“I wake up to it, open as doorways, breathless as a coming hour, and undone” Dionne Brand, from Thirsty

One of my favourite elegies

Alex Dimitrov, “August,” in Love and Other Poems

Ex-Reform politician admits Russia-linked bribery charges bbc.in/46B7ssD

Such a great Tony Harrison poem - written about the death of his father who was a baker.

László Krasznahorkai, from 'Satantango', 1985

—Li-Young Lee, “Eating Alone”

Amazing - Philip Larkin reviews Tennyson's collected poems. Reprinted in the New Statesman newstatesman.com/archive/2025/1…

"He’d played his life legato, as though / no one would die on him, even as time / worked at dulling his senses." 'Beethoven’s Sonata in C Minor', a poem by Elena Croitoru (Elena Croitoru), now up on Wild Court: wildcourt.co.uk/beethovens-son…

Give it a go!

It me

There comes a time when the ferocity of craving palls, you are drained dry by it, no longer do you want this savagery. - Lesley Stern

“In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.” Pablo Neruda

Cryptocurrency backed by Farage donor is used for Russian war effort, investigators say theguardian.com/politics/2025/…

BREAKING: Reform UK's former Welsh leader and close Nigel Farage associate, Nathan Gill, sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison for repeatedly taking bribes to spread pro-Russian propaganda

I'll be reading at Newnham College, Cambridge on the 11th of December at 7 pm. Please come, if you are around. Registration using the QR code below.

‘The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.’ Tom Stoppard 1937 - 2025

In Mircea Cărtărescu’s Blinding, communist Bucharest turns into a visceral, shifting organism. Dive into the Nobel contender's world — including his shared love of butterflies with Nabokov, and the ambivalence of the Romanian identity. tinyurl.com/5kdxx4vu

one of my favorite final lines from a book, from keith waldrop’s light while there is light. rip. reissued next year from nyrb