Andy Jackson
@azjackson
Writer, editor of poetry, including Poetry Scotland and Whaleback City Press. Knee-deep in assorted poetry-related malarkey including New Boots & Pantisocracies, the Otwituaries, Double Dactyl of the Week, Project Abeona and more.
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.
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.
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.
#ProjectAbeona reaches its half-century with a sparse yet complex poem beamed in from 2327 via Richard Price. open.substack.com/pub/projecta...
#DoubleDactyl of the Week seems like a dream to me now. Robert Lindsay Marcus, take a bow!
An #Otwituary for footballer #KevinKeegan A season’s lease has too short a date; one moment you’re the miner’s lad, the next, weasel in ermine, ball twined to your toe, then legend on another nation’s telly, then preaching a gospel with one chapter that reads we’ll-score-one-more-than-you.
An #Otwituary for news broadcaster #EdwardStourton How many times have I switched off as fakes and stooges tell it like it isn’t? The world spins, and nothing feels true, and then a light goes on - Mic Live - and here is intellect and wit, the quiet spark.
An #Otwituary for cricketing legend #GarfieldSobers Six for the straight drive. Six for one that turns late. Six for one that just clears the rope. Six for one clean over the gasometer. Six for the one hit all the way to Swansea. Six for the grass that blooms where you passed.
An #Otwituary for actor #BrendaFricker We are casting from life today, looking for someone who can strain word and action through the sieve of experience, real as rain falling on a busy street.
An #Otwituary for actor #SamNeill Range is the rarest craft, to know doctor and devil, father, husband, monster, and be everything of each, to take us to places where we won’t need eyes to see.
Una Otwituary del futbolista #AntonioRattín El temperamento es una expresión propia, emblema del club o nación, y la furia de un hombre es la «cultura del aguante» de otro. El juego exige una cosa: La pasión, cómo lo juegas y cómo te juega a ti.
An #Otwituary for newsreader #DermotMurnaghan We interrupt this programme for a news bulletin; not news in itself, but news of the news, neither war nor nor murder sweetened by commercials, but the story of a real story.
An #Otwituary for pilot and astronaut #WallyFunk I have been a disciple of the sky, set out my own flight plan, seen my own shadow over the earth, slipped the surly bonds of men and shown the face of a woman.
An #Otwituary for singer #BonnieTyler On the wind is a shredded voice, someone else’s heartaches sung like an old razor. Sometimes it burns slowly, sometimes it’s an insatiable fire. We know every word, despite ourselves and every now and then, we sing too.
An #Otwituary for Ian Kennedy Martin, creator of TV’s #TheSweeney Write me a seedy London: nail-hard blaggers staked out by cops in Jags, sleazy briefs and easy housewives, trouserless pimps, and a dubious double act; not comedy, but still funny.
After a brief hiatus to accommodate the Site Curator's indolence, we return with a new #DoubleDactyl of the Week. We hope to keep going until No. 200, by which time we will probably have run out of gravy... This week is another masterpiece from Alice Meynell.
Poetry Scotland 112 is open for business. See the link below for info. When you email us, remember: - To include your postal address - To include titles of poems - Up to 3 poems in a single Word document We're excited to see your poems - send away! poetryscotland.com/submissions/...
An #Otwituary for #VillagePeople frontman #VictorWillis Maybe heaven is just a street corner where young men can be who they are, where discos open but never close, where traffic stops to watch you dance. It’s just up the street; follow the noise, hang out with all the girls, all the boys.
An #Otwituary for actor #MichaelByrne Drink to leading men if you must; I will hang around the stage door for the slender men in overcoats, divested of the uniform of dreams - mournful spy, owlish Nazi, rascal. So many entrances, and then gone.
An #Otwituary for actor #PenelopeKeith Some roles are cast to chart the fall of the English; pitched somewhere between hunt ball and sweet suburbia, starch and tiaras and Fortnum hampers, and oh, how we fell for it, and still do.
The latest transmission from #ProjectAbeona has just been picked up by the Tien Shan Astronomical Observatory in Kazakhstan. This one comes from Technician Ava Blake and has been forwarded by Aimee Norton projectabeonapoetry.substack.com/p/transmissi...