Who will protect us from poetry’s protectors?

I don’t know how you whippersnappers reel off your blogs so quickly, so I arrive at the pitchfork party for Nathan A Thompson a little late. Earlier, a wave of virtual sabers were shaken throughout the twittersphere after Thompson’s ill informed and reference free diatribe against Slam appeared in today’s Independent. Most of us started [...]

On the Record…

Dave Bryant’s interview with me appears in today’s Morning Star. You can read it online right here but I’d recommend that you also head out and buy it, it is one of the last true left wing papers in distribution and often struggles to maintain its existence. It’s a lovely piece by Dave which captures [...]

Missive 29/2/12

Half Time Report Wow, it’s been a long time since I put up one of these. I have been busy writing poems rather than verbalising about the state of poetry. The Mundane Comedy has been going for six months. For those of you that haven’t clicked on the links that turn up daily in my [...]

The Drug of the Nation…

Yesterday, I caught up with a few poets at a little Apples and Snakes shindig to celebrate their National Portfolio funding. Among all the how-do-you-do’s and me-me-me’s, I ended up waffling on about the perennial topic of the poetry/spoken word scene and television. Since then, I’ve been grinding my caffeinated gears about the subject, and [...]

missive 4/7/11

That was the week that was… Thank you to anyone that showed up at SWOON, Shadows in the City in Richmond and The Fling in Chelmsford last week. I had a great time at both. For my second set in Richmond, I took the opportunity to read my Werewolf of London sequence in its entirety, [...]

missive 5/6/11

More Poetry in the News Shennanigans Channel 4 News got their oar into the current poetry “crisis” today while reporting on the exclusion of some poetry organisations from the National Portfolio. In return we got some truly appalling doggerel from our Poet Laureate, giving Andrew Motion’s ode to Johnny Wilkinson a run for its money [...]

Thoughts on Gil Scott Heron

I said a lot of loud and retractable things when at a certain occasion where the pints were flowing, but there’s one slogan I’ll stick by: an explosion of seemingly nihilistic and motiveless violence is the ultimate political act. What did I mean by this? That the dominant political ideology can become so entrenched within [...]

A Late Poem to Commemorate Yesterday’s Great Event

For Frank Auerbach on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday It is not the same day as yesterday, but you live it the same anyway strolling through often-sketched North London avenues, street lamps lean over like familiar drunks with some ribald tales to tell, though their loud aftershave of grit, rust and benzine has altered [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Eight

“Three-dimensional stop-motion model animation created a fantasy world that was so rare. The way the creatures moved encouraged a sense that one was watching a miracle, but when the miracle becomes commonplace, the concept of the miracles ceases to be miraculous.” -Ray Harryhausen For the Master I learned to dream on Bank Holiday Mondays, when [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Six: Bonus Track

Ross Sutherland has thrown out a commission for poets to make their own version of the wonderfully abysmal “Last Barman Poet” poem, recited by Tom Cruise in the barman buddy flick, Cocktail. Please take a moment to watch the above through tiny slits between your fingers. You can find other examples at the project website: [...]