Andy Jackson

An #Otwituary for #StarTrek actor #WalterKoenig Your character was a 'wessel' for its time, a voyage from the future, but also from the past, laden with dangerous cargoes. In a Universe warped by optimism, old worlds show how new worlds could be.

The latest future-poetry Transmission from #ProjectAbeona has been picked up by our high-gain antenna matrix. It's another instalment of Simon Barraclough's dark and dangerous 'Incarcernaut' sequence. projectabeonapoetry.substack.com/p/transmissi...

#DoubleDactyl of the Week is from Mandy Macdonald - sorry, must dash...

An #Otwituary for actor #TomSkerritt The camera tracks in close-up to a cast of faces; all the same bones, hewn from granite yet softening at a woman’s smile, skin like prairie scrub, eyes blue as the bayou or the empty sky.

A few places are still available for the new term of Dundee’s Bitesize Book Club - 5 sessions of reading for pleasure…with guaranteed no homework. Come and enjoy the pleasure of reading with no pressure in a supportive and enthusiastic environment. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bitesize-b...

An #Otwituary for poet #DouglasDunn I must revisit the library of times, to browse, to study, to be renewed. The books within call me, brimming with ideas, yet easy as an old suit. Its doors are heavy, but always open; my friend, say you’ll come with me.

An #Otwituary for actor #EveMarieSaint The house lights go up; just me at movie’s end…and a woman on her own, three rows back, svelte and luminous, hair like threads of platinum. She lights a cigarette, says Great movie, and time stands still, and so do I.

An #Otwituary for film & tv composer #GeorgeFenton Wait, I know this one; composed, scored, played, absorbed, proof that we hear with square-eyes, that we remember the lives I have seen when we can whistle their theme. Shoestring. Sorry We Missed You.

An #Otwituary for disgraced politician and novelist #JeffreyArcher The church clock stands at ten to three; words are priceless in the mouths of chiselers and shysters. The benches groan with fabulists, and the book writes the man. Nothing of this, of course, is true.

An #Otwituary for singer #LenaMartell Yesterday’s gone; the ballrooms fall to the wrecking balls of talent show and karaoke. A woman takes the mic and rakes among the ruins of a heart, pokes at the embers of a gospel tune, does every day what she has to do.

youtu.be/QjVy-BZZQOg?... It’s #NationalPoetryDay again! Which means it’s time for another Patchwork Poem assembled from work written by members of the Federation of Writers Scotland. One line from each person, woven into a poem on the theme of ‘wonder’…

The 53rd transmission from Project Abeona was just picked up on an uncoded channel - another poem beaming in from a speculative future. projectabeonapoetry.substack.com/p/transmissi...

#DoubleDactyl of the Week features some pop singer none of us over 30 have ever heard of…from Christophe Gowans

An #Otwituary for #EstherRantzen Turn down the volume on the froth; the talking dogs, phallic vegetables, odd odes and high street vox pops. Can you hear it? A child, repeating to themselves a telephone number given out by a woman on TV with funny teeth, promising to answer.

An #Otwituary for Scottish crime novelist #PeterMay The isles are full of bodies, weighted down in dark lochans or buried under lush machair. The heart is a blackhouse, and there is blood to be written of.

An #Otwituary for Scottish crime novelist #PeterMay The isles are full of bodies, weighted down in dark lochans or buried under lush machair. The heart is a blackhouse, and there is blood to be written of.

#DoubleDactyl of the Week is much ado about no-one...from Christopher Reid.

It's a privilege to be involved in the Dymphna Bursary; seeing this testimonial from 2025 recipient Elizabeth Kelly makes it all worthwhile. Thanks to @byleaveswelive.bsky.social If you’re a poet who identifies as neurodivergent, why not apply for the 2026 grant? www.facebook.com/share/v/1RzZ...

An #Otwituary for actor #StephanieCole I speak as I find, and when I speak, I find the voice of the woman inside; matron and matriarch, hard-faced yet tender-eyed, perfecting a look that could sharpen a bread knife.

An #Otwituary for cultural commentator #BonnieGreer How to live without portfolio: ask more questions, provide fewer answers; disagree agreeably; offer your truth without assuming it to be universal; counter hate with reason; take it easy, but take it.

Crash-bang-wallop, what a #DoubleDactyl! We return after a summer recess, and we're on the last leg. Will we make it to 200? We hope so... This week's posting is from the evergreen Alice Meynell

Abeona is the Roman goddess of outward journeys. Project Abeona celebrates the outward journey of humankind into space with a sequence of speculative poems from ordinary lives. #52 sees Ian Badcoe looking back at a dwindling Earth. projectabeonapoetry.substack.com/p/transmissi...

An #Otwituary for short-lived 60s singer #CraigDouglas Curtain up on another cabaret, last chance for your counterfeit nostalgia - hey, remember this? - This is the sound of long-soured milk, memories of you at sixteen, a time I was too young to know.

An #Otwituary for actor #RichardO’Sullivan It used to be that you could get by on butter-wouldn’t-melt, playing it light in heavy times, living over the brush and under the thumb, with hilarious consequences. That nest is empty now, the birds having flown.

An #Otwituary for feminist leader #GloriaSteinem Revolution first stirs in the head, then the hearth, boardroom, bed, even the womb. The just fight rallies just fighters to the call, making activists out of us all, not for a cause, but for a right.

On my way across to Tiree for the @royalliteraryfund.bsky.social - running an essay writing workshop at Tiree High School tomorrow!

New from @tippermuirbooks.bsky.social - a weighty volume of essays and poems on MacDiarmid. Well done Jim Mackintosh, Alan Riach and James Robertson for making this happen!

The Scottish Poetry Library kindly selected a poem from my new collection Disco Biscuits to feature in today’s Scotsman newspaper as poem of the week! Thanks to them and to Rob Mackenzie at Blue Diode and Stephen Watt at Nutmeg magazine, where it first appeared. @ByLeavesWeLive

An #Otwituary for actor #TimCurry A man falls to Earth from space, not sure if he’s a boy or a girl. He/She licks his/her lips, looks straight (but not very) into the camera, straight into us, saying Why don’t you stay for the night?

I think this is a very worthwhile poetry bursary, and if you know someone who might benefit from it, please do pass this on! @byleaveswelive.bsky.social www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/dymphna-burs...

An #Otwituary for #DollyParton Across the Smoky Mountains I heard a voice like torn satin, singing of good love gone bad, how she could never love again. I heard the heart of a country girl break for the hundredth time, and when she cried, she cried rhinestones.

An #Otwituary for Rugby legend #BillyBoston A dark warrior bursts through floodlit dusk, like a wardrobe filled with lightning, stepping away from hands that would dig his grave. His path to the posts is a blur of light and power, smiling as he reels in the try-line.

An #Otwituary for #ZZTop drummer #FrankBeard They came out of the cantinas and honky-tonks to see them, that little ol’ band from Texas. An old boy with bourbon breath said man, that drummer, shuffle as tight as a cheerleader’s tush, backbeat like nails in my coffin.

An #Otwituary for actor #PhyllidaLaw Stage directions for life: Enter as if everyone is waiting for you; Treat each line of dialogue as a gift; When a good actor cries, so does the audience; Exit, but disgracefully.

Great to have something rather special from Sean O’Brien on New Boots and Pantisocracies today…

Transmission 51 from #ProjectAbeona comes from biospecialist Paraska Bertrand, via F.J. Bergmann. projectabeonapoetry.substack.com/p/transmissi...

Last week’s #DoubleDactyl is even better than the surreal thing. Poet Sian Lang has a nose for these things!

An #Otwituary for actor #CherylHall This is a Dear John letter from the eternal girlfriend, eyes bright as a mirror ball, a laugh in every smile. She will love, but she will never marry. At least, not you.

An #Otwituary for The #TeardropExplodes drummer #GaryDwyer Every so often the muses of a city align; sound, attitude and rhythm, all waiting for someone to pick up the sticks, adjust the drum stool, set the tempo for a song called Everything is Possible, Here, Now.

It's been great to watch this sonnet sequence unfold. Sophie Herxheimer and Nancy Campbell have done a great editorial job. The penultimate sonnet #13 is magically infused with Japanese culture, from the imagination of Vik Shirley newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com/2026/08/08/a...

An #Otwituary for musician and producer #WilliamOrbit Some music carries the strangest cargo; bliss and heartbreak, glistening beats, guitar like the strumming of a rainbow, strings like a final breath, torch songs for machines to fall in love with humans.

An #Otwituary for Irish musician #GlenHansard Some are born to ramble, guitar in one hand, sheaf of hard-luck stories in the other, busking from Ballymun to Grafton Street to Broadway, the rascal on the corner, just across from the gates of Hell.

An #Otwituary for comedian #JimmyCricket Me mammy used to tell me there’s a living to be made in buck eejitry. She told me not knowing your left from your right is the beginning of wisdom. C’mere, I’ll tell you more; there is no more.

An #Otwituary for movie and TV mobster #VincentPastore Don’t imagine you can trust a Fed, or tell me you’re just Joe Schmoe, takin’ care of business. We both know what a rat smells like, how he acts like he’s on the up-an’-up. Face facts; even the wisest guys wind up dead.

Un #Otwituary per una leggenda del calcio Italiano #FrancoBaresi

An #Otwituary for Italian football legend #FrancoBaresi In Italy they built a wall, painted it red and black. Here is the space where its little watchman once stood like a stubborn shadow, hand raised to spring the trap, slam the gate, bolt the door.

An #Otwituary for character actor #TomChadbon There are times you must feel there are no roles left to cast, that all the best lines are gone. The director says Back to one; your first line becomes your last, your life playing as a demo reel.

An #Otwituary for anatomist #GunthervonHagens This is the story of the heart: of all the territories of my body, whose hills and plains I know, the interior is the province art hesitates to claim. I am ready; expose the place I fear to go.

An #Otwituary for TV puppeteer #RonnieLeDrew It takes much to create life from cloth; the precise crook of a finger becomes beckoning or refusal, flexing of palm becomes imitation of life, the innocent misdirection in which all have a hand.

An #Otwituary for scriptwriter, actor and naturalist #BillOddie By night vision I saw something under my old trandem; a creature, mostly hair, gnawing at a black pudding, a mating call something between wonder and melancholy, and I’m sorry, I looked at it again.