Andrew Neilson

It also tells us that lyric poetry is as ancient and beautiful as the hills, the lakes, the forests. Across the whole world and for a long time. The next time someone with several degrees tells you they are 'anti' or 'post'-lyric...show them Du Fu.

Addendum: 'ten thousand' is basically the Tang Chinese version of saying 'infinity', it crops up a lot in Du Fu and elsewhere. I love this. The sophistication and modernity of these 10th century lyrics blows my mind.

Great poem, from a great collection.

My pamphlet of poems, Summers Are Other, is officially out now. Here's a taster, a version of Du Fu that Linton Kwesi Johnson used as an epigraph to Time Come, his Selected Prose. rackpress.blogspot.com?m=1

Poem for a Shabbat. By @jsaphra.bsky.social.

First stanza of The Viaduct: As a child I would cross with my father's brother, and in summer weather we would walk into loss.

Pamphlet titled Summers Are Other

I'm very much enjoying Andrew Neilson's pamphlet Summers Are Other from Rack Press, particularly the lovely lyric 'The Viaduct'
@badlilies.bsky.social

The government could stop spending £7bn on building yet more failing prisons and this would give it a head start on a far more promising route to cutting crime:

My poetry pamphlet Summers Are Other is available for pre-order now from Rack Press: rackpress.blogspot.com?m=1. I also have copies available if you message me. And they're out in the very occasional wild! Official launch in London on 29 October...more info to follow. 🙏

My poetry pamphlet Summers Are Other is available for pre-order now from Rack Press: rackpress.blogspot.com?m=1. I also have copies available if you message me. And they're out in the very occasional wild! Official launch in London on 29 October...more info to follow. 🙏

Violent crime plunges 13% in London as homicide rate less than Paris and Berlin Despite there being ‘tens of thousands of fewer victims,’ Mayor of London Sadiq Khan acknowledged that ‘one death and one crime will always be too many’

Violent crime in London has dropped by 13%—a fall of nearly 10,000 attacks a year—as the capital records its lowest homicide rate in five years. www.standard.co.uk/news/london/...

Summers Are Other

"There is much to admire in Andrew Neilson's poetry - its sober aplomb, for example, its musical exactitude, and the humane steadiness of its gaze at love and mortality. This is a very welcome sample. More, please." Sean O'Brien

Coming this autumn from Rack Press. Poems!

Cheers!

Thank you, Tarn!

Summers Are Other

"There is much to admire in Andrew Neilson's poetry - its sober aplomb, for example, its musical exactitude, and the humane steadiness of its gaze at love and mortality. This is a very welcome sample. More, please." Sean O'Brien

Coming this autumn from Rack Press. Poems!

Thanks, John! I was in a more Longley place (I usually am) but I do know exactly what you mean.

'The Viaduct': poem and construction. My uncle was a coal miner at Bilston Glen. Thank you to Gerry Cambridge of The Dark Horse for publishing the poem, and my thoughts on Seamus Heaney. This is a poetry magazine everyone should read.

Back from a trip to see my family in Scotland and what was awaiting me on my return but this grand wee magazine. Featuring the final part of a trilogy of essays therein I've written on excellence, entertainment, and edification...the final essay being on Seamus Heaney.

Gathering flowers – The Friday Poem In Conversation: The Friday Poem talks to Kathryn Gray and Andrew Neilson of digital poetry journal Bad Lilies

"… great sonics, an authoritative tone (even, or perhaps most especially, in expressing vulnerability), attentiveness to the line (for non-prose poems), and, very obviously, a freshness of language (free of cliché, invigorating)" thefridaypoem.com/in-conversat...

This has been a civilised discussion, thank you. What I've seen of the same thing on Facebook is...the opposite.

True. I would be with MacNeice myself, I hope, but what do we know? I do think WHA was brave in his own way because it involved his principles.

Just him. The move to the US was the singularly most politically controversial thing any poet did and it united the left and the right. *That* is bravery.

Parliament debated him leaving the country. That is sort of my point!

I think WHA was the last English language poet to have genuine publicly cultural and political impact. Seamus (amazing as he was) was a shadow of that. The reaction to
KJ's piece, on Facebook, is profoundly depressing

The social media reaction on other platforms (much of it grotesque and reprehensible) to Kathleen's challenging yet mild thoughts on what has happened to poetry in more recent decades made me think of this. Auden later changed the last line to "and die". But he had it right the first time. 2/2

"We must love one another or die" wrote Auden in 'September 1, 1939'. That was a truly great public poem by a truly great poet (if seriously flawed). The last of that type, I think...writing at a time when poetry itself was publicly recognised as a major art form. 1/2

Poem by me. I've lived in London for most of my adult life but I am Scottish. This one is about another Scottish poet. Sometimes the emotions run so deep you have to access the language.

Palestine Action protest arrests rise to more than 500 Police say the majority of arrests were for displaying placards in support of the banned group.

The poet Alice Oswald being among those arrested for supporting the right to protest has to be one of the most depressing things to happen this weekend. What country is this? www.bbc.com/news/article...

BAROQUE Let me be baroque in death as I've been practical in life Let six black-plumed stallions draw the black-gloss carriage wherein my black-gloss casket rests upon a maple plinth festooned with lilies - outrageously frilled and huge white lilies exploding from every crevice, their syrupy musk clogging the air for miles around. Let it halt all deliveries. Let the golden trim of the vast black wheels Hash and wink as we roll by, let the mourners' wails fly above the roofs of inappropriately mundane semis where only grandpa doesn't doubt his seeing eyes. Let the teenagers of the parish be absolved from Maths and History and PE, and instead beat timpani, their pale necks bowed to the heavy instruments, the pulse recalling the slow-time march of an invading army, while out in front a lone flautist draped in velvet presages our coming with tones as dissonant and forsaken as a freight train horn petitioning the night. Afterwards, let there be rain: sudden and catastrophic rain for a thousand days, washing all the pavements clean.

Great poem by Rebecca Watts.

(My eyes were closed, obvs)

I just spent a moment staring at this old friend and feeling whole again. Reasons for why forthcoming. ❤️