‘There’s a sort of limit to the empathy. You know, ultimately, you can imagine changing places, but you would not change places.’ Alicia E. Stallings reads and discusses ‘Empathy’ from This Afterlife: Selected Poems (Carcanet Press) Listen: lttr.ai/AlEZj #poetry

‘Time is a crucial quality in this poem: it speeds up at certain points in the action, it slows down at others. And yet, in another sense, it seems to take place outside of time, on a plane of magical reality.’ Listen to the episode: lttr.ai/AlSxs #poetry #coleridge

‘A part of me thinks that I might not have even been a poet if I hadn’t had to leave my country because I needed a language in which my whole self could be expressed.’ Dr Nick Makoha FRSL discusses The New Carthaginians (Penguin Books UK) Listen: lttr.ai/AlXMF #poetry

‘And something of poetry and poetics and culture and experience and erotic attachment and friendship, the poem suggests, will survive this apocalyptic moment.’ Stephanie Burt Stephanie Burt (Taylor's Version) 🥥✨ on Tonee Mae Moll, Super Gay Poems Harvard University Press lttr.ai/AlcD8 #poetry

This month on the podcast: Orna Ross reads and discusses ‘Recalling Brigid’ from Poet Town: The Poetry of Hastings and Thereabouts (Moth Light Press) Listen to the episode: lttr.ai/Alfyj #poetry #hastings #Brigid

‘Some poems are made and some arrive. This one arrived.’ ~ Orna Ross Listen to the episode: lttr.ai/AllPO #poetry #hastings #Brigid

‘Brigid is the patron saint of Ireland. You’ve probably heard of the other one, Patrick. You probably haven’t heard of this one.’ ~ Orna Ross Listen to the episode: lttr.ai/Alvv6 #poetry #hastings #Brigid

In 1714 a man living on Baldwin Street found an enormous, black cobweb in his garden, measuring 34 foot/10 metres across. Fascinated locals paid to cut off pieces to take home and fearful word soon spread that a giant spider was lose in Bristol. No explanation was ever found.

‘Coleridge’s use of the ballad form is like taking a traditional folk tune and playing a Fantasia on it, it’s like the prog rock guitar solo version.’ Listen to the episode: lttr.ai/Al18V #poetry #coleridge #ancientmariner

‘I had to give up on modern poetry ages ago. If I wanted to write poetry, I had to drop so much that I learned.’ ~ Orna Ross Listen to the episode: lttr.ai/AmBVC #poetry #hastings #Brigid

‘If we ignore AI, or demonise it because of the people involved, or specific ways it is being developed and applied... We risk missing the real threats, and the real opportunities it presents us with.’ lttr.ai/AfabC

"Maybe one day, AI's poetic technique could improve enough to imitate really good poetry, to a standard that would fool even expert readers. "But it still wouldn’t be poetry." lttr.ai/AfqJ7 #AICreativity #AIArt #CreativeEconomy

‘It’s great to bear in mind the promiscuity of language, and these connections that it makes across time and space and peoples.’ Gregory Leadbetter on ‘Alchemy’ from The Infernal Garden (Nine Arches Press) Listen: lttr.ai/AjQgE #poetry

‘The past is very present in Ireland still... It’s something to do with being a small island on the very edge of civilization.’ ~ Orna Ross Listen to the episode: lttr.ai/AmhNJ #poetry #hastings #Brigid

Here is our Weekly digest #01 of 2026 freelancing.eu/news/weekly-di… featuring Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. Mark McGuinness etc.

This is how enjambment can work in a poem. Bridge 77 on the Macclesfield Canal allows a horse to cross the canal without having to untie it from the canal boat.

★ ALBUM IS TEN YEARS OLD “We were born upside-down...” Ten years ago today on 8th January 2016, David Bowie released his 28th studio album ★ (Blackstar) on his 69th birthday. Today would have been his 79th birthday. Here follows the text from the post we made back then,

“The idea that writing is simply a matter of executing on a pre-existing idea is nonsense to anyone who really understands the creative process.” Why Your Taste Matters More than Ever in an AI World lttr.ai/AnBrB #AIcreativity

‘All the poets I love, the action for them is just ahead of them. They’re just ahead of period style, they’re just ahead of what they can manage, they’re ahead of authorial intention.’ Peter Gizzi on ‘Findspot Unknown’ from Fierce Elegy Penguin Books UK lttr.ai/AnX0l