Man holding a copy of ‘Metal Gear Sonnets’ by Laurie Eaves
❗️’Yes, death can be designed. We can all play Snake, we can all play God.’
😁 Laurie Eaves has made a poetry collection as gleefully bonkers, as playful and as filled with moments of surprising profundity as any Hideo Kojima production. Get yourself this belter from @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social
Smiling man holding a copy of ‘The Other Wind’ by Ursula Le Guin
😊 it is bittersweet to close the book on ‘Earthsea’, even as I could not think of a better way to end the saga than ‘The Other Wind’. These stories are a part of me now, and while I could gush about the beauty of the writing and the generosity of their vision - all that needs be said is ‘read’!
Man holding a copy of ‘The Water Table’ by Philip Gross
💧’Only catchment, maybe, is a sort / of *self*, a notional line / within which nothing is alien to a river’.
🌊 returning to this collection from Philip Gross I first picked up in my teens, it is still a challenge, but in the ‘Betweenland’ of the Severn Estuary the poet conjures real delights.
Man standing in front of the Departures desk for the Eurostar at Kings Cross St Pancras International
👋 gone to the Continent for a bit - see you in a week!
🚆
#holiday
Man holding a copy of ‘Babel’ by R.F. Kuang
😬 well….
There is much about Babel that is intriguing, even occasionally brilliant, and worth grappling with even as its politics get imprecise or nihilistic.
But ye gods, this novel is *terrified* of the reader ‘not getting it’, and its didacticism will exhaust you before the end.
Cheering man wearing a Green Party t-shirt
🙌 GET IIIIIIIIIN!
✊Hannah Spencer and the Manchester Greens have done something *extraordinary* in Gorton and Denton, whose voters have decisively rejected hatred and division and embraced a path of hope and renewal.
💚 watch @greenparty.org.uk - you ain’t seen nothing yet!
join.greenparty.org.uk
Sweating man in a boxing gym
🔥 arms are burning after tonight’s session at Mickey’s - here’s hoping they soon start to hit a little harder!
Man holding a copy of ‘The Noise of Time’ by Julian Barnes
‘[W]as it brave to be standing there waiting for them, or was it cowardly? Or was it neither - merely sensible?’
👏 Julian Barnes’ short novel of the career of Shostakovich is a jet-black meditation on the relationship between art and Power, as well as the comforts (and limits) of irony.
🙏 today can be something momentous. I can feel it in my bones.
💚 come on Gorton and Denton - elect Hannah Spencer and show us just how different politics in this country could be!
#GetGreensElected
“Much like Geralt or Batman, Jesus Christ can shift into detective-vision and follow a blood-trail…”
@jacobgeller.com does it again - milk-out-my-nose jokes alongside analysis that expertly engages head and heart. It’s good stuff ya’ll.
youtu.be/8dkB-KTMB3o?...
Man holding a copy of ‘Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons’
📚 decided to spend Sunday with a selection from ‘Poetry Is Not a Luxury’.
😌 as with any anthology of ‘inspirational’ poetry, it’s a mixed bag. There are poems that leave me cold, or make me roll my eyes. But it only takes half a dozen or so truly excellent poems for it to fulfil its purpose.
⚖️ something else I was getting up to this week…
“Lot of good, clean fun down the Bailey…”
#BarLife
redlionchambers.co.uk/re-trial-end...
Sweating man next to a punchbag in a boxing gym
🥊 missed last week so I was a little nervous to step back into Mickey’s - but every step is getting a little quicker and ever punch a little sharper. Keeping going!
#boxing #resolutions
Man holding a copy of ‘Nobody’ by Alice Oswald
‘How does it start the sea has endless beginnings’
Alice Oswald has been, among other things, a priestess of water and its polyphonic, powerful emptiness for many years, so this ‘water-damaged’ version of various Homeric narratives might be her apotheosis. I can see myself returning many times…
Dungeon Master’s chair behind a screen
Three people smiling around a table playing Dungeons and Dragons
People high-fiving around a table playing Dungeons & Dragons
Finger pointing to minis on a map during a game of Dungeons & Dragons
🎲 I asked my wife if she was okay with spending Valentine’s Day playing #DnD with some close friends.
❤️ I think it’s accurate to say she insisted on it.
😊 love takes many forms…
#tabletoplife #readerimarriedher
Man holding a copy of ‘Earthsea: the First Four Books’ by Ursula K. Le Guin
‘Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life’
🥲
I wish that I had first come to the fantasy of Ursula K. Le Guin when I was a much younger man, but at any age these are masterpieces of fable-making: sweeping and also intimate, spare and also lush - all brilliance.
🙏 for anyone interested in human rights, peaceful protest and government overreach, this is enormous.
⚖️ this should be the moment for the government to change course; let this ban drop; and start considering how it can protect people’s rights rather than than criminalising them.
Man holding a copy of ‘My Ear Is Full Of Milk’, an anthology from Broken Sleep Books
Text of a poem ‘They’re Still Completing the Jigsaw Puzzle’ by Tim Kiely
Shot of text from inside an anthology of poetry and prose from Broken Sleep Books
🎥 and now for the latest bucket of suds I’ve gotten myself into - an anthology from @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social
🙏 thanks to @aaronkent.bsky.social and @simonbarraclough.bsky.social for this opportunity!
📚 get your copy of ‘My Ear Is Full Of Milk’ now!
www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...
Man holding a copy of ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ by Tom Stoppard
‘Heroism isn’t honest work… it offends normal people and frightens them…. It’s not the action of a friend to point out that your character is more heroic than mine.’
🎸 I do find the back half of this play slower going, though I understand why it’s there. Not my favourite Stoppard but still good fun
Sweating man wearing boxing wraps on his left hand following a session in a gym
🥊 knocks taken (and a few dealt) at Mickey’s - must try and do more boxing during the day when working from home!
🙌 out of January and still keeping this #resolution going. Baby steps…
“I didn’t know a nose could be deformed to that extent.”
😳
Just what you want to read before you open the case folder you’ve been sent marked ‘INJURY PHOTOGRAPHS’…
#BarLife
💚 my heart genuinely soars seeing Hannah’s campaign take off in Gorton and Denton - Godspeed and good luck! Let’s #GetGreensElected
Man holding a copy of ‘Erasure’ by Percival Everett
‘I had not only made him, but I had made him well enough that he created a work of so-called art. I felt like god considering Hitler…’
😆 I have enjoyed the movie adapted from this novel, but in my view its particular brand of malevolent humour has more room to breathe here.
💚 I am *properly* excited to see where this campaign goes - congratulations to Hannah Spencer as she prepares to take the fight to the far right and get @greenparty.org.uk their fifth Commons seat!
Man standing outside Mickey’s Boxing Gym with a raised fist
Sweating man grinning into the camera after a night at Mickey’s Boxing Gym
😁 yup - still got the full set of teeth even after a night at Mickey’s!
🥊 Hopefully for all the punches I took tonight I threw out a few good ones of my own! Baby steps, baby steps…
Man holding a copy of ‘The Parisian’ by Isabella Hammad
‘To invent one’s self was to resist the inventions of others: to forge was to author.’
I have been drawn through Isabella Hammad’s dense novel slowly, and found not so much a moment of dazzlement as a continuous unfolding of something rich and intriguing. Definitely worth your time.
🕯️ keep the candle lit for human dignity, in a time of where we remember the darknesses of before, those who survived and those who did not.
🙏 On #HolocaustMemorialDay my thoughts go out to all those who live with the legacy of that atrocity, and my resolve is quickened to see it is never repeated.
Man holding a copy of ‘We Could Have Been Friends, My Father And I: A Palestinian Memoir’ by Raja Shehadeh
Raja Shehadeh’s memoir of his trailblazing father, the lawyer and political activist Aziz, is as matter-of-fact in tone, but also wrenching in its melancholy power.
Thinking now of Israel and Palestine, th imagined words of Aziz stay with me: ‘The only real victory is when we’ve both won.’
Help us make hope normal again.
Join the Green Party now.
Sweating man wearing a hand-wrap in a boxing gym
🥊 jogged my way into Mickey’s tonight after a late bus - at least my heart-rate was up to kick things off!
❤️🩹 definitely getting more experience getting whacked in the face - which I’m told is an important part of getting better! Still blunt as a rubber hammer, but getting sharper by degrees…
