Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

So exciting!! I cannot wait to read it!

Nonchalant animal noises

This is what the internet is made for 😭😭🤣🤣

REDISCOVERIES (edited by David Madden) and REDISCOVERIES II (edited by David Madden & Peggy Bach), a pair of hardback books full of writers recommending mostly forgotten books

These two books from the 1970s/80s, where important writers choose lost books to bring back to people's attention, are now doubly poignant given that a fair chunk of those important writers are themselves now vanished from mind and print.

Hatzola ambulances set alight in Golders Green arson attack CCTV footage circulating on social media shows three men approaching the vehicles and then fleeing the scene as flames appear

I grew up in this community and I have a few thoughts I want to share.

A short thread.

www.jewishnews.co.uk/breaking-hat...

I have just donated to Hatzola here: hatzola.org

As far as I can see on their website, they have four ambulances. Reports say that four ambulances were damaged in the attack last night. People will die.

In and I should say *through* the process of writing it…

I crossed out a nearly complete essay in my one of my finals and started again, because in the process of writing it, I realised that I actually thought the exact opposite of the argument I was making. It was terrifying and frantic, but fortunately it paid off

This painting sums up how I imagine the relationship between writer and reader. That's me in the middle in the green latex suit with the giant pink cotton buds and that's you sitting down on the right.

#WorldPoetryDay | "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue") written by a Holocaust survivor Paul Celan. Translated by A.Z. Foreman.

More about the poem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todesfuge

Photo of Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. TEXT: Lecture "Young Poets" (1957) published in Mightier Than the Sword: The P.E.N. Hermon Ould Memorial Lectures, 1953-1961 (1964), p. 56.

Edith Sitwell. A Portrait of Sitwell by Roger Fry, 1915. "Roger Eliot Fry (1866–1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. " - wiki

"As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality. It should make our days holy to us. The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten."

--- Edith Sitwell (1887–1964):

Oh. My. God 🤯

Spring is a wonderful mother for ryhmes ❤️

The Dereliction

Thinking of my hometown and how I never go there anymore, I thought of Liz Berry

🇬🇧 La course annuelle de portage d’épouse au Royaume-Uni s’est déroulée dans le Surrey, en Angleterre, où des équipes ont parcouru un circuit de 380 mètres dans une compétition traditionnelle originaire de Finlande ⤵️

Today marks the first day of meteorological spring 🌷

March has arrived, and with it comes longer, lighter days. Over the next few weeks most of us will enjoy around two extra hours of daylight ☀️

"There, there," a fellow soldier says, patting my shoulder as I weep over the body. "It could have happened to anyone."

"Thanks," I sniff. "That's... quite cliche. Say, do you know a recipe for apple pie in haiku form?"

My hand is already reaching for the fallen gun.

"I want to tell the story again.

That's why I write fiction - so that I can keep telling the story. I return to problems I can't solve, not because I'm an idiot, but because the real problems can't be solved."

Jeanette Winterson

Yesterday I bought some trousers & last night I went to the Atlantic (the local disco). There was some nice blokes there, about 3 or 4 Punk blokes & lots of punk girls. My zip broke while I was pogoing & no one seemed to have any safety pins, even the punks.

A SELECTION OF (MOSTLY) EXTINCT OCCUPATIONS Baller: occupation in various sectors, including (in pottery) one who measured balls of clay for throwers, or (in textiles) prepared balls of wool in advance of spinning. Beetle cutter: maker of wooden mallets (beetles) for finishing textiles. Belly man (also bellyer, bellymaker & belly builder): made & assembled sound boards inside pianos. Bender: occupation in various sectors; usually involved bending a material (esp. glass, metal & wood) as part of a larger manufacturing process. Biscuit oddman: responsible for odd jobs around a pottery kiln. Blubberman (also blabber): responsible for the removal of blubber from whale or seal skin. Body builder: made bodies of coaches, carriages, motorcars, tramcars & perambulators. Bogeyman: transporter of ingots, plates or sheets of metal from furnaces to rolling mills and shearing machines on a two-wheeled truck called a 'bogey'. Boner: inserter of whale bones into corsets. Bottom action-maker: manufactured the main bellows of player pianos; fixed the pedals & controls. Bottom stainer: applied paint or stain to the bottom of a boot or shoe. Breeze riddler: riddled or sifted breeze or cinders from furnace ashes for use in a smithy. buddleman & huddler): operator of buddle

A SELECTION OF (MOSTLY) EXTINCT OCCUPATIONS Ear trumpet-maker: maker of ear trumpets & other acoustic instruments for the partially deaf. Eye puncher: operator of a fly press, piercing eye holes into needle blanks. Fat boy: greaser of axles of haulage systems used in mines & quarries. Fellmonger: merchant who washed, cured, processed & sold animal hides & skins (esp. those of sheep). Fiddler: maker of 'fiddles' or 'waists' of boots or shoes. First half doer: turner of points or pivots for the centre, third or fourth wheels of a watch. Flasher: maker of glass discs by rotating bulbs of glass on pontil rods at the mouths of furnaces. Flirter: remover of loose bristles from brushes. Gadger: sewer of cloth hat or cap parts before they went to the machinist for finishing. Gaff hook-maker: forger of frost nails. Gimp-maker: manufacturer of ornamental trims (gimps) in the textiles industry. Helmet underer: fixer of material under the brims of helmets. Higgler: itinerant manufacturer and salesman of various transportable wares, including textiles. Hot-presser: operator of a hot-pressing machine, used to flatten & improve surface of cloth or paper. Hugger: quarryman responsible for carrying blocks of stone to the surface using hugging ladders & saddles. 323

CRAFTLAND Bumboat man: seller of goods from a flat-bottomed "bumboat to the crews of ships anchored nearby. Butt woman: seller of flatfish on quaysides. Calender girl: presser of embroidered articles with a calendering machine. Catgut maker (also gut maker & tharme maker): splitter & cleaner of animal gut for strings of musical instruments. Cave man: responsible for removal of clinkers & ashes from the cave or a tunnel beneath a furnace. Cheeker (also plinther): fitter of ends (cheeks), plinth, toes & feet to upright pianos. Chip chopper: fed wood used by medicinal or dye industries into chipping machines. Cock-maker: maker of bridges for balances or pallets of watches or clocks. Cullet picker: sorted out cullet (waste glass) for remelting. Cure man: responsible for vulcanising rubber products. Dagger sheath mounter: riveter of steel or brass components to leather dagger cases. Dandy roll-maker: maker of dandy roll (part of a papermaking machine). Decomposing man: maker of chlorine gas. Devil: odd-job man (more often, boy) in a printing office.

I'm assured these are all genuine occupations, but it's hard not to hear many of them as casual insults.

(From Craftland by James Fox, ISBN 9781847927866)

Gosh I love these threads

Happy new year!

Oh my god I’m a semiotician.

(A semiologist?)

a metaphor here about life. sometimes it is really really dark. but at least we know there is generally reversion to the mean.

For Christmas last year I asked for an office-style not-available-in-regular-shops serious sellotape dispenser. Game changer

The Solstice W.S. Merwin

Good morning! Today, I will share a thread of poems for/about winter solstice

Do feel free to add your own or anything else appropriate.

❄️❄️🕯🕯❄️❄️

This one is W.S. Merwin

Thousands welcome winter solstice as Sun rises over Stonehenge In the northern hemisphere, it's the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

And a happy solstice to all.

8,500 at Stonehenge to see the light return.

"Of course as a boy I did not think that my timidity would turn out to be invincible. On the contrary, I convinced myself that it would inevitably disappear of its own accord in the face of a growing acquaintance with people and the ways of the world. I counted on experience breaking down my timidity, when in fact timidity would prevent me from gaining experience."

Very rude of this book to expose me like this:

jonny sun @jonnysun hello darkness my old friend why are you here its 4pm

My kids woke up so excited this morning for the first night of Hannukah and now yet again we have a festival where I’m very conflicted about whether it’s safe to take them to synagogue to celebrate. Communities shouldn’t have to live like this.