Graeme Richardson

After a Night in Camelot and Arden The life of Patience Strong, England's best-selling modern poet

I wrote about Patience Strong, almost certainly the best-selling English poet of the twentieth century, who wrote six poems a week for the Daily Mirror (all on a Monday morning) as well as a hit song, greeting cards and calendars, and whose print runs were in the 100,000s

I've been reading & rereading @ravoon.bsky.social's debut Dirt Rich the last couple of weeks. It's the best new collection I've read in a very long time. It reclaims the techniques of Auden and MacNeice for the 21st century, while mining layers of memory – personal. familial, social – …

Little Griefs by Andrew Neilson Come to celebrate the launch of Andrew Neilson’s debut collection, Little Griefs!

OCEAN'S FOUR: merely a hop, skip and a lengthy jump away from Leith's Ocean Terminal. Not a heist but a quest, or maybe even a bris (ouch, at my age). Yes, it is the Edinburgh launch for my debut collection, Little Griefs, out next month! www.eventbrite.com/e/little-gri...

Auden's 'Imaginary Friends' NSP Guest Post! Andrew Neilson on how the literati cope as Rome falls

Our co-florist @andrewjamesneilson.bsky.social has written a guest post for @northseapoets.bsky.social on Auden and 'Imaginary Friends' northseapoets.substack.com/p/audens-ima...

Hoping that's early Thomas and not early John! Thanks,Paul. I'm very touched by how deeply you've engaged with the collection. Thank you.

Benn had a lot to be scarred about! That's really perceptive, Ian - he has long been a favourite of mine. Ungentle Benn.

"You won't like me / When I'm angry" was one of the Marvel couplets wasn't it

Thanks so much, Ian: it's so generous of you to say this.

I posted elsewhere about a lady in one of my Leeds Irish Health and Homes workshops who wrote 'I've had dementia / for as long as I can remember'. It came back to me reading @ravoon.bsky.social's tremendous debut 'Dirt Rich', full of technically brilliant, emotionally-devastating work like this:

It would have been like the Palast der Republik in Berlin - "Erich's Lampenladen" - so maybe demolished in the 2010s and then replaced with an almost unbelievably expensive simulacrum of the "pre-war" Parliament.

I should point out that not all the poems in my book are this rude

Thanks, Rishi - that's very generous of you. I'll get you an unwatermarked copy!

One of the joys of walking through any English churchyard for Morning Prayer

Holgers absolutely brutal

A last call for this! Do sign up.

😂

Would like to see this on "Dragons' Den"

Did you manage to see this piece, Rachel? Archdeacons are busy, I know :) archive.ph/E9Bst

Her last book was outstanding - I do hope there might be a posthumous Selected from Seren at some point.

Excellent news

Queasy and nervous thanks!

"as it were, provisional" is very droll

I appreciate you saying that, John - thank you. That means a lot.

Join us for an evening of conversation and music with Neil Hegarty and Iarla Ó Lionáird to celebrate the publication of Nicholas Allen’s Late Heaney.

📅 Saturday 28th February
⏰ 7.30pm
🎟️£15

Secure your tickets here > tinyurl.com/4k4e7avx

@neilhegarty.bsky.social @dedalusdenaries.bsky.social

"Feierabendbiervorfreude" - it's in Luther's translation - "Nun aber bleibt Glaube, Hoffnung, Feierabendbiervorfreude, diese drei; aber die Feierabendbiervorfreude ist die größte unter ihnen."

I often think of him when a poetry book has an especially boring title - asked on Brain Drain for boring books, he suggested "Know Your Slippers". Still makes me laugh...

Great! I will ask Christine for a pdf

It's a terrific poem, John

Thanks @poetrysociety.org.uk for the new issue of Poetry Review. Featuring a fabulous new poem by @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social

When I complained that the TSE prize last year was given to someone "male, pale, and stale", an army of flying monkeys came to complain BTL about my anti-male bias and my support for something called "DEI". Not a peep from them on poetry, of course - before or since.