Ian Duhig

"Poetry is words in their least lucrative order." (Recalled by Earle Birney)

My elder sister worked in Selfridges many years ago and once Frank Ifield got into the lift with her. Clearly a bit narked that she didn't respond to him, he said to her, "Do you know who I am?" My sister replied, "No. What floor do you work on?"

Yesterday was St Crispin's Day. Phil Spector's brother was named for him, but Crispin Spector didn't go into music, serving as Head of Quality Control at Tyrrell's for many years.

The poem takes possession of the poet

If you know, you know

Gilgamesh prepares to give his cat a worming tablet, sighs "I wish Enkidu were still here to help with this!"

Rehearsals for the Willliam Carlos Williams poem interpretation by Takashi Miike for Halloween suggest Miike has taken a lot of liberties with the original

"So how's the poetry going?"

What's so amazing about these old Irish Halloween turnip carvings is how accurately they also represent what it feels like to live in the 21st century

It's only real poetry if it comes from the Poët region of France. Otherwise it's just sparkling whine.

The Tristram Shandy trumpet pic via Vito Gaarin

I am terribly sad to hear the great Douglas Dunn has died. I turn to a treasured copy of Terry Street, inscribed by both the author and its previous owner Derek Mahon!

L-R: Novelist, playwright, poet pic via Dodi Walter

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

I was honoured to read at a Bradford City of Sanctuary event some time ago, and if I'd known then it would send a shiver down the spine of the sort of people who would go on to join Reform, I'd have felt twice as honoured.

The Tomb of the Unknown Poet spotted in Chelsea

My wife just gave me one black sock, presumably mine. There is always one spare black sock floating about the cosmos. I am waiting for scientists to prove that black holes are merely parts of vast inter-dimensional black socks.

"Sorry to hear about your insect thing, Gregor, but y'know, two baristas phoned in sick and we really need you to cover their shifts. Just keep your head down in case the Environmental Health Officers come sniffing around. Chin up: you might get a book out of this!"

This essay in appreciation of Keith Bailey, an important collaborator in Ian Hamilton Finlay's work, by Patrick Eyres is on the Little Sparta website. It contains an account of IHF''s commission for my friend Ronnie Duncan, one 'unique in Ian’s oeuvre', www.littlesparta.org.uk/keith-bailey...

Monday

Apropos of someone reminding me, here's me in conversation with the mighty Sarah Howe earlier this year, for @thelondonmagazine.bsky.social, on cherry blossom and related matters: thelondonmagazine.org/interview-ri...

Saturday night review: a review by the critic Chris Edgoose of my three most recent pamphlets -- Singletary (@shearsmanbooks.bsky.social), The Vitalist Sees the Signs (brokensleepbooks.bsky.social), and, impressively, the just-released Palomines (Blue Diode Press) 😲🙏 woodbeepoet.com/2026/10/10/v...

Pinter's birthday. I was on a bill ay his last public reading in the Nicaraguan Embassy in support of, er, the Bolivarian Revolution. In a wheelchair, fed oxygen, he spoke about how bad things were globally; noting our glumness, he added with a twinkle: "Except for Nicaragua!" Art: Mortimer, NPG

fro . . . . . .pho

via Dr Dorothy Cashman, 'Gill’s Irish Phrase Book, A Conversational Manual for Everyday Use', circa 1900. The section on 'Meals' takes a dramatic political turn at the second last entry

Many visitors to this Kraków wax museum exhibit never sleep again.

Deeply moved at Christopher Fox's setting of 'An Aroko for David Oluwale' from my last book. I know he researched his piece deeply from the structure of Yoruba music to what David might have danced to: music.youtube.com/watch?v=iy4T...

That one of the oldest songs in the English language is a complaint about the weather will surprise nobody: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirie_i... www.youtube.com/results...

cf "Can you explain all the gaps in your damn poetry, Oppen?"

The Arrival of the Jarrow Marchers in London, Viewed from an Interior, by Thomas Cantrell Dugdale, 1880-1952 (Museum of the Home).

St Margaret of Antioch protected herself from the dragon in her cell by telling it ghost stories. It found these so frightening that she had to lend it a security blanket to help it fend off panic attacks.

northseapoets.substack.com/p/the-garden...

'And thus it came to pass that this angel editor was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone . . .'

#NationalPoetryDay

Woman walks into a Hull hairdresser and asks for a perm. Certainly, he replies: 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' #NationalPoetryDay

Was told someone bought the book because of this review, which is the best response we can ever hope for 💛 ya, literary community

Friends, come and talk to me about Irish poetry in Aberdeen and we can catch up over a single malt or two. www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/news-e...

Happy National Poetry Day!

This Is Just To Say I have eaten the poems that were in your typewriter and which you were probably saving for National Poetry Day Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so bold #NationalPoetryDay

Happy #NationalPoetryDay

Blyton's best yet

Dada perfection

The Waste Coat

Itō Jakuchū's 'Frog' of 1790 for me is the iconic image of numbed uncomfortable bafflement at the predicament of existence in the coming modern world, much as Munch's 'Scream' expressed it through horror.

Virginia Woolf said of him, 'Here comes Tom Eliot in his four piece suit." Could this waistcoat be from that suit?

What do you call the huge grey poet in the middle of the room being ignored by everybody? TS Elephant #HappyBirthdayTSEliot