My pleasure! x

Shakespeare's Birthday Lecture with Dr. Emma Smith YouTube video by FolgerLibrary

"Thinking more deeply and more empathetically about disrupted ideas of home" - The 2026 Shakespeare Birthday Lecture by Emma Smith @oldfortunatus.bsky.social

#Booksky #EarlyModern #Folger #TheatreStudies #Shakespeare

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZV-...

A Twist of Rotten Silk. New Shakespearean material. Out now.

#ATwistOfRottenSilk #booksky #poetry #theatre #Shakespeare

Join me on Saturday 18 April 2026 at 2pm at Cover to Cover, Swansea, for a poems-and-responses session. With readings and musings, recitations and speculations, we'll release a new book into the world.

#ATwistOfRottenSilk #booksky #event #poetry #theatre #Shakespeare

Screenshot from my website as linked in post, showing three book covers and a photo of me

Spent a bit of time on my website this morning - not exactly my comfort zone, but authors need a wide skill set! I've now added pictures of the upcoming US edition of A HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN 25 POEMS, as well as the paperback cover (out with Penguin in the UK in September) 😍
www.catherineclarke.info

Yasmine Hamdan - Shmaali شمالي (Official Music Video) YouTube video by Yasmine Hamdan

Northern Song or Lover’s Hymn? Why, both of course. Listen to this coded Palestinian folksong in Yasmine Hamdan's version –

#NowPlaying #Lebanon #Palestine #Tarweeda #YasmineHamdan

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i5H...

One of my faves from Shakespeare Okuni’s (@i-shakespeare.bsky.social) brilliant A Twist of Rotten Silk, which I’m really enjoying today.

Excited to receive my author copies of Henry VI Part 1 out later this month!

Hear @oldfortunatus.bsky.social and me discussing the play and my introduction today at 6pm BST @engfac.bsky.social

english.web.ox.ac.uk/event/englis...

I have a seat in the abandoned theater in Beirut
#MahmoudDarwish #Beirut #Lebanon #Poem #Poetry #Theatre

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52553/...

The cover of A Twist of Rotten Silk by Shakespeare Okuni

The poem King and Queen

The poem I Will Begin

A fresh encounter with the words of #Shakespeare in this wonderful #poetry collection by @i-shakespeare.bsky.social. These #poems are made out of Shakespeare's words, re-fashioning familiar fabric into curious, beautiful and sometimes challenging new meanings and possibilities. Alchemy with words.

Book cover for 'Twelfth Night' from The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series. Edited by Emma Smith.

In Illyria, a shipwreck tears two siblings apart and sets off a chain of mistaken identities and confused desires.

Edited by @oldfortunatus.bsky.social, this edition foregrounds Twelfth Night’s queer potential and explores madness, mourning and migration.

Coming this winter: https://bit.ly/4bKgSoi

Shakespeare's Birthday Lecture with Dr. Emma Smith | Folger Shakespeare Library Join us for the Folger Institute's annual Shakespeare's Birthday Lecture with Dr. Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University.

If you can, join us in DC on 18 April at the Folger for Shakespeare’s birthday lecture: www.folger.edu/whats-on/sha...

Me doing Kerelybonto at the Damn Fine Bookstore in Lyon, France, 2026. Oh no that's Hugo Ball doing Karawane at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, 1916.
#ATwistOfRottenSilk #Booksky #Dada #LivePerformance #Lyon #Poetry

Come and join me this Wednesday 25 March 2026 at 5.30pm for a poem-and-response session at the Damn Fine Bookstore in Lyon, France. We’ll celebrate the release of my new book with readings and recitations, followed by a celebratory libation. Kerelybonto!

#ATwistOfRottenSilk #booksky #Shakespeare

Margaret Ann Griffiths, Grasshopper, Arrowhead Press, 2011, page 350 –

Writer’s Block

I cannot pen a poem:
my Muse is up the spout.
I cannot pen a poem;
the words will not come out.

I cannot pen a poem;
my brain is in a tizz.
I cannot pen a poem
but, fuck me, here it is.

#poem #WorldPoetryDay

Collage image: the cover of A History of England in 25 Poems, plus poem choices handwritten in by Wendy, and some original lines inspired by poems in the book, from Alan.

On #WorldPoetryDay, what's your favourite #poem? We all have treasured poems we carry with us and would like to pass on. My book #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems has a section of blank pages especially for you to add in your own choices (or creations!). Thanks here to @wendycaitlin.bsky.social and Alan x

Each picture is a close-up of a different fritillary: a bell-shaped purple flower with a chequered pattern

Following the jewel fairy lanterns of #fritillaries through the dappled sunshine of a wood - is there anything more magical?

Slavery, sugar, and the value of Shakespeare

Emma Smith @oldfortunatus.bsky.social contending with the human cost of valuable books. #booksky #history #shakespeare

www.throughlines.org/suite-conten...

THE Emma Smith, author of Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers, troubles assumptions made about the First Folio, the nature of value, and how culture is communicated across time. Stay tuned for more from Emma on Throughlines this week.

Jorge Drexler - Ante la duda, baila (Lyric Video) YouTube video by JorgeDrexlerVEVO

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrR-...

#jorgedrexler #historia #history #nowlistening #song

Some events coming up, featuring A History Of England In 25 Poems. I'd love to meet you at one of these! All info via my website www.catherineclarke.info
#history #event #reading #poetry

A Friday night in Baltimore. Thank you Cristina Deptula for bringing us all together. And thank you Tia Hamilton for hosting this spirited reading event at Urban Reads Bookstore. May your Black Star Line Literacy Bus hit the road in 2026!
#booksky #bookstore #literacy #poetry

Thursday 5 March, 7pm, Politics and Prose, Union Market, DC.
I’ll be part of this evening’s gathering of voices. Do join us.
#ATwistOfRottenSilk #Poetry #Theatre #PoliticsAndProse
politics-prose.com/the-hour-030...

I’m really excited to be speaking with Prof Emma Smith @oldfortunatus.bsky.social about #Cymbeline and its ‘infinit questions of the circumstance of strange chances’ (as one c17th reader put it) on Monday 2 March!

Saturday 28 February 2026 at 7pm. Blacksburg Books, Virginia, USA.
#ATwistOfRottenSilk #BookSky #Poetry #Theatre #Shakespeare

When I Was a Fair Maid YouTube video by Jackie Oates - Topic

Jackie Oates, When I Was a Fair Maid, 2022.

with my big hat and feather
if you’d’ve only seen
you’d sworn from your very heart
a young man I’d’ve been
my waist being small and slender
my fingers thin and small
I could rattle up the drum a dee
the best among them all

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlRW...

Publication Day Book Launch Event with Shakespeare Okuni! — Blacksburg Books Join us for the launch of Shakespeare Okuni’s book of poetry, A Twist of Rotten Silk or Words to That Effect. The author and participants will read poems from the book - no preparation necessary. Th...

Publication-day book launch event. Poem and response. Come and join me to celebrate the release of A Twist of Rotten Silk #ATwistOfRottenSilk at Blacksburg Books, Virginia, USA, on Saturday 28 February 2026. Details here –
www.blacksburgbooks.com/events/autho...

A Twist of Rotten Silk Audiobook on Libro.fm Old and new, serious and absurd, tricky and electrifying. A book of words, words, words, for actors and directors, playwrights and poets, readers and speakers. For Shakespeareans and Anti-Shakespearea...

The audiobook of A Twist of Rotten Silk #ATwistOfRottenSilk, read by Jackie Oates @jackieoates.bsky.social, with the afterword read by Emma Smith @oldfortunatus.bsky.social, is available on all major audiobook platforms. Here it is on Libro.fm –
libro.fm/audiobooks/9...

Jackie Oates @jackieoates.bsky.social is the voice of the audiobook of A Twist of Rotten Silk #ATwistOfRottenSilk, with Emma Smith @oldfortunatus.bsky.social reading her own afterword. In Oxford on 21 November 2025, Jackie recorded Emma reading the afterword.