"Such a tired machine"

A round-up for the week commencing 22nd August:

Can you solve this?

I have two new poems in Bristol-based journal Raceme no.13, both titled ‘Another Labyrinth’. Below is a poster I’ve made for one of them. If you find it a little difficult to understand at first, that’s likely because it’s a puzzle-poem based on the well-known ‘15 puzzle’ — a set of sliding numbered blocks which can be rearranged into the correct sequence. I recommend writing it out onto tiny slips of paper and rearranging by hand, although a very skilful and attentive person could solve it all in their head.

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On Starlings, with Caleb Parkin and Holly Hopkins

I’ve published a very short essay on two starlings poems over on my ‘Share Your Toys’ blog. It begins:

How does a poem mimic (or capture, or transmute) something so visual, so kinetic, so unliterary, as the sight of a murmuration of starlings? And is there any point in it trying to, when we can see the spectacle for ourselves at any time, via a brief internet search? Where is the sense in using such a tired machine as language – words on a page – to describe something that can be experienced first hand?

A revisitation

One of the first poems I published in a book which I also co-edited (traditionally, a frowned-upon practice) was an ode to swifts, in Birdbook: Towns, Parks, Gardens and Woodland, back in 2010. I decided this week to revive it, slightly edited, as a poem collaged from newsprint:

Reading

I’m coming up to half way through Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, which is a far easier and, to my mind, more intriguing read than her previous work, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I’ve attempted three times without managing to finish. I’ve also started the latest Seishi Yokomizo mystery to be published in English, Death on Gokumon Island. And just this morning I’ve received through the post Tania Hershman’s Still Life With Octopus and Suzannah Evans’ Space Baby.

Coming up

The reason I’m recommencing this Substack (as a round-up bulletin) after a five-month gap is that I’ve finally finished editing, designing and typesetting the latest round of Sidekick Books titles — our first since 2018. They’re due back from the printers on Tuesday, so future posts and social media activity will be focused on giving everyone a taste of their contents. Many, many more projects, small and large, are on the horizon or beginning to take shape. Perhaps too many for me to avoid dropping a few balls here and there. We’ll see!

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