I mean, Lukacs would say that the realistic novel is about economic conditions by definition
Novelist & poet. Latest novel COLE THE MAGNIFICENT https://linktr.ee/tonywilliamswriter
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I mean, Lukacs would say that the realistic novel is about economic conditions by definition
Bilbo's offered a wage to go with the dwarves, but the reason he goes is that he quite fancies being a gentleman adventurer
Characters having to worry about money (or not) would be one way of differentiating between realism and fantasy. E.g. Frodo is Mr Frodo and can swan off to Mordor without giving notice
No wonder the political class despise and undervalue teachers, if this is what they think teaching is. No wonder their view of education is so reductive and instrumental.
Cherry plums
People need to complain about this crap if we want it to stop www.bbc.co.uk/contact/comp...
I keep expecting Bruno Cremer to walk into shot
I call it an OranGINa
That's like a cross between turning in his grave and rolling in the aisles - he's fuming, but he's also amused, because he knows how inflation works.
A classic of the genre* *the genre = M John Harrison novels
Lecturer in Creative Writing (poetry) at Bath Spa, 0.6 FTE www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOB269/l...
Lecturer in Creative Writing (fiction) at Bristol, 0.5 FTE www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOF238/l...
Yes, and I imagine it's also why they say I am silent but deadly
The correct spelling of my name is actually Tawny Owliams
Don't you find though that the shape of the coat-hanger really affects how the garment hangs?
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
You seem to have mistyped 'Life: A User's Manual, by Georges Perec'
(Which is odd as Rushdie said, with some justification, that it's a book characterised by the absence of love)
The Enigma of Arrival ❤️❤️❤️
... So (obviously) I would advise buying the pamphlet in order to enjoy work by, among others, Katharine Towers, Peter Riley & Helen Mort, but also _going_ to the Peak District in reality or imagination for the sake of how its topography might seduce you. 3/3
...as my poem 'What I See Is a Limestone Landscape' seeks to express, the Peak District and in particular the White Peak functions for me as a kind of 3D promise of home which I will never be able to redeem but which, frankly, is the myth which sustains me in the face of all life's difficulties. 2/3
Can't quite express how grateful I am to have a poem included in 'Ten Poems from the Peak District' from @candlestickpress.bsky.social - not only because it's a beautiful object, nor that I find myself among poets I deeply admire, but also because... 1/3
Yeah, because academics aren't people and so don't have extraordinary or everyday experiences 🙄
Full quote: "A breathtakingly pacy and bone-crunchingly violent tale of life in the northern criminal underclass, that comes across like poverty porn on a crystal meth binge or Sleaford Mods out of their minds on spice." uk.bookshop.org/p/books/nutc...
"Sleaford Mods out of their minds on spice." Banging recommendation of Nutcase from @stuhennigan.bsky.social whose novel KESHED is out from Ortac Press next year uk.bookshop.org/lists/how-to...
That's amazing! Thanks so much 🙏
Brilliant and brutal sounds right... KESHED by @stuhennigan.bsky.social will be ace
A glibly written grant application risks producing an ineffective project. Really nailing the bid means nailing the project conception too and that takes human effort and expertise
My wife writes charity geant applications and says AI is very limited there too. As in any context, it can churn out bland vaguely plausible text but it can't understand a project and then write to communicate that understanding
Lecturer in Creative Writing at Exeter post, closes 15 July 💙https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNS852/lecturer-in-creative-writing-education-and-scholarship
Obviously I'm biased but I'd say it's definitely worth a try!
*love story... shit!
www.saltpublishing.com/products/col...
Those goons @saltpublishing.com have got a lot to answer for 4/
But maybe there's still something to be gained from reading it even if the author is basically Private Walker from Dad's Army 3/
Lots of readers really loved it so they're going to be shocked to discover most of it isn't true 2/
I've just heard about this book about a long journey, with a live story at its heart, which is apparently completely made up and written by a total crook 1/
RIP Phil Lynott
In contrast to Scots, which has a living tradition of phonetic orthography, so when people do it they are drawing on conventions and don't have to start afresh
Maigret's subordinates are so endearing
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
I know it's, in one sense, not a laughing matter, but, on the other hand, this paragraph 🤩🤩
This fish doorbell is very moreish visdeurbel.nl/en/
Thank you!
Maybe that's what I'm grasping at... and/or Empson might have adapted it. Can't find my copy of 7 Types of Ambiguity to look in there!
"Ideas are simple and the world is complicated" - I thought that was William Empson in Some Versions of Pastoral, but I can't find it there. (He does say pastoral is "putting the complex into the simple".) Can anyone tell me where it's from - another Empson text, or someone else entirely?
"A horse is, like, an animal with four legs that eats grass"
Gavin Higgins reflects on his new song cycle celebrating the North of England, which premiers at Aldeburgh on Tuesday. I'm honoured that it includes my poem 'How Good It Sounded', after Heine. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/j...
Colleagues attending my 20-minute talk on Monday will be pleased to hear my ppt is 122 slides long and 27MB
How the Willow Pattern led @tonywilliams.bsky.social’s poem to echo the pattern of a poem on an imagined urn: Who are those people under the catkins And what, in the temple, do the worshippers sing? Blue’s the low fence that was built to climb over A bundle of secrets you were told to bring
Poem about the place I was when I was looking at the place in the willow pattern plate
Northumberland is NOC (a small crumb of comfort)
Similarly it's called the blue screen of death because when you die, everything goes blue and you see some boring administrative text for the rest of eternity (2 Thessalonians 3:26)
The footage from the Sycamore Gap case looks like it was taken by Nicéphore Niépce
🔍 Who are the UK indie publishers redefining books in 2025? Discover 10 bold presses + their must-read new titles — from Salt to Dead Ink, Bluemoose to Fitzcarraldo. 📖 Read the roundup: #indiebooks #ukbooks #boooksky
But it was also a great adventure - a day out of the usual run of time, when social structures and ties were both loosened and tightened. When the power came on late in the evening there was a cheer, but it was also a bit sad - back to the same old same old
It was amazing how much infrastructure was affected by the outage - apart from no lights and plugs etc, there were no card payments, no mobile internet (sms texts slowly crept through), no atms. If you didn't have cash you couldn't buy anything, though most shops were shut anyway
Eventually I reached my hotel and dumped my bags, before heading out for a beer and kebab by candlelight
You might have thought it was indeed '100 STRESS', but actually there was a really jolly vibe, a bit like early lockdown. Everyone was in it together. The traffic lights were off so everyone just took turns
As I got closer into the city I started to see more people, walking around looking for food and water or just generally roaming (since lots of businesses had to close for the day and they had no power at home)
Also I was dragging a suitcase because the left luggage machines, like everything else, were out of order
I'm shit at social media so I didn't document the walk very well, but here's a railway line and a medieval bridge
It's about 7 or 8 miles through industrial areas, countryside, suburbs and then the city itself. It was about 25 or 26 degrees but I had water and nothing else to do all day
Yesterday I found myself at Porto airport during the power cut. I'd toyed with the idea of walking to the city centre (one night stopover before my flight today) and the transport issues and general chaos decided me
The cage is open, but the beast is asleep (Sid the Sexist, Viz)
'Susan? It's Mr Chesterton and Miss Wright' has become a favourite quote in our house
This. An emergency recall of parliament on a weekend for British Steel. Nothing at all for UK HE which employs far more people, has already shed 10,000 academic jobs, with several institutions on the brink of collapse. A reminder: we train all the doctors, teachers, engineers, nurses, lawyers &c &c
I'm going in. I may be some time.
I wish either my father or Mrs Dalloway, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, & what my lousy childhood was like, & how my parents were occupied & all before they had me, & all that Mrs Dalloway kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth
Recycling at its best
Drinking whisky and listening to birdsong in the dusk because there's a dog asleep on me
He'll get sore thighs if he walks down a steep hill like that
I certainly am!
Ideally 100% butter & 0% marmite
Lovely recent review of Nutcase, which you can obtain from any good bookshop or indeed from LibGen if you're a techbro crook
A poem about cows for #worldpoetryday from my @ninearchespress collection The Midlands. MOOOOO!
"variance in bodily and mental health is being unnecessarily medicalised and pathologised" - unnecessary if you're a doctor, maybe, a bit more necessary if you're the patient suffering from that variance
'lying in bed with a woman... whom the station agreed not to name in their coverage'
New Cormac McCarthy just dropped www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
The name's Bond. Bollocksed-up Bond.
Riddley Walker's a masterpiece, but I also love Pilgermann. He was a genius.
Hoist by their own petard
My poetry collection Hawthorn City is currently on sale for a fiver www.saltpublishing.com/products/haw...
Pick up a copy of Nutcase for a fiver in the @saltpublishing.com sale www.saltpublishing.com/products/nut...
They're probably tired
No, you are
Kletterzentrum Innsbruck is the best climbing wall in Europe but perhaps my favourite element is the lemon-yellow gents which has minimalist trance playing very quietly
"Their half was full of things that were all at different stages in the process of decay, so that the boundary between ornament and junk had been obscured." Rachel Cusk, Transmit 😍
It'll make a change from turkey
From Ivan Klima's magnificent Love & Garbage
I just felt Stoner's story and setting was quite well trodden, whereas Butchers Crossing took me to new imaginative territory
I much preferred it to Stoner - it stayed with me too
Morning
"You are old, John the Baptist, the Nazarene said, and you cannot fandango for toffee, and yet you repeatedly cut off your head - would you not rather chat over coffee?"
