Selby. ✍️

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 3d

This hasn't been received well either. It's just another piece of rushed, performative legislation for them to list in debates when they get accused of having done nothing.

Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 3d

Going over my slides for Tuesday -- it's 'poetry as soapbox' week, which means comparing the styles of Gboyega Odubanjo and Tony Harrison. Hits in a way it didn't before now they're both gone.

Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 4d

Gaby, Labour are never going to join in a 'coalition of the left' because they (a) are not left, (b) don't see themselves as left, and (c) consider defeating the left to be their real raison d'etre.

Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 6d

It's the right one! Love 'The Crab Man' and very happy to get the chance to write about it!

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Reposted by Jon Stone

Eleanor Holmes | Eliot North @eleanorholmes.bsky.social · 6d

Well this is a lovely surprise for @poetrydayuk.bsky.social having my poem 'The Crab Man' 🦀 from 2014 NPC used for close reading / writing prompts on the theme of #play for NPD by @shotscarecrow.bsky.social - this is the right Jon Stone?
Hello, and thank you 🙏
poetrysociety.org.uk/wp-content/u...

The Crab Man

by Eliot North

Turn left, close the gate
Enter Mariner’s Lane.

The road to the shore
Is all salt and tar.

Go right down to
Correction House Bank.

Smell the fish guts,
Feel it pull you.

Push Gossip’s voice
Far from your mind.

Ignore the shudder
Of trains, overhead.

Down Tanner’s Bank
Pick your way.

Head held high,
Nose to the wind,

Past empty warehouses.
Go to The Crab Man.

Block out the warning
Tone of her voice.

See him in his red robes,
Inside the chainmail door.

Feel the cleaver’s rhythm
Smashed over and over.

Watch how he stills,
Cocks an ear to the sound.

The swish of metal skirts
Closing behind you.

Filmpoem of The Crab Man by Eliot North (Eleanor Holmes) on The Poetry Society website:https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poets/eliot-north/

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Reposted by Jon Stone

Sidekick Books @sidekickbooks.bsky.social · 6d

This year's #nationalpoetryday theme is 'play'! How about a #poem and a #dicegame from the same book? Here's Abigail Ottley's 'The Sea Always Wins' ... 1/2

@poetrydayuk.bsky.social

ABIGAIL OTTLEY / The Sea Always Wins - Sidekick Books

Abigail Ottley The Sea Always Wins or, The Ageing Wreck Diver Speaks of the Ocean (after Roland Morris of Penzance, Cornwall) The sea is an indifferent lover. She may be your delight, your mistress, y...

sidekickbooks.com

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 6d

Start of a new term is hectic, and a little harrowing, but I think I'd be far more heavy-hearted if I didn't get to walk around a buzzing uni full of all different kinds of young people talking, laughing, hanging out, planning where to go next. The bastions of civilisation haven't fallen just yet.

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 7d

Anyone know of any online lit journals that might want a readymade review of a recent poetry book? I have one going spare.

Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 7d

I'm invested in fairness and justice. 'Women's spaces' and 'men's spaces' exist for practical purposes, to serve everyone's rights and dignity, not as a means for one or other group to practise exclusionary bigotry.

Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 7d

Averages over massive populations are not a reasonable basis for making a decision about individuals. Neither is capability -- which is any case irrelevant because sexual violence can be committed with any number of tools. These are not sound reasons.

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 8d

'Potentially' doesn't cut it. All women are also a danger to all other women. So this is not a reason to exclude trans women with no history of violence from women's prisons.

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 8d

I am in that position -- because I already excluded trans women with a violent background. Now you have to explain to me what rationale there is for excluding trans women who don't have a violent background. Without recourse to dogma.

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 8d

That's not a reasonable or reasoned response to what I said. It's rancid dogma.

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 8d

Women's only prisons serve a practical purpose, in that they decrease the likelihood of female inmates being violently attacked. Housing trans women with no history of violent behaviour in a women's prison doesn't increase that likelihood.

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 8d

No group has a right to exclusive spaces or facilities. Segregation of the sexes has a limited practical purpose that is not inherently troubled by a minority of people transitioning.

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 8d

You can hardly accuse someone else of 'not having any coherent argument' when your position is that Maya Forstater is merely arguing for 'sex-based rights', a completely nonsensical term that implies humans have different rights depending on what sex they are.

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 9d

Yeah, it's tough to find the right balance when the aim of a callout is to encourage something against the grain. Ultimately, poets are going to be looking to fit what they've already written to the available opportunities out there.

Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 10d

I think you'd have to use multiple examples, named and linked to from the description.

Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 11d

RIP Tony Harrison.

National Trust

Bottomless pits. There's one in Castleton,
and stout upholders of our law and order
one day thought its depth worth wagering on
and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder
and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.

Not even a good flogging made him holler!

O gentlemen, a better way to plumb
the depths of Britain's dangling a scholar,
say, here at the booming shaft at Towanroath,
now National Trust, a place where they got tin,
those gentlemen who silenced the men's oath
and killed the language that they swore it in.

The dumb go down in history and disappear
and not one gentleman's been brought to book:

Mes den hep tavas a-gollas y dyr

(Cornish-)
'the tongueless man gets his land took.'

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Reposted by Jon Stone

Jordan Magnuson @jordanmagnuson.bsky.social · 12d

Are you a fan of expressive short-form videogames? Check out the first Game Poems Community Showcase at gamepoems.org/showcase

Please play, share, and leave comments!

Submissions to Game Poems Community Showcase #1

gamepoems.org

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Reposted by Jon Stone

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 14d

"Polanski is adamant that Labour no longer deserves to be thought of as progressive.

"The Labour Party is so dead and gone in terms of being a progressive force. You don’t need to be in the Labour Party: @greenparty.org.uk time is now.”

www.newstatesman.com/politics/lab...

Labour vs the left

While Keir Starmer focuses on the threat of Reform and the populist right, is his real problem a resurgent progressive politics?

www.newstatesman.com

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 23d

PR is the only hope for the political future of my country at this point. There is zero chance of a non-far-right part emerging as an election-winning vehicle, thanks to centrists wrecking the joint.

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Jon Stone @shotscarecrow.bsky.social · 28d

New poster for a new event.

Cambridge Writing Centre 🖋️ @aruwriting.bsky.social · 28d

Aaaaand we're back! Tickets for the 13th Future Karaoke are available FOR FREE here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/myevent?eid=...

Poems and stories inspired by the Major Arcana. Wednesday 1st October from 6.30pm at ARU's Recital Hall in Cambridge. Attend in-person or online!