Liam Bates

Lecturing on allusion today ✨

Tom is great

"How will a student who is learning to write well know when to transform an automated output or how to infuse it with A-worthy value? Which of a chatbot's always confident ideas or texts do or do not meet the bar?"

Really brilliant piece on AI infiltrating the university.

appreciate you

Chicago Review seeks pitches of critical reviews, commentary essays, notes and reflections on contemporary British experimental poetry 👇

mailchi.mp/d31d83f35611...

will I still be able to follow the film if I didn’t see the previous one, wuthering hsevens

Randall James Tyrone

Jeff VanderMeer recommending Richard Siken

📢Call For Papers📢
Sociability & Political life

Marc Jaffré & I are organising a conference! We're asking: can there be politics without sociability? How have friendship, intimacy, socialising & informal attachments been central to political projects & movements?

Get your abstracts in by Feb 14th!

November Show's over, folks. And didn't October do A bang-up job? Crisp breezes, full-throated cries Of migrating geese. Low-floating coral moon. Nothing left but fool's gold in the trees. Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage, While it lasted? Was I dazzled? The bees Have up and quit their last-ditch flights of forage And gone to shiver in their winter clusters. Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin, Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters. Even the swarms of kids have given in To winter's big excuse, boxed-in allure: TVs ricochet light behind pulled curtains. The days throw up a closed sign around four. The hapless customer who'd wanted something Arrives to find lights out, a bolted door.

Maggie Dietz

America invents a machine. They call it the machine. It’s a machine you need if and when you want to reinvent yourself. It helps, America promises, with everything. No one knows where to look or how to turn it off. The waitlist is thick. Every kid wants one. It costs 48 thousand dollars and last I checked it’s still out of stock.

one of my two poems in the newest print issue of @waterstonereview.bsky.social

much love to guest editor @josehernandezdz.bsky.social

Parkin 84 — The Interpreter's House

Hi friends - I'm Featured Poet on the new @interpretershouse, with three poems & an introductory essay to them:

theinterpretershouse.org/parkin-84

They're PhD work: one of my jay poems & two from my travels last year 🐦 🚢 🐻

Got to keep the lights on

the poetry competition is pounding at the door; your tithes are overdue

Speak and Sell | Sophie Pinkham The siren song of Ms. Rachel cannot be understood outside of America’s ongoing impoverishment of families.

I would love to see more rigorous, popular criticism of contemporary children’s media. Love this, on Miss Rachel, from Sophie Pinkham. thebaffler.com/salvos/speak...

Last chance to get tickets for tonight🎟️ manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/whats-on

Beautiful readings today from #YvonneReddick and @liambatespoet.bsky.social exploring #friendship #climate and #journeys

Looking forward to listening to the wonderful Yvonne Reddick and @liambatespoet.bsky.social reading at @litfest.bsky.social later today

The Triangle I should never have written the instruction manual illustrating the 52 distinct tones that can be struck from the triangle, popular now in concert halls from here to Berlin. It's brought me nothing but success. The joke, at first, was exquisite as a devilled egg and the expression on their faces like a sweet pimento. You put the phony in symphony tonight, grinned back the shiny hand-dryer in the gents. Gobs dropped and I went on, describing the point tapped just so for the blackbird's dawn trill, the ripple on a clear lake in Sweden, the squeak of gas that jets from a roasting coal. One tone only audible to toddlers, another only to dogs. Of course I reddened when those rich fools googled me, the search results proved it true. The hits were legion. Not only that, the book had entered its fourth print run and was forthcoming in Russian and Nynorsk. That's when it occurred to me that I was late to deliver the keynote address at the annual summit for triangle-lovers, my lecture on the sweeter octaves of beryllium copper - how to damp it for the rustle like the train of a bridal dress over cobbles. Or pitch it like the mice celebrating the owl's demise by lightning. Or the ting! so crystalline it's called 'frost creeping'. So I jotted some notes, grabbed my jacket, and said taxi.

Dean Browne (@deanbrowne.bsky.social)

No news but agonising over the ending of a poem I’ll ultimately decide was shit anyway. National Poetry Day!

Booking the Phrases The power of found speech in poetry

Is there a poet listening in to your conversation? Watch out: you might become an immortal line...

Who are the poets you think of as citational or allusive, the kind that might allude to, quote or paraphrase e.g. cartoons, philosophy, music?

Gardeners urged to collaborate to help moths and hover flies thrive in cities Researchers found moths and hover flies are more negatively affected by urbanisation than bees

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Saw that the strong white cider we used to drink in the park as teenagers is being bottled in recycled plastic now.

I was fortunate to spend some time with Liam's excellent poetry earlier this year. Highly recommend taking him up on his offer in the below post!

Two copies of Human Townsperson

Human Toznsperson, the debut collection by Liam Bates. centres around a heroic quest. The hero? Somebody. The quest's objective? Unsure. Utilising Bates' engaging and absurd poetics. Human townsperson follows the journey of a poet leaving town bearing gear and supplies: a pack full of fantastic weaponry, potions and prescription medication. The work will be precarious and the costs grave, but out in the wilderness for long enough, maybe we'll remember why we're here. Al the speed of human brain synapses Liam Bates poems in Human lozensperson zing around conceptually but always hold the dry wit at their centre. The poems constantly strive to make sense of a world that plays out as if it's a dream state. As the book progresses we become aligned with Bates' mode of thought. because it scems like the only sanity in a constantly discombobulating world. A book we all need. to guide us gently back to the ordinary from the bizarre times weire in. - Roger Robinson To encounter these poems is to embark on a surreal quest, where the language of gaming and fantasy act as waymarkers to move deeper into our understanding of ourselves. - Andrew McMillan Reading a poem by Liam Bates is like embarking upon a mysterious mission. You don't know who the enemy is, or where you're going. but the poet hands you a scroll and a sword and an office stapler and sends you out to seek yourself. - Caroline Bird Bates makes ludic operations, life as endless side quests, magic potions and mysterious exchanges collide with the hyper-real. Intense invention is balanced with a compassionate sensibility and connection with the world. The voice is so charming and the experimentation worn so naturally that the moral challenge and heartfelt Ivricism arrive by stealth and take your breath away. - Luke Kennard

I’m clearing the house out so have some copies of my debut poetry collection, Human Townsperson, going cheap. A BARGAIN EVERYTHING MUST GO SALE PRICE £5+P&P if you’d like one.

Someone else recommended this! I’ve been remiss

Alice Notley - The Descent of Alette
CAConrad - The Book of Frank
GennaRose Nethercott - The Lumberjack's Dove

Oh wow yeah just looked it up and sounds v cool. Will try and find a copy or pdf