Ace performance piece from Topher Mills’s selected poems Sex On Toast published by ⁦@parthianbooks⁩

Miniskirts in The Waste Land! Now that’s a great title. When you google it, always google proposed titles, it shows Pratibha Castle’s @pratibhacastle fabulous book first. Same with other sites. An original, amusing and literary title just can’t be beaten!

What a cracking cover! It just stares out at you, follows you round the room etc. It is also a cracking book full of Merthyr dialect spouted by a stupendous array of characters. Edgy, moving, politically savvy and seriously funny. Stonking!

Ending my reading year with a bang! A powerfully written intense novel that is so much more than just good writing and the search for justice and long buried truths in a racially divided America. 2024 is going to have trouble topping this book!

Poetry and Sexism, it sounds like heavy going but I romped through this highly readable book. At times uncomfortable, especially if you’re a man, the truth being a bitter pill etc., but it’s honest, insightful and even inspiring. One of those works all poets should read.

Getting a bundle of books in the post is like a mini Xmas. Always good to have a wide range of reading matter to keep your perspective acute.

Got this in the post! The revised and enlarged second edition of Rob Cullen’s book. Any poetry book going into a second edition is good news.

Does this cover repulse you? Never mind all the shortlisted nonsense, this is a book of wonders, I’ve read and re-read some of these poems rapturously, and yet many will be put off by the cover, the innate fear of creepy crawlies!

My first book was called ‘The Bicycle is an Easy Pancake’ and the title poem was my first poem translated into French and yes I still love cycling!

Venue change for this event. Private back room in the Packet, a great pub.

A bit of a Marmite book, you either love the complex interplay of ideas and images, the hyper linguistic rendering of emotion and the sheer verve of this poetry, or, once you’ve read enough to get the full impact, you need to lie down and wait for the headache to wear off!

Home made chicken pie for dinner with proper shortcrust pastry and fold over crimping to stop leakage. It’s not just Gareth Writer-Davies who can bake!

Every time I log in to X/Twitter the screen has a black background? I change to a white background, it says that’s the default, but next time I log in it’s back to black! Why is it doing this???

Exhilarating essays that combine passionate, modernist, poetic prose with rigorously intellectual thought. There is so much going on in this book that examines class, academia, race, gender and poetry and so much else. It is quite simply awe inspiring.

Vikings, the great tv series, focuses on the Western, European etc. travels of the Norse, but this book looks at the Baltic/ Eastern exploits. How did a carnelian bead from India turn up in Repton, England? You’ll have to read this intriguing book to find out!

Years ago Jon Gower raved about The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris; I thought it was going to be about sheep farming, boy was I surprised! His latest suggestion (below) was very different but just as brilliant, so much more than just a book about Wales and its future.

My mum died in 2022 and this book captures that grief profoundly. It’s anger, confusion, sadness and humour etc. One long poem called ‘Arrival’ about being in your parent’s home after they’re death is a tour de force that is stunningly good.

John Harrison, Topher Mills and Ifor Thomas at Cabaret 246 in 1987

Two great books of working life arrived today from Smokestack. Fred Voss poems of working in machine shops in America have become classics and Martin Hayes is almost his alter-ego in minimum wage, fag end Britain. A perfect combo for Christmas!

What is this? Is it a memoir, a history, a handbook for poets, a guide to publishing or advice on how to write when your muse has died? Whatever he writes about Finch is always so engaging, human and unfailingly humorous. A book destined to become essential reading for writers.