John Harvey

"But oh how my heart leaps up to think that never again shall I be harnessed to a long book."
Virginia Woolf's Diary, June 1937

To the @BFISouthbank yesterday to see beautifully restored (?) print of Terence Davies' "The House of Mirth", based on the Edith Wharton novel, with terrific performance by Gillian Anderson. Front row, big screen - wonderful colour palette, so many telling close-ups!

Slowly making my way through the Jimmy Schuyler biography - at last (p. 135) getting past the details of early relationships/affairs and onto the work. Surprised - and, for some reason, pleased - to learn that one of his first inspirations/models was D H Lawrence.

Admirer of Kelly Reichardt's work as I am, I was disappointed to be, well, disappointed by her latest film, 'The Mastermind'. Quite the best thing about it, for me, was the jazz-based score by trumpeter Rob Mazurek, featuring wonderful - beautifully recorded - drumming by Chad Taylor.

10/27/60: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
D: Karel Reisz P: Tony Richardson
w/Albert Finney, Shirley Anne Field, Rachel Roberts
Evening Standard: “Here is a chance for our own New Wave”
More
Crowther, impressed: www.nytimes.com/1961/04/04/a...
@leftlion.bsky.social: leftlion.co.uk/features/201...

This week's painting ... 'The Viaduct' John Nash, Oil on canvas, 1916.

Denise Levertov on Language, Poetry, the Imagination, and More Happy birthday, Denise Levertov! Here are some quotes from the writer:   “to go / just that much further, beyond the end / beyond whatever ends: to begin, to be, to defy.”   “…

Happy birthday, Denise Levertov!

bigother.com/2025/10/24/d...

✨WORKSHOP TOMORROW✨

Writing the Uncanny with Pam Thompson
Mon 27 Oct, 7pm

Sign up here: buytickets.at/thepoetrybus...

In this workshop we will aim to look at ways we might ‘unsettle’ our poems looking at examples of ‘the uncanny’ from writing and art.

This week's painting - "Piccadilly" Albert Irvin, Acrylic on canvas, 2002

Oh, and did I omit to say funny, sometimes outrageously so. And the packed audience responded appropriately. Great stuff!
@parktheatrelondon.bsky.social @nptheatre.bsky.social

Rare (for me) theatre visit last night - Nottingham's New Perspectives Theatre Co.'s brilliant production of Jane Upton's "(The) Woman", directed by Angharad Jones at the Park Theatre, north London. Meaningful, funny - so well written and played. Just one week to go!

Thanks to my New Mexico correspondent for this, a fair haul of my work on the shelf in the Taos Public Library - far more that to be found in my local Camden/Kentish Town equivalent.

One hefty, much anticipated volume purchased on Monday's visit to @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk

Followed a course of lectures by Matthew Holman at the Courtauld recently - if they're anything to go by, this should be some good book!

POEM FOR BRIAN
internationaltimes.it/poem-for-bri...
Malcolm Paul

Chuffed to find 'Fedora' (CWA Best Short Story Dagger 2014) in this collection, edited @martinedwardsbooks.bsky.social, of the best stories by members of the CWA. Also present, Ann Cleeves, Simon Brett, Liza Cody, Peter Lovesey et cetera ...

While in Whitby, many a flat white enjoyed at the estimable Mr. Cooper's ...

Here's a taster ...

Just back from a week in Whitby, North Yorks. Some tumultuous seas, amazing skies ... Pics now on my Blog ...https://straight75nochaser.wordpress.com/2025/10/12/a-week-in-whitby/

Clapping good wishes!

Haven't read the Sarah Hall yet, but if it's up to her usual standards it should be a string contender.

Brian Patten 1946 – 2025 I first became aware of the poet Brian Patten in the late 60s, when, as one of the handily christened Liverpool Poets, his work, alongside that of Adrian Henri and Roger McGough, was published in P…

New post just up on my Blog ... straight75nochaser.wordpress.com/2025/10/02/b...

The first issue - of thirty - of Slow Dancer poetry magazine and gently leaning on friends ...

We’re sorry to learn of the death of poet Brian Patten aged 79. Brian was the youngest of the trio of best-selling Mersey Poets who shot to fame in the early 1960s. (Photo: Brian Patten by Chris Gleave).

Yes, Kate. Brian's work in that book, alongside that of Roger & Adrian, opened a sense of what was possible in poetry to many young people - that and how it might relate to their lives.

Lovely tributes to poet Brian Patten throughout the news and press, as there should be. His wife Linda Cookson reminded me yesterday that he had been afforded the Freedom of the City of Liverpool, which made him so proud. www.itv.com/news/granada...

I'm so sad to have lost my brilliant, mercurial friend, poet Brian Patten, with whom I worked for 39 years. This is how he signed off his last email to me: "It's dragonfly time here. The lake down the lane is alight with them..."
Brian, you left the world alight with your words.
Obit in comments.
💙📚

Brian Patten obituary — The Guardian One of the Liverpool poets, along with Roger McGough and Adrian Henri, who was a perceptive writer on love

“He moved, spoke, gestured and breathed as if he knew for certain that behind the drab winter clouds a different kind of sky was waiting, and that beneath the exhausted and frost-bitten ground lurked every imaginable flower.”

apple.news/AFXfwny7ZTti...

Very sad to learn of the death of the poet Brian Patten at the age of 79. I first heard Brian reading, alongside Roger McGough & Adrian Henri, in Nottingham in '67 or '68, after which our paths crossed, happily, many times. A fine poet and a lovely man.

Art work of the week - William Scott, 'The Harbour', Oil on canvas, 1952