Ian Duhig
@ianduhig
'An Arbitrary Light Bulb' the Poetry Book Society Winter 2024 Choice: "some of the most moving, restrained, memorable and technically adroit poetry of our times" --- TLS, 3/25
Sweep was the greatest Heathcliff -- here he is looking hot and wuthered about Cathy (Soo) on the moor.
I complained here some time ago that I was drowning in the amount of times I saw the word "immersive" used to describe art, poetry and music projects. However, it was worth them all to see its deployment here, courtesy of Private Eye.
Happy Birthday John Clare. A new book on his work and life will be published this year in which I am honoured to have this poem.
Yeats United pioneered the formation of a double-midfield pivot for two interpenetrating gyres and great, interchanging wings. The system's weakness is the centre may not hold. Photo: Mel McMahon
The BBC commentator's breathless metaphor about 'the hand of fate smiling on England' reminded me of this.
"If we winter this one out summer will kill us, no doubt” #ifSeamusHeaneywasborninYorkshire
"Listen guys, I know you weren't keen before but now you HAVE to listen to my poetry!"
Woman pretends to be dead in a far-away land when her lover suggests reading their poetry to her art: Eldar Eshaliev
Bird Praying for Death While Rabbit Recreates Eric Clapton Guitar Solos on His Zither Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, France ca. 1294-1297 (Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 130I, fol. 344r)
Left: Welcoming a new draft of a poem Right: Looking at it again next morning
There's a tale that when the Archbishop of Canterbury asked JBS Haldane what evolutionary science told him about God's creation, Haldane replied that He had "an inordinate fondness for beetles." Pic: Violin Beetle from Maliau Basin
When seagulls retire, they can be spotted on ferries visiting sites of great chip-theft triumphs and car-craps. "I consider myself an artist in gull-shite, a Pollock of Poo, if you will" this one tells anybody who'll listen. And is willing to share a sandwich. Photo: Alessandro Gallo, 'Dover', 2009
Amazed this groundbreaking volume by two great modernist authors isn't better known among the literati.
Carlo Ginzburg, RIP. Loved his microhistorical studies, especially 'The Cheese and the Worms' which considered the 16th C miller and heretic Menocchio from Friuli and inspired this ballad with his stubborn and original vision of Creation. This got him into big trouble.
Martina Evans and yours truly at the RTÉ Irish Embassy event last week. I was particularly pleased to read with Martina as I have frequently used her poetry in workshops for Leeds Irish Health and Homeless.
Today is the tenth anniversary of Jo Cox's murder by a white supremacist on her way to a surgery in Birstall in her constituency whose ethnic diversity she praised in her maiden speech to the Commons. Her murderer shouted "Britain first" as he shot and stabbed her to death.
"Hey! This is Richard Nixon's enemies list. You just crossed out his name and put your own, Mo-rrissey!"
The traffic lights at Leeds Station are delaying its completion because the contractors used a green man that is a Neopagan nature figure, This means bees offer it honey, birds their eggs and travellers crossing the road here inexplicably break into Morris dances.
Happy World Swift Day! It was realising I couldn't hear them that led to me getting my ears tested and the hearing aids I celebrate in this poem, as well as the birds. of course.
Feel I might be about to have an idea for a new poem cartoon : Miroslav Barták
Happy Birthday Margaret Drabble! She came to a reading I was a part of once and we chatted after. She asked about my name and I replied with a vague apology for its complexity due to its Irish origin. She responded, "Well, at least your surname isn't a word for prostitute!" Photo: Murdo Macleod