Bill Herbert

‘Gasafoetida’ is a cruel nickname. Might it, albeit subconsciously, have contributed to its neglect?

There’s laconic, then there’s Darlo laconic. #VaneWomen’s Marilyn Longstaff eulogises a phone seat/table:

…scraps of paper, dying biros, phone book of the mainly dead,
…I’ve received bad news here, lots of it.
Now it’s mostly spam…

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue #Darlington

Marilyn Longstaff: The Black-and-White Telephone perches on the execrable drawers/seat combo,fills a space on the quarter landing, towards the foot of our stairs,a draughty spot, next to a single-glazed stained-glass…

Marilyn Longstaff notes that, just because an item of furniture becomes obsolete, it doesn’t mean that the memories and emotions we associate with it become obsolete too. It’s a pretty close thing, though.

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/m...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Our editors are currently approaching folk to set up the chain, which will be posted fortnightly on the #NewBootsAndPantisocracies site and shared here and on Effbok, TwittereX, & Insta, then (all being well) published in the autumn.

#ArtSonnetChain @azjackson.bsky.social

Sophie and Nancy will be looking for art structured like a sonnet, for sonnets that can be drawn, snipped, or modelled. As long as it is reproducible on paper in black and white, and something like a last line can be handed on, let's see how far we can go!

#ArtSonnetChain #NewBootsAndPantisocracies

…They hope this theme might allow not just ekphrasis or poems about iconic (and less well-known) figures, but experiment: sonnets about processes, techniques, ideas - about art-making itself.

#ArtSonnetChain #NewBootsAndPantisocracies

The #ArtSonnetChain editors are longtime #NewBootsAndPantisocracies co-conspirator, previous chain contributor & cover artist @sophieherx.bsky.social, and the wonderful poet/artist of the idea of Northness (& Greenlandic), #NancyCampbell.

new boots and pantisocracies Eco Sonnet Chain

As in previous years, #NewBootsAndPantisocracies interrupt your #ValentinesDay weekend to bring you a collaborative sonnet-y announcement:

For our 4th chain, #WhalebackCityPress have asked @sophieherx.bsky.social & #NancyCampbell to edit an #ArtSonnetChain.

newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com

File this in the triquetra between Furniture, Futility, and Futurism:

From painted calves to poetic cuffs:

‘Above me loom the awe-inspiring stockinged
calves of dukes, striking the pose of kings.
 
…My eyes resist such conquest
and I lay my head back, let my mind drift
 
from the poet’s practised off-the-cuffs…’

@isobeldixon.bsky.social

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Isobel Dixon: Poetry in Trinity The Court’s clock strikes the stanzas of the hour.Bright spears suspended from the chandelierrefract their lofty light on all this complexpatterning: the window’s heavy damaskvalances and drapery, …

There are some rooms that, as @isobeldixon.bsky.social describes in this poem, may not really be for us, and there are some poetry readings that take place in such rooms that, well…

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2026/02/10/i...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Is it to-whoo or to-whoom?

Bring on Spring 🍃✨what better way to start than with this bunch of eco sonnets from @whalebackcity.bsky.social @azjackson.bsky.social

Lesley Mountain's sequence weighs up that which we may not wish to inherit:

I am old enough to remember the threat
of the bottom drawer, my mother’s stories
of hopeful embroidering
of tablemats, aprons and napkins -

young enough to have escaped
being sewn into that hole.

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Lesley Mountain: Skirting 1 Trousseau I am old enough to remember the threatof the bottom drawer, my mother’s storiesof hopeful embroideringof tablemats, aprons and napkins -young enough to have escapedbeing sewn into that …

This Thursday we have a fine trio of poems by Lesley Mountain about not only the difficult matter of the trousseau, but also that of a fitting we were astonished to realise we hadn't noted earlier: the skirting board.

(ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/l...)

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Wigtown Poetry Prizes Founded in 2005, the Wigtown Poetry Prizes are some of the UK's best established writing competitions, offering awards in all three of Scotland’s languages with a prize pot of over £3000. The 2026 prizes mark 21 years of Wigtown Poetry Prizes and over £50,000 awarded to emerging and established poets. The competition opens on 2 February and closes on 6 May 2026, with a prize-giving at Wigtown Book Festival in the autumn. We hope to see you there. Wigtown International Prize: £1500 Runner-up: £200 Wigtown Scots Prize: £500 Runner-up: £200 Supported by Saltire Society Wigtown Scottish Gaelic Prize: £500 Runner-up: £200 Supported by The Gaelic Books Council Dumfries & Galloway Fresh Voice Award Professional support including mentoring by Wigtown Festival Company and a retreat at Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize 30 copies of a pamphlet of your work set by Gerry Cambridge Supported by The Dark Horse Magazine

The Wigtown Poetry Prizes offer awards for poetry in all three of Scotland’s languages. The 2026 competitions are open for submission from today (2 Feb) until 6 May
www.wigtownpoetryprize.com/poetry-compe...

Stephen Bone: Ode To A Deckchair Rousedfrom cobwebbed hibernation,you regain yourself, emblemof holidays. Sun soaked dreamsof cornflower skiesand slumped easeunfoldedwith your teak bones.A weathered veteranbrave faced to the washo…

In these cauld and blustery days of far too much rain, how nice to sit back and dream of deckchairs with Stephen Bone…

Why not set one up in your living room now, and pretend you’re on the deck of a doomed ocean liner!

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/s...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 38 The theme for this episode (https://open.spotify.com/episode/1FeZemtLFiCIBpkyFqC24u?si=y7M0SktZQXSU1-8FcCiVrw) was 'writing nature/writing eco' and it was prompted by some comments by Nancy Campbell w...

Lots of further info on this episode of #PoetryWorthHearing, including texts etc from other participants, available here:

www.poetryworthhearing.biz/post/poetry-...

#EcoSonnetChain #NewBootsAndPantisocracies #WhalebackCityPress

@azjackson.bsky.social

Kathleen McPhilemy’s excellent podcast, ‘Poetry Worth Hearing’, featuring the launch of our #EcoSonnetChain, is now up on Spotify, Audible, and YouTube, introduced by #LindaFrance and featuring readings from almost all participants:

open.spotify.com/episode/1FeZ...

#NewBootsAndPantisocracies

Rabbie, Rabbie, Burning Bright by W. N. Herbert Atween November’s end and noo there’s really nithin else tae do but climb inside a brindlet coo and dream o Spring, fur Winter’s decked hur breist and broo wi icy bling. It feels like, oan St Andrae’s nicht, thi sun went oot and gote sae ticht he endit up in a braw fire fecht wi some wee comet – noo he’s layin low wi his punched-oot licht aa rimmed wi vomit. We too hae strachilt lik The Bruce and hacked up turkey, duck and goose; and let aa resolution loose oan Hogmanay, but waddle noo frae wark tae hoose lyk dogs they spayed.

Each year fails tae begin thi same: fae dregs o Daft Deys debt comes hame and we gaither in depression’s wame aa duty-crossed – but Burns’s birthday is a flame set tae Defrost. Ye dinna need tae be Confucius tae ken, if Dullness wad confuse us, ye caa ‘Respite! Let’s aa get stocious – And dinna nag us. Grant us that globe of spice, thi luscious Delight caaed “haggis”!’ That truffle o the North must be dug frae the depths o January, but cannae pass oor lips, nor we cross Limbo’s border – unless that passport, Poetry, be quite in order. Sae thi daurkest deys o thi haill damn year can dawn in yawns baith dreich an drear – sae thi Taxman’s axe is at wir ear fur his Returns? We Scots sall neither dreid nor fear but read wir Burns.

Atween November’s end and noo
there’s really nithin else tae do
but climb inside a brindlet coo
and dream o Spring…

—W.N. Herbert, “Rabbie, Rabbie, Burning Bright”
in OMNESIA (Remix), @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social 2013
Warming up for #BurnsNight
#poem
www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/rabbie-...

Andrew Sclater adds that essential item, the kitchen sink, to the #GhostFurnitureCatalogue.

He also alludes wittily to further matters possibly at play in our daily focus on the domestic:

…while I, in aprons, gently pour
our residues down this white sink,
in metaphors of how I think.

Αndrew Sclater: The Sink The pipes here underneath my sinkamaze me by the way they linkmy blinkered house to Lower Earthand in so doing add real worthto living this my drywall life—together with my drywall wife—though we a…

Sinks: we all think we know where they start out, but then where do they go? We're astonished we haven't mentioned them before, but Andrew Sclater's poem plumbs the depths of the matter, dare we say, succinctly:

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2026/01/21/%...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Olive Ritch’s poem ends on a neat but unsettlingly ambivalent note: what exactly does its protagonist hope for?

Wind rattling panes long into nights,
she seeks answers in scriptures. Between moments,
the light changes, and a hunter’s moon
haunts a lobby window with hope.

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

Olive M. Ritch: Stoneyhill An Orkney chair in my dining-roomspeaks of another place, another time,before womenfolk were entangled in our webof online fear, offline shortcomings.A time when great-grandma lowers herselfonto th…

No-one who has sat in or seen an Orkney chair would think of it as anything other than a safe place. As Olive Ritch points out, though, that rather depends on what you need protection from:

ghostfurniturecatalogue.wordpress.com/2026/01/12/o...

#GhostFurnitureCatalogue

'...bow to the one who'll have your goods and gear,
To one you must obey, to one who doesn't even want you dead;
Than one more snatch- or hit-squad in a gunship.'

#NewBootsAndPantisocracies #PeterMcCarey (2/2)

If you can’t be kind, don’t be cruel, as #Elvis nearly sang. But what about those who can’t not be cruel - what use is it that history will not be kind to them? #PeterMcCarey attempts to bear witness:

'Better a rescue flight, however grave the constitution
Than...'

#NewBootsAndPantisocracies (1/2)

'...their own flag and their own oath and their own inspiring ditty
And they’ll gather as The Presidential Right to Riot Committee.
You may forget these details, friends, so here’s the nitty-gritty:
When the turkey does the pardoning, you know the world’s turned shitty.’

(Peter Childs) (2/2)

Those #Trumpo pardoned for storming the US Capitol seem awfully like those #Trumpo unleashed on the US streets. Here’s Peter Childs from a year ago regarding the former:

‘They’ll be Grand Marshals, every one, in uniforms bright and pretty
With...'

#NewBootsAndPantisocracies (1/2)

Striking, resonant poem - and a brilliant instance of the 13 line near-sonnet.

I think this is translated by Richard Lourie, though the Poetry Foundation site and indeed the publisher (as far as I can tell) don't seem to mention this.

Can you confirm, @johnglenday.bsky.social?

#CzesławMiłosz

Peter McCarey: Crans In the Jura Mountains,That sketch the Milky Way on frosty nights(Though the Swiss Alps star),The Coupe-feu – I’d want themThere by the grace of gift, elective kinship.Trying not to seeW…

Here’s a new poem on the #NewBootsAndPantisocracies site by Peter McCarey, contrasting the complex, messy way humans react to tragedies with the simplified cruelty of why humans cause them:

newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com/2026/01/08/p...

(2/2)