Currently writing a Substack piece about literature and the Lego Movie – it's a hot take that would have been excellent content 12 years ago.

Translated Literature and Global Politics A personal reflection.

I wrote about how Trump’s chaos and education in England have me reading more translated fiction. It also means I’m proper cultured and clever and that. Read and subscribe etc. if you want to be proper cultured and clever as well.
open.substack.com/pub/coaldust...

The sunrise crowned the stag like a king 👑🦌🌅
📍 Cairngorms National Park, United Kingdom 🇬🇧

Bit thick this lot.

A movie couple who would definitely have a podcast (maybe they had a podcast before podcasts)

‘I’m not worried about committing war crimes’ – FIFA Peace Prize winner Trump is threatening to attack civilian infrastructure if Iran doesn't meet his deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

King Donald the Warmonger.

"History will judge-" let me stop you right fucking there, history doesn't do fucking shit, I'm a historian, let's be clear here: elected officials need to do their fucking jobs, right now, before it happens, or future historians will judge THEM. Everyone knows and knew who Trump was.

Amazing! Congratulations

Rest easy, Bo. Hardcore punk lost a legend this week.

Heartbreaking. The way bands and fans of punk and hardcore come together in times like this shows exactly how inclusive and loving the community is.

Where books about political figures have traditionally included collected letters and diaries, Trump’s will collate the toddler ramblings he’s posted on social media, each one slowly revealing the murderous depths that greed and fake tan can take us.

Niche Germanic humour / satire
#Farage #Reform #dictator #grammar

Flitting between two notebooks that often atm that I’m pissing myself off. Brain, pick one book idea and stick to it.

Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.

Melania Trump (right)

An Overdue Update Getting over the cringe and other writerly bollocks.

An Overdue Update
substack.com/@adambarrett...

No, thank you! Incredible work

Running sucks. Co Durham does not.

A Molotov to a stale age of English literature. It’s visceral, raw and full of heart. @stuhennigan.bsky.social prose is breathless and hypnotic, a kaleidoscopic vision of addiction and depression, before settling to tender, quiet moments about the beauty and mundanity of life. What a book.

Just going to leave this here

Billionaires want to kill art with AI because they can’t do art. They can’t throw money at obtaining a skill they’ll never have, so instead they’re throwing money at destroying it, and persuading you that the process of human creation never had any value anyway.

When We’re Smiling Do photographs of working-class people have to be sombre, serious and vaguely threatening? Not if Carmina Ripollès is taking the pictures, they don’t. Here’s her show of smiles from the past year to c...

The documentary photography of working-class people that gets published tends to show people looking pitiable and/or threatening.

We try to challenge that a bit, and Carmina Ripollés is one of the photographers who helps us. Here's her fabulous festive portfolio:
thebeemagazine.com/when-were-sm...

Thank you both!

Adam Barrett - The First Thirty Years EP | Broken Sleep Books Adam Barrett’s The First Thirty Years EP is a taut, propulsive collection that fuses poetic memoir with political indictment, navigating masculinity, class, and grief through the lens of North East En...

My debut pamphlet, The First Thirty Years EP, is out now. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

'Barrett writes with formal agility and emotional charge, drawing lines between private collapse and public failure without sacrificing lyrical control.'

I’ve abandoned this for a while.

This week my debut poetry pamphlet comes out with @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social. Please buy, read it, take a photo of it and post it, whatever you can to support writers and small presses.

Can't wait to see this develop. Shout out @newwritingnorth.bsky.social

I love you Durham but fuck me. We could have kept Darren Grimes in his ma’s basement.

A bright purple background has text reading 'Every working class writer belongs in their union' in shiny holographic sticker style writing. Below it sits the Fossil Free Books logo and smaller text that reads 'Join the Society of Authors as a Full Member by Wed 30th Apr to vote in this year's Management Committee elections'

📢 Every working class writer belongs in their union!

📚 In a survey by The Bookseller a staggering 78% of working-class authors said their background had hindered their career. [1]

www.thebookseller.com/news/survey-...

It cured a real slump I was in with my writing. I just couldn't sit and write at my laptop and so gave it a try and have done it since.

I can only write first drafts longhand. Then typing them up becomes a huge part of the editing process.