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@oliverinthenorth.bsky.social

16 Followers  |  28 Following  |  2 Posts  |  Joined: 27.01.2025  |  1.879

Latest posts by oliverinthenorth.bsky.social on Bluesky

Congratulations!!

29.03.2025 17:36 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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Katherine Rundell · Why children’s books? Children’s books, to a great extent because they are written for those who cannot participate in the market, can offer...

‘The greatest children’s fantasies were worth your time when you were twelve, and they are equally worth it now. They remind us that the imagination is not an optional extra.’

Katherine Rundell on the importance of children’s literature: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

12.02.2025 12:10 — 👍 73    🔁 21    💬 3    📌 7
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RISE UP! With Antony Dunn, Lisa Coates and Nathan Walker 🎉 26/02, nowhere better to be on a Wednesday in February (or any other Wednesday)

07.02.2025 15:17 — 👍 7    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0
A wooden post in a garden with a framed area for a piece of paper to be mounted. On it, Chen Chen’s poem “Sorrow Song with Optimus Prime”: You are an unhappy thing, cursed with legs, every step carrying the love who left, the love you left, the job lost, the mountain of low, the mounting lack. But your legs grow tired of holding it, so you transfer it to your head. Then your head grows tired, so you delegate it to your shoulders. Then they are tired & you are tired & you don’t know what to do but replant it in your legs, your feet, & walk it to the supermarket. You try to sell your sickness to the octopus whose tentacles lie in severed strips. But he refuses. You try to freeze your darkness but the industrial fridge spits it out. You put a pink hat on your gloom & march it to the toy store where you try giving it away, giving it back to the latest version of the unattainable robot from childhood, the truck that transforms, grows arms that hold laser guns, could hold your grief, you. But the sorrow is held by your heart now, your own exquisite machine that seems finally to contain it. Then even your most stubborn muscle grows weary, & sends it whirling through your bloodstream & your blood carries it, everywhere in your body at once, so there is no more moving. So you sit, on the floor of the toy store, like the end of an avalanche, each rock, tree, & small wish of you crushed, heaped & the scream of your total defeat is the cry that brought the mountain down.

A wooden post in a garden with a framed area for a piece of paper to be mounted. On it, Chen Chen’s poem “Sorrow Song with Optimus Prime”: You are an unhappy thing, cursed with legs, every step carrying the love who left, the love you left, the job lost, the mountain of low, the mounting lack. But your legs grow tired of holding it, so you transfer it to your head. Then your head grows tired, so you delegate it to your shoulders. Then they are tired & you are tired & you don’t know what to do but replant it in your legs, your feet, & walk it to the supermarket. You try to sell your sickness to the octopus whose tentacles lie in severed strips. But he refuses. You try to freeze your darkness but the industrial fridge spits it out. You put a pink hat on your gloom & march it to the toy store where you try giving it away, giving it back to the latest version of the unattainable robot from childhood, the truck that transforms, grows arms that hold laser guns, could hold your grief, you. But the sorrow is held by your heart now, your own exquisite machine that seems finally to contain it. Then even your most stubborn muscle grows weary, & sends it whirling through your bloodstream & your blood carries it, everywhere in your body at once, so there is no more moving. So you sit, on the floor of the toy store, like the end of an avalanche, each rock, tree, & small wish of you crushed, heaped & the scream of your total defeat is the cry that brought the mountain down.

Spreading art is resistance. Just updated the poetry box at my house with this gem from @chenchenwrites.bsky.social

03.02.2025 17:07 — 👍 20    🔁 5    💬 1    📌 0
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Absolute cracker of a night at Rise Up! with the wonderful @carolinebirduk.bsky.social @coliverpoet.bsky.social & @oliverinthenorth.bsky.social - thank you, ace poets - & (always) my brilliant co-host @chadpie.bsky.social

30.01.2025 08:42 — 👍 11    🔁 2    💬 3    📌 0

Was an absolute pleasure to attend Rise Up! Thank you for being so welcoming and attentive. I also love this photo 🤩💛

30.01.2025 19:57 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Oh, lovely to see wonderpoets @oliverinthenorth.bsky.social & @oh-so-boatie.bsky.social listed in the 2025 Disabled Poets 'Best Single Poem' & 'Best Unpublished Pamphlet' categories 🙌✨

Congratulations to all whose work has been selected 💖Readings & announcement of winners on 29 March

Details 👇

29.01.2025 11:37 — 👍 6    🔁 3    💬 1    📌 0
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‘I’m frightened but I’m here.’
First Illness, from Niall Campbell’s Forward shortlisted collection ‘Noctuary’ (Bloodaxe 2019)
#Poetry
@bloodaxebooks.bsky.social

www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/...

29.12.2024 08:05 — 👍 35    🔁 10    💬 0    📌 0

better, i think, when i work on a poem, to believe i have something to learn rather than something to say

10.01.2025 16:52 — 👍 195    🔁 48    💬 5    📌 4

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