Jo Bell

A poster for our show in Sheffield tonight at The Foundry.

Thank you, lovely Liverpool, for a terrific night yesterday.

Today we’re heading to Sheffield for another evening of poetry and music.

Tickets here should you fancy coming along: leadmill.co.uk/event/brian-...

The latest Ted Hughes Society featuring the poetry of Steve Ely, who reads from his brilliant long poems The European Eel, Lives of British Shrews and Orasaigh. Available on our host Acast at: open.acast.com/public/strea... on Amazon Music, Apple, Spotify and Audible.

Let's just take a moment to reflect on the self-sacrifice and hope this person embodies - not the evil, hateful monsters thirsting for violence.

Near Cheltenham on Nov 13th? A great free poetry event with Hannah Lowe & Stewart Carswell 😊 👇

Sharks absolutely get cancer, and people claiming otherwise are pseudoscientific grifters preying on the desperate.

Even if sharks did not get cancer, eating shark would not cure your cancer any more than eating LeBron James would make you better at basketball.

Blimey. On what grounds?

I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice.

This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.

Asylum seekers, housed in hotels in Manchester, are reaching out in their own words to address the concerns of the local community.

Please take a minute to read their letter, & share it with the people in your life who need to hear the truth about the people they are protesting.

My sympathies - and I think the book is out on 27th?

Calm down, Kissabel. We all are.

Tfw you write a draft and you know a poem has promise, but it's not there yet. But you've done this enough times to know that this poem is not going to be one of the abandoned ones, and when it does figure itself out, it's going to feel like magic. ✨

Welcome, new Bluesky users! Please check out the thread below for tips on setting up your account, making your feed more interesting, finding old Twitter friends, search, privacy, stats, and more (and please ask questions if you have them)

(I'll have to rewrite & update the thread soon!)

Co-operative housing already shows what’s possible when people own where they live. Fair rents, strong communities, real security.

In Parliament today, the Housing Minister agreed: it’s time to explore how law can help it grow.

Today we are celebrating the publication of The Poems of Seamus Heaney, the long-awaited, definitive edition of Heaney’s poetry.

I'm the most famous eel historian in the world! How is that not great?

Also, I've met tons of wonderful people & made some of my very best friends. I've been able to launch a whole new career as a mapmaker & artist. I've been profiled in TIME, saved some eels, & shared the spaniel with the world.

BBC Radio 4 - Last Word, Dame Jane Goodall, Tony Harrison, Lord Menzies Campbell, Danny Thompson Matthew Bannister on a primatologist, a poet, a politician and a bass player.

Poet and broadcaster @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social paid tribute to poet and dramatist Tony Harrison on BBC Radio 4's Last Word (from 7:52).

Bloodaxe's tribute is on our website page below:
www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?article...
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Promotional poster advertising that submissions to online ekphrastic poetry journal After... will reopen for the whole of October 2025. Gives the web address to visit as afterypoetry.com/submit.

It's nearly time again ...

If you've been looking for a home for that 'after' or ekphrastic poem, @afterpoetry.com is the place for you.

Submissions reopen tomorrow – October 1st 2025.

You then have the entire month to send in your poem for a chance to feature in After... in 2026.

Good luck! 🤞🏼

The cover of Boater - a Life on England's Waterways

I love this book. Thank you, @jobellwriter.bsky.social !

Claire Wilmot | Fascistic Dream Machines Part of the misunderstanding of the deepfake threat stems from the idea that it is a problem of bad information, rather...

A powerful article with a powerful message: people aren't being fooled into fascism. They are seeking it out. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

US judge preliminarily approves $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright settlement A federal judge in California on Thursday preliminarily approved a landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a copyright class action brought by a group of authors against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, according to the authors' representatives.

📣We're delighted with the Court’s decision yesterday.
It's a win for authors and rightsholders, and a step in the right direction towards compensation for the unlawful use of copyright-protected works. Big Tech is not above the law and creators’ rights cannot be ignored. ✊
tinyurl.com/4db9u2fn

The easiest part of my job is being fighty and mean to powerful people when they are wrong. The hardest part of my job is being constructive and kind to people with less power than me when they are wrong.

Thank YOU and I'm so glad!

A Black man and a homeless man were found hanging from trees in Mississippi yesterday, for those who haven’t seen yet because it’s barely made it out of local news.

Today people went around my neighborhood in north east London spray painting St George’s crosses onto people’s homes. Many of these houses have non British people living in them.

This is getting very dark, very quick.

Elon Musk calls for change of UK government at Tommy Robinson rally Elon Musk spoke with Tommy Robinson via a video link to the thousands of people at Saturday’s ‘unite the kingdom’ rally

Foreign billionaires don’t get to incite violence against Britain.

We cannot stay silent. 1/5

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Evidently! Blimey, I'm delighted to hear this. Well done.

This Monday.

Congrats!

London peeps, it is a great great book. Go along and embarrass Luke by telling him how great it is, repeatedly.