Matt Gilbert

'Ecstatic Disempowerment' Annie Dillard's weasels, erotic obsession and how poems hold our gaze

“The poem doesn’t care for us. But, if it works properly, it might make us feel that it does. It might even cause us to change our perspective, our course. The fact that we know the poem doesn’t really look back is part of the contract.” open.substack.com/pub/helenmor...

Milestone – Niall M Oliver Milestone . . Niall M Oliver resides in Ireland with his wife and sons. His poems have appeared in Acumen, Atrium, The Honest Ulsterman, and he is the author of ‘We Will Eat Breakfast With Our Chil…

Milestone - Niall M Oliver @nmoliverpoetry.bsky.social
atriumpoetry.com/2025/08/08/m...

Today - 07/08/2025 - BBC Sounds News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.

Katherine Rundell on @BBCr4today would wave a magic wand to reverse the loss of school libraries. Only 1 in 7 primaries have one - only 1 in 4 in the most economically deprived areas. She adds they should be staffed by a librarian and assessed via Ofsted. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

If We Don’t Hang Together… This week: Nye Bevan, Labour and the case for solidarity; some extremely large places; and the European train time simulator you always wanted.

"The government has all too often seemed ready and eager to talk about vulnerable groups as though they’re a problem to be addressed, rather than human beings deserving of human dignity. It has not stopped to consider what the long term effects of this might be."

On solidarity, and the lack thereof

Cover of The Northern Gravy Anthology of Poetry

Excited to be part of this. Going in… @ralphdartford.bsky.social

Tell It Slant! is useful as a weapon in a creative armoury. However, its overuse in contemporary poetry as an all-encompassing method leads poets down a blind alley...

In his blog post yesterday, @roguestrands.bsky.social challenged the oft-heard injunction to 'Tell it slant' when writing poetry. It's true this technique can imbue a poem with intrigue and encourage readers to do a little of the work themselves. But should it be the standard practice for all poems?

“You’ll be amazed by what he looks like now” #poetry #foyles #blackboughpoetry

My favourite question in this interview/review with @karanchambers.bsky.social with @echepoetry.bsky.social is What do you do when a poem won’t behave?

Fave answer is to ‘How do you like to write?’ which is not the same as how do you write…
www.echepoetry.co.uk/reviews/woma...

Prison bosses make room for possible influx before planned protests across England Exclusive: Possible arrests at protests against Palestine Action ban and asylum hotels likely to stretch prisons

Let's empty the jails so we can fill them with octogenarians who care about genocide.
Because that's the real threat to society.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Stop the boats, wreck the state Another week, and it’s another two institutions on the brink – prisons and the asylum system.

There are no consequences for failure in modern British politics, just speaking gigs, board seats, and new wallpaper in Downing Street. The country, however, is not so lucky.

From small boats to prisons, the ghosts of the Tory past haunt the British state.

theleaduk.substack.com/p/stop-the-b...

‘Worrying’ levels of screen time means young people losing confidence to socialise in person, minister warns – UK politics live Culture secretary Lisa Nandy says ‘majority of young people spend all, or almost all, of their free time alone in their bedrooms, online’

This is not caused primarily by "screen time".

It's been caused by the mass eradication of third places for young people in basically every city over the past three decades - and a society that's hostile to the concept of teens socialising in public spaces.

www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Background pic shows an open notebook and pen on a wooden table with a coral-coloured filter applied to the image. Text overlay reads: Publishing Your Work - August 2025; Poetry & Writing Submissions - Journals, Competitions, Bursaries, Residencies.

It's here! Over 150 calls for literary competitions & submissions incl. poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, art, photography & more - contests, literary journals, residencies, bursaries etc - open or with deadlines in August 2025. Good luck & pls share.

www.thisiswordbox.com/wordbox-blog...

On losing an agent. Me and Mickie James came out in 2008, my next book, Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel in 2020.

Today’s blog is a bag of spanners, which is a metaphor so overused as to have no meaning but this blog actually is a bag of spanners. Oh.

In,

‘On losing an agent’

An agent is lost.

Not at sea.

Read and find out!

open.substack.com/pub/drewgumm...

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

"People are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites."

Global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished. But disaster is not inevitable: every one of us has agency. USE IT.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The emotionally precarious life of a poet… @writersandartists.bsky.social have released an excerpt from my essay in their 2026 edition: ‘Perseverance in Getting Poetry Published’ www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/perse...

The end of the road? What The Salt Path scandal means for the nature memoir It wasn’t the first hit memoir to tell a story of redemption inspired by the great outdoors – but could it become one of the last? Authors and publishers assess the damage

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a... ““Nature is considered to be the one place free of human artifice, the place where deep universal truths can be uncovered that are not to do with us,” Macdonald says, “which, of course, is bullshit.” [Helen Macdonald]

David Renton · What is the meaning of support? With the proscription of Palestine Action early in July, the question of what support for a terrorist group means has...

"An academic institution that responds to reasonable criticisms by asking the courts to imprison the students who make them has made itself a supporter of authoritarianism"

What is the meaning of support? www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Supersized stick insect discovered in high-altitude trees in Australia The 40cm-long insect, named Acrophylla alta, weighs slightly less than a golf ball and may be the heaviest insect in Australia

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

News: issue nine of Finished Creatures opens for submissions tomorrow - for the month of August. The theme is Trespass: verb and noun; sin and action; rights and wrongs. Please see the website for more information. xx

Thanks Drew. One of my own faves.

On this #PoisonedPlanet, last thing #PublicHealth or #Biodiversity needs is more #pesticices

Reading ‘Ridley Road’ from my 2023 Collection - Street Sailing @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social

Scheme to release beavers into wild in England has stalled, say nature experts Not a single licence granted since first beavers let loose in March, raising questions over application process

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Too early for the damehood? Stick this in the National Gallery. #Lionesses

A lovely review from the depths of Paul's Book Bag. *Blushes*

In search of all things "most rich, most glittering, most strange".

The Uniformbooks edition, published ten years ago now, of this important and unique work. First published in 1967 it had been unavailable for far too long.
uniformbooks.co.uk/thebookofthegreenman.php

I travelled the globe to document how humans became addicted to faking the natural world. Here’s what I found In his new book, The Anthropocene Illusion, photographer Zed Nelson reflects on the surreal environments created as people destroy nature, yet crave connection to it

www.theguardian.com/environment/... “as we destroy the natural world around us, we have become masters of a stage-managed, artificial experience of nature, a reassuring spectacle, an illusion.”

The Wise Owl Bookshop, Bristol in the background of a scene from Aardman TV series Rex the Runt.

My mum’s Bristol bookshop in a still from an old Aardman series called Rex The Runt. richlyevocative.net/2012/03/26/i...

Petition. Steve Reed: Come clean on the true cost of publicly owned water | We Own It

weownit.org.uk/act-now/peti...