My favourite poem about a mother, by Kay Ryan.

Just perfect.

(And this is an epic for Ryan; it breaks onto a second page and everything!)

Published in Ink, Sweat & Tears a little while ago, for National Poetry Day:

When will we give up wiping the bottoms
of our colicky old gods, coddling and
burping them as we attempt,
for the billionth time, to button them
into the grown-up clothes
of The Enlightenment?

From 'Haunt' (Salmon 2015). Came to mind while walking past (now dismantled) static caravan of migrants' tents on pavement on Mount Street: very different protest by people with no homes to return to.

Pic taken yesterday near College Green: somebody homeless, migrant or native.

Let’s hear it for…Endosymbiosis!

For first time in a billion years, two lifeforms have merged into one independent.co.uk/news/science/a…

Eye-opener from Bill Manhire.

Evocative writing by Kureishi on his early years in (and out of) school and college. With my mother's encouragement, I, too, wangled my way into Art School in the early 1970s, and drifted.

A NOTE TO MAGAZINE EDITORS

It is nice to be informed that one's poems have been placed on a 'longlist' but I am puzzled as to why such knowledge should be disclosed till the poems have made it to a short(er) list or, better still, have been, finally & regretfully, rejected.

Delighted to have a (strange) wee poem in the 'Underworld' issue of Magma, along with Julia Webb, Fiona Benson, Audrey Malloy, Sean Borodale and many other excellent poets.

This is very moving, and an actual cliff-hanger. Emperor penguin chicks jump off a 50-foot cliff in Antarctica NEVER-BEFO... youtu.be/4PwDFddpo4c?si… via YouTube

With new poems by Corinna Board, Rachel Burns, Toby Campion, Jen Feroze 💙, Mark Granier, Cleo Henry, Alia, sarah lasoye, Chris Lloyd, billie manning, Mary Ford Neal, ⛅️ katie o’pray, Deborah Scott Studebaker, Adam Panichi, Ellora Sutton (she/her), & Nadia de Vries.

Out now: andotherpoems.com/issue-three/

I was pleasantly surprised that And Other Poems accepted this recent poem of mine, one of the few that came 'as naturally as leaves to a tree' (though a good deal more swiftly).
andotherpoems.com/2024/04/10/the…

Imagine being 19 years old and watching live on TV to see if your birthday will be picked to fight in the Vietnam war.

There is a place reserved on the street for all of us.

THE CHURCH BELL IN THE NIGHT
(after Kuno Meyer)

I love that little bell
struck on a windy night
to comfort and console
more than women might.

A couple of poems for the day that's in it:

anthropocenepoetry.org/post/2-poems-b…

Horrifying, of course, but worth sharing, however unlikely it is that those who most need to see it will give it a glance.

How would a nuclear war between Russia and the US affect you personally? youtu.be/-xthzy1PxTA?si… via YouTube

P-Day, 2024

(from Some More Questions)

What if we see ghosts every day,
unaware because we miss
the signs, the tells
of those who do not haunt us
but themselves?

*
What can heal us
if we are the wound?

*
How do we keep it on file?
That edgy bliss,
days when even the abyss
cracks a smile.

If almost all photography is now digital, its original subject, the world, remains as analogue as a wave, sunlight, an evening shadow on a wall.