On Viewless Wings

Day Shift, painting by John Wood, Barnsley artist (b.1956).

Been teaching History by the much missed John Burnside this week. What a poem that is, and it really hits hard this week.

Blanket dismissal of any art form is massive red flag for me.

I'm finding this whole working for a living thing really inconvenient.

Matt
Good
Win

attempts to

Gloss
Bad
Loss

That was going to be my shout too. Satan is a great character.

The declyne of readinge ys caused by manye thinges. One major cause ys a systematic & decades-long devaluinge of literature at all levels of educacioun. We kan not put instrumentalitye above meaninge and still thrive. Fundinge the humanityes ys key to a just societye of well-informed citizens.

The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Rebecca Solnit - Longreads The author of The Beginning Comes After the End talks about jackrabbits, her own “informational hypervigilance,” and the one word she won’t stop using.

What five items would you place in a time capsule?

Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and maybe Mohammed bin Salman, to be opened, carefully, with precautions, in the year 3026.

When i was a kid i always wanted to see a book with my name on the front. Now there's two of the fuckers. Never seen em side by side cos i don't have a copy of Keshed and i dunno if i've even got Ghost Signs. Mad to see this tbqh.

NIGHTGOWN A cold so keen, My speech unfurls tonight As from the chattering teeth Of a sewing machine. Whom words appear to warm, Dear heart, wear mine. Come forth Wound in their flimsy white And give it form.

James Merrill, born 100 years ago today

Yorkshire #Printmakers the Hepworth is looking out for print artists to be in their Makers Market in May
mail.hepworthwakefield.org/cr/AQiZ0xUQv...

Such a great poetry workshop this morning at Mapplewell Library; I gave them this Pete Morgan villanelle to take away as homework!

Working Days, and Journal of a Novel, are great: they are copies of Steinbeck's daily writing journal when he was writing The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. He absolutely slated himself and his ability every day. Full of self doubt, full of a sense of failure. They are oddly reassuring.

call me a spondee by cause Ich am stressed stressed

"I know it was you, Isabel Oakeshott. You broke my heart."

#GetKeshed

What a lovely message this is. Totally bowled over by the response so far 🙏

A reminder that Harrison Ford is doing some of the best work of his career on Shrinking.

Here's an idea. Why not tell your daughter's disabled teacher not to risk coming for a lesson and pay him if he's in need of the money?

People in UK publishing take note. In case you haven’t heard, your government is still at it.

And anything that hoovers up British publications is liable to get a lot of Irish ones too.

#SpeirGorm

We're all in a toxic relationship with this guy, aren't we?

I really like it. A favourite of mine for years. Good soundtrack too.

Good lord Small Prophets (BBC) is exquisite isn’t it. Such a carefully and perfectly crafted piece of television. Mackenzie Crook is a genius.

I'm thinking of As I Lay Dying. I guess Darl would be the protagonist if one is needed, but I feel like Faulkner is deliberately decentring the idea of a primary focus or perspective or voice.

We are training undergrads (18-22) to digitize vcr tapes, cassettes, and vinyl. We introduce phrases like "rewind" into their vocab and made diagrams of what a tape looks like from 6 angles. And we get questions like "how do I rewind a record" which is understandable but turns my bones to dust.

Do you think a clear protagonist is always necessary?

bsky.app/profile/onvi...

Dulce etc decorum est / Pro patria mori."

"If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, / Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud / Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- / My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: 1/2

Give him an etch-a-sketch and tell him it's the missile controls.

Among all the horrible things that Trump and Farage are, it is really striking that they are both such silly little whiney petulant babies.