Matt Clegg

Two white cardboard boxes on a wooden background, with a rolled black Dymo tape label and white text.

John Bevis, 'Cloud Study'; Dymo tape edition, 1981.
“There is always a danger that the use of any system of names based on types shall lead to the neglect of everything not typical.”—Arthur W. Clayden, Cloud Studies, 1905.

Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’ Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

Climate change though. Absolutely insane lack of panic about this www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Voters' voices are being shut out of British politics. Your Party has a radical plan to change that | Jeremy Corbyn At our conference in November we will use a jury service-type model to allow members to discuss and decide policy, strategy and even the name of our party, says Your Party co-leader Jeremy Corbyn

Voters' voices are being shut out of British politics. Your Party has a radical plan to change that | Jeremy Corbyn

YouTube video by BBC Music Beth Gibbons - Floating On A Moment (Later... with Jools Holland)

'... all going to nowhere,
make no mistake...'

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlYt...

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

Text of poem - Seventieth Birthday. Made of tissue and H20, and activated by cells firing - Ah, heart, the legend of your person ! Did I invent it, and is it in being still? In the competition with other women your victory is assured. It is time, as Yeats said, is the caterpillar in the cheek's rose, the untiring witherer of your petals. You are drifting away from me on the whitening current of your hair. I lean far out from the bone's bough, knowing the hand I extend can save nothing of you but your love.

‘Seventieth Birthday’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

I thought this John Berryman poem, exhumed from an archive by Shane Macrae and published in the TLS, was very fine.

The last stanzas of Tony Harrison’s poem v, first published in 1985: Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard to find out where I'm buried but I'm near the grave of haberdasher Appleyard, the pile of HARPs, or some new neonned beer. Find Byron, Wordsworth, or turn left between one grave marked Broadbent, one marked Richardson. Bring some solution with you that can clean whatever new crude words have been sprayed on. If love of art, or love, gives you affront that the grave I'm in's graffitied then, maybe, erase the more offensive FUCK and CUNT but leave, with the worn UNITED, one small v. Victory? For vast, slow, coal-creating forces that hew the body's seams to get the soul. Will Earth run out of her 'diurnal courses' before repeating her creation of black coal? But choose a day like I chose in mid-May or earlier when apple and hawthorn tree, no matter if boys boot their ball all day, cling to their blossoms and won't shake them free. If, having come this far, somebody reads these verses, and he/she wants to understand, face this grave on Beeston Hill, your back to Leeds, and read the chiselled epitaph I've planned: Beneath your feet's a poet, then a pit. Poetry supporter, if you're here to find how poems can grow from (beat you to it!) SHIT find the beef, the beer, the bread, then look behind.

Tony Harrison, poet
1937-2025

Sad to hear of the death of Tony Harrison at the age of 88. He was perhaps the last surviving major English poet of the 20th Century. I posted this on his birthday last year:

x.com/SimoninSuffo...

Text of poem - Arriving. A maze, he said, and at the centre the Minotaur awaits us. There are turnings that are no through road to the fearful. By one I came travelling it like a gallery of the imagination, pausing to look at the invisible portraits of brave men. Their deeds rustled like dry leaves under my tread. The scent of them was the dust we throw in the eyes of the beast.

‘Arriving’ - #RSThomas
(Between Here and Now, Macmillan)
#Cyrraedd #Arriving
#Bardd #Barddoniaeth #Cerdd
#Poet #Poetry #Poem

Initial Illumination, by Tony Harrison

poetryarchive.org/poem/initial...

YouTube video by Democracy for Sale Inside the Tony Blair Institute: Larry Ellison’s Money, NHS Data, and Democracy at Risk

nside the Tony Blair Institute: Larry Ellison’s Money, NHS Data, and Democracy at Risk

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHO...

Three places left on this guided walk around Ted Hughes's national service landscape. 11.00-3.00, Saturday 4th October. www.eventbrite.com/e/ted-hughes...

‘The Empty Church’ - #RSThomas
(Frequencies, Macmillan)

RIP Tony Harrison: the first poet from my home city I read. I remember my first girlfriend calling me downstairs when she saw the re-showing of 'V' in the late 80s. 'There's a poet on TV! He's from Leeds!' The School of Eloquence is his masterpiece, & The Loiners is underprized.

Starmer says battle with Reform is fight for nations soul

And so everyone needs IDs?
Are they actually saying this?
What?

Nearly half of UK families excluded from modern digital society, study finds Exclusive: Lack of online skills and access creates digital divide that amplifies other exclusions, says report

Nearly half of UK families excluded from modern digital society, study finds

Exclusive: Lack of online skills and access creates digital divide that amplifies other exclusions, says report

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

trickle down economics
trickle down economic
trickle down economi
trickle down econom
trickle down econo
trickle down econ
trickle down eco
trickle down ec
trickle down e
trickle down
trickle dow
trickle do
trickle d
trickle
trickl
trick

Available for a while on BBC Sounds…

Can't help feel that Labour's recent strategizing has shifted the Overton Window against their own interests & those of their core voters. The Morgan McSweeney approach seems to melt principles, fog long-term vision, & set up perfect conditions for backlash. It worsens cynicism.

I look forward to the peace
conferences of the future
when lies, hidden behind speeches,
shall have their smiles blown away
by the dove’s wings, fanning in silence.

RS Thomas, from ‘One Day’

Ian Hamilton · Frown by Frown For R.S. Thomas, the poetry of R.S. Thomas has never been able to shape up to requirements, could never quite be work...

I enjoyed RS Thomas's Autobiographies more than Ian Hamilton did in 1997. Many passages read almost like those of a Japanese haibun master - & DO shed light on his relationship to poetry, Welsh nationalism, religion & science, & to nature especially.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v1...

Sadly, I don't currently have good enough tech to get age-verification through a picture, so I'm unable to use my 'chat' facility. Apologies to those who are trying to message me.

YouTube video by The Weather Station The Weather Station - Neon Signs (Official Video)

Out on the street, I went walking in a punishing heat -nobody meets my eyes except witty signs & luxury designs. Every neon sign every flashing light tries to fool you. Get you on their side, everybody swears they need you & only you to make the buy...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMbi...

‘To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves & the world – & at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.’

All that is Solid Melts into Air, Marshall Berman

The Empire of Forgetting by John Burnside review – last words from an essential poet of our age This posthumously published final collection confronts mortality, alongside the world’s almost unbearable beauty

He was the ideal laureate of our age, painfully alive to the glory of what we’re losing. Now we’ve lost him, our Anthropocene spirit guide.

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

YouTube video by BruceSpringsteenVEVO Bruce Springsteen - Adelita (Official Audio)

Bruce Springsteen - Adelita (Official Audio) youtu.be/dbM6bwUeFq4?... via
@YouTube

YouTube video by BruceSpringsteenVEVO Bruce Springsteen - The Lost Charro (Official Audio)

Godmother, when I die
Make of my clay a jar
And when you are thirsty, drink from it...

youtube.com/watch?v=biwz...

I agree about eradication of third places, but business models of addictive tech gotta be addressed!

Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/...