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I’m reading alongside Astrid Alben, Rose Gibbs, Sophie Herxheimer and Lucy Mercer at Burley Fisher Books in Haggerston this Thursday. Tickets are £5 and can be ordered from here.

I’ll be reading a few poems from Sandsnarl, but also from a new work-in-progress which happens to be set in the same universe, in a hotel full of half-human half-insect guests.

I have three new poems in the latest issue of Firmament, a handsome magazine made by Sublunary Editions, who are a very impressive small press based in Seattle, with editorial input from the UK. I’m especially happy to have these poems published, as all three are from a new collection I’ve been working on for, oh, maybe four or five years now?

One, ‘The city awaiting’, belongs to the same sequence as ‘The city is over’, which was published in Poetry Birmingham a year and a half ago. Another, ‘Cat’, is from the same sequence as ‘Dog’, published in Marble in December, ‘Frog’, published in Gramarye in June last year, and ‘Woodlouse’ (or ‘Bug’), published in The Rialto, also last year. One more of these to place before the entire set is out there! (The city poems have some catching up to do, and the castle and labyrinth poems have barely got off the ground).

The third poem I will leave you to discover for yourself. But here is ‘Cat’:

This post can also be read on my Substack, Stray Bulletin.

DIARY

I was originally planning to write on two topics: whether or not writers need to read, and disconnections at a near distance. After weighing up which to take on first, I found that the two bled in to one another.

When I teach poetry to students for the first time, I always ask about their prior relationship with it, and there are always a few who say they write it but don’t read it. I understand this; poetry is an expressive tool, and if your major concern is being acknowledged in a world that seems quite happy to roll by with or without you, you naturally lean toward output. The ability to read and enjoy poetry is the result of practice, and we see little apparent evidence of the benefits of putting in that practice. Writers are people of status; readers are just faces in the crowd. The pleasure of reading is private, and its relationship to intellectual or emotional maturity is difficult to trace, for all that we may sense the change within us.

When the topic of writers needing to read was broached on Twitter, two themes came to the fore: firstly, that habitual reading undoubtedly has a positive impact on writing. How could it not? Language is a fearsomely complex system – trying to work if from only one end is going to greatly limit your success. But secondly – and in response to claims that some people’s minds work ‘differently’ – there is the moral case. Why should you expect to be read if you yourself refuse to read? Why should that exchange only run one way? Who deserves to be listened to, who does not listen?

This takes me on to my second mini-topic. I don’t know whether and to what extent this is to do with my getting older, or to the damage wrought by the pandemic, or to do with specific painful events in my life, or to do with capitalism or Toryism or the ubiquity of digital media (probably all of the above), but I am finding it particularly difficult to connect with new people around me at the moment, and feel this particularly acutely when we have, on paper, much in common.

It’s not just a case of my feeling shut out; I also struggle with unwillingness on my part. That is to say, I simultaneously feel an intense desire to connect and an equally intense hesitance. I have to work hard to resist feeling mildly exasperated, or bored, or judgmental. All talk feels like small talk. When this is coupled with my perceiving that the other person is also pushing a boulder up a hill, feels the same ambivalence toward me, it lends itself to a feedback loop, in the same way that friendships tend to spring from rapidly accelerating mutual intrigue.

Now, my memory of last being a stranger in a strange land is hazy, but I’m sure I remember the process of getting to know people involving a lot of generous, unguarded gestures from all parties. When I make one of these now, not only is it often not reciprocated, but I may end up feeling I’ve made the person uncomfortable – as if I were doting. I’ve become accordingly more restrained.

Hard for me to know, though, how it looks from the other side. Hard for me to judge whether someone is genuinely keen to maintain emotional distance, or wants me to offer much more, wants me to put all I’ve got to offer on the table. Or whether they themselves simply don’t know what is misfiring.

Thinking back again to writers who don’t read, I wonder if it’s possible for a collective – a stratum of a society, say – to be damaged to the point where the combined ability to extend care and understanding toward others becomes far outstripped by the need for the same care and understanding. For the need to write (and, hence, to be read, to have one’s experience validated) to completely overtake the capacity to take on board ideas and experiences that are of an alien character.

I wonder sometimes even about people who read voraciously – whether they are really exposing themselves to the risk of disorientation, of intellectual and emotional hurdles, or whether they have found a way to read with blinkers on, sifting the material for what reassures them. I wonder if this is what the judgement that a work is ‘beautiful’ sometimes relates to, and whether there is a connection with standards of beauty in people – the beautiful being that which is devoid of threat, which will not change you.

I may be drawing together too much. I may be overly haunted by some advice given to me in the midst of a series of bad dates last year. Without going into the details, it pertained to What Women Want (or what answers their subconscious psychological needs, say) and lo, it was something I could not see myself ever being able to provide, nor being inclined to fake. Perhaps, then (I say to myself), the people I meet now need things, and are able to ascertain very quickly that I am not a provider of these things. Much as I am offering handouts, worksheets and group discussion to students who may struggle to see past their need for acknowledgement and validation.

And what do I want? What do I mean by this ‘connection’ I say I’m looking for? Perhaps the same thing – perhaps more than anyone can give. To be read, to be listened to, to be made safe.

Or maybe I just want to run into someone who will play couch co-op games with me.

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VIDEOGAMES

I’ve recently started playing Dishonored 2, from Arkane Studios – a little nervously, since the original Dishonored was a game I felt didn’t need a sequel. There’s a strange dissonance to both titles whereby the story casts you as a cautious avenger, only killing the most despicable enemies, while the various systems (enemy behaviour, player abilities, level layout) entreat you to become a brutal, supernatural night stalker and murder-machine. This is even more pronounced in Dishonored 2, which begins by making a sore point of the fact that you’ve been framed for the deaths of your political rivals, before handing you a knife, pistol and crossbow and making it trivially easy to terrify and tear apart enemies.

As an example of what is now termed an ‘immersive sim’, it’s designed to facilitate different approaches and playstyles. There are videos of players who approach each level as a dance floor – after practising their moves for countless hours, they will release a video of them performing an expertly choreographed ballet of mayhem and mutilation. An electric-shock mine attached to a severed head is thrown into the air,  landing on another enemy just as he whirls round to face the protagonist, surprising yet another into falling into the harbour, and so on.

I prefer to try to ‘ghost’ each level, getting through it without being seen or heard while robbing every purse and rooting through every drawer and cabinet. But what I really enjoy is testing the boundaries of the game’s realism and watching it devolve into the uncanny. I can yank a guard officer up onto the roof of his own lodge, take his money, then slingshot away – the A.I. doesn’t know how to jump or climb down, so after recovering from the mugging, he will simply stand there on the narrow roof, pondering to himself.

In a similar move, I rescue two civilians about to be shot by the local religious fanatics. I stow them in plain sight on a dusty first floor balcony while the cult members below yell, “Come out of hiding!” and light bombs. When one of my rescuees notices I’m carrying the unconscious body of an underworld boss, he cries out in terror and, lacking anywhere to run to, cowers before me. He is still in the same position, on the same balcony, when I return half an hour later, after having made a deal with the cult and stolen every single one of their pistols from right under their noses.

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FICTION

I’ve begun reading The Beetle by Richard Marsh, “a thrilling horror novel of mesmerism, murder and shape-shifting terror”, according to the blurb, released the same year as Dracula. Coincidentally, it includes a chapter very early on which could easily have served as the inspiration for some of Dishonored 2’s levels. Under the influence of mind control, the protagonist scales the outside of a house and smashes his way through an upper floor window. The house belongs to a powerful politician, and our burglar has been sent to steal some papers – the key to that politician’s downfall.

It’s very Hammer Horror so far – short chapters making it easy to read at the bus stop.

This post can also be read on my Substack, Stray Bulletin.

TINY LIBRARY

I continue to train between Cambridge, London, Buckinghamshire and sometimes Matlock, picking up post and moving things around as I try to figure out whereabouts in the vicinity of my new job I can settle permanently, meaning in all likelihood for the rest of my life. One of the items I picked up on a recent visit is this collection of 50 single-card games, published by Long Tail.

It appeals to me greatly as a concept because I know many people who, like myself, enjoy tabletop, travel and role-playing games in theory, but struggle to find the time to familiarise themselves with complex rules, or the lore of a fantasy world, or to summon the particular kind of creative performativity needed to be able to act out an emergent story. The ideal kind of game, to my mind, is one that can be cracked open for the first time on a train journey, laid out on a carriage table, then learned and played in less than 30 minutes – but which has some element of character development or fantasy interaction therein.

But I’m keen to experiment with games that are even faster and more straightforward than that. I like the idea of having a few simple cards or rulesets on me at any one time, or perhaps a puzzle or two, linked to my writing and research, to serve in the place of business cards or icebreaker conversations. 

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THE SANCTUARY SPARROW

Last year I decided to make my way through every book in Ellis Peters’ Cadfael series, since they’re short, conventionally plotted, and full of period detail, being set in 12th century Shrewsbury. One particular passage in the seventh novel, The Sanctuary Sparrow, rather unaccountably moved me more than anything I’ve read in fiction in the last few years. A penniless bard, Lilliwin, is chased and beaten by a mob after he is falsely accused of murder. Finding temporary safety in the abbey, he’s nursed by Brother Cadfael, the abbey herbalist:

After I read this passage, I had to pause for a while. I felt very sore. I wanted very badly to go out and retrieve Lilliwin’s rebec for him. I reread the page three or four times, before pushing on, reluctant to leave the moment behind.

I don’t expect, even in its proper context, it would have the same effect on anyone else – and in fact, in a way, I hope it does not. I hold out for and treasure that which is peculiar to me, just as I love most in other people what is peculiar to them. One of the wonderful things about the breadth of literature and other cultural artefacts that we have access to is that they allow for so many of these peculiarities.

It’s preferable, I would suggest, that each of us is moved in their own way, by a stray detail or otherwise, than that we’re all moved together, as if we are of one mind, by the same parts of the same works. And as it happens, I’ve found that most of what comes recommended on the basis that it’s intensely emotionally affecting turns out to be fairly bland. That’s as it should be; some degree of unity of feeling makes sense when we’re reacting to real events and circumstances, but I don’t see why it should be the same with the arts. 

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TOXIC JOURNALISM

Most of my impulsive social media activity last week consisted of reactions to articles and opinions posted about Kate Clanchy and her books, following the news that she has separated from her publisher. All current editions of her works, we learned, were to be withdrawn with immediate effect – not an outcome I or anybody else asked for. But as with so much else, it seems impossible for any journalist to report the basic facts of the situation, since they’re all too invested in a narrative which those facts don’t fit.

Clanchy has faced fierce criticism for the content of her book, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. Quite simply, the criticism lands. That is, it is the force of the criticism itself that has carried the day. There have been no pitchforks, no protests, no blockades or book burnings. Passages in the book were highlighted, and Clanchy’s subsequent behaviour (particularly her response to said criticisms being aired) only seems to have convinced more onlookers that she is deeply in the wrong. We don’t know how exactly the relationship with her publishers, Pan MacMillan, deteriorated so badly over recent months, but it is not the result of any organised effort to destroy her or her career.

It clearly galls the commentariat class, however, that such criticism could be delivered – and produce such results – without their ministry. In article after article, the story is presented as if an arbitrary campaign were waged against Clanchy, using terms like ‘mob’ and ‘witch-hunt’. The fact that it was Clanchy who ignited the fire, by highlighting early criticism and asking for it be removed, is sidestepped, as is the fact that nobody ever actually called for her books to be taken off the shelves.

Most of my contributions, therefore, have simply been to re-state these facts under comments which omit or overlook them. But sometimes I run into variations of the ideological framework that really underpins all these misleading accounts, presented as counter-argument. What business have we, it asks, undermining someone who has been pronounced a ‘good person’ by powerful institutions? Clanchy won the Orwell Prize for Some Kids, as well as an MBE and the admiration of many individuals of esteem. As in every case where a statue comes down or the reputation of a historical figure is revisited, the ensuing panic is caused by the realisation that status can be undone. This is what most commentators really mean by ‘cancelled’, after all: demotion. The authority they wielded over others now weakened.

This post can also be read on my Substack, Stray Bulletin.

DIARY

I keep saying and thinking ‘when I’m settled in’. To living in Cambridge, that is. I use these words to defer certain expectations – this or that will happen ‘when I’m settled’. But I’m not sure what that will look or feel like. The opposite of agitated? Is it me that’s settling, like a leaf on the ground, or is it that my contents are a kind of churned riverbed, a cloud that needs to become a steady layer of sand? Once things stop catching me off guard or causing me trepidation, I will be settled – in which case, I can’t remember the last time I was settled. I’m a worrier – I worry about and at. I’m very suspicious of long silences.

The first couple of weeks of teaching at the new job have been mostly comfortable; that is to say, I’m finding I can talk for a long time and listen attentively, and always have my plan to hand, and I haven’t frozen up at any point to wonder what on earth I’m doing. The hitches and difficulties seem to be the same as those experienced by everyone else, more or less. I haven’t yet got a firm enough grip on my schedule to fit in a lot of writing, however, largely because writing, for me, has always depended on a certain degree of drifting, of unhooking myself from the immediate surroundings. My mind elsewhere. Being away with the faeries. I’m not quite ready to give myself up to that at the moment.

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KOSUKE, KISUKE AND SNUFKIN

I’m continuing to make my way, very slowly, through The Village of Eight Graves, in between attending to several other books. The detective in the story, Kosuke Kindaichi, is described here, as in the preceding books, as scruffy, young-ish, always wearing an old serge hakama and sun hat. Several films have been made of his adventures with different actors portraying him, and I was struck, looking at the stills, by how much he resembles Kisuke Urahara, the exiled inventor/shopkeeper from Tite Kubo’s Bleach. Their first names are only one letter apart, and both are characterised as eccentric, oddly dressed and brilliant. Here are there live action outings side by side:

Bleach was first published in 2001, so there’s plenty of scope for the detective to have served as inspiration for the shopkeep, but I can find nothing to substantiate the idea. In fact, Urahara is said to have been inspired by a different character entirely: Snufkin, the vagabond from Tove Jansson’s Moomin books. Here are both in their original illustrated forms:

I would quite like to see all three of them share an adventure someday. 

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JUST JOSS

(A little late to the party)

I remember encountering, in around 2010, Neill Cameron’s illustrated A-Z of Awesomeness, a lavishly drawn paean to geek culture. ‘A is for Aztecs in Atomic Armour Attacking Anomalous Amphibians’, ‘I is for Indiana Jones Inching Away from an Inebriated Iron Man’, and so on. ‘J’ was for ‘Joss … just Joss’, accompanied by an image of Joss Whedon in the nude, relaxing by a fireside. Ideas for the individual entries were crowdsourced; I would say, therefore, that this is a fair representation of the absurd degree of esteem in which Whedon was held by geek fandom at the time. More so because he was a god of feminism; Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, to a lesser extent, Firefly were supposedly shows that established strong female archetypes, as well as being witty, subversive and self-effacing, a combination that signalled the imminent overthrow of stagnant, male-dominated and heteronormative narrative genres.

Now Whedon is attempting to mitigate the reputational damage caused by revelations about his treatment of actors and crew members, most of them women. Nobody seems to have been particularly surprised by these revelations, coming as they did on the heels of a string of similar busts – men in positions of cultural power found to be abusing that power. But it’s especially unsurprising in this case, since the feminism of Buffy was deeply gestural; that is, it asked to be noticed and acknowledged, a sign that something was expected in return. I often felt uncomfortable watching it in the way I feel uncomfortable seeing men affect an enthusiastically servile manner around women (or a macho one, for that matter – two sides of the same coin).

That does not mean I think Buffy, or Whedon, should have been condemned from the start. But it does seem to me yet another example of a mess resulting from the collective inability to temper enthusiasm, to enjoy things without turning them into sacred objects. I like geek culture, for the most part, but I recoil from it a little as well, because of how it seems to swallow up people’s identities and distort their sense of perspective. Fantasy, sci-fi and adjacent genres have their roots in speculative reconfiguration of the world; they are ways of seeing which relate directly to everyday struggles and politics. Fan worship, at its worst, instead seeks a haven from the everyday, whose borders it then guards until the inevitable collision with reality.

Joss Whedon is, in all likelihood, a caring, creative, rather spoiled guy who doesn’t fully understand why the script has turned on him. If he’d caught heat early on for overstepping boundaries – or if the reception of his work hadn’t done such a good job of convincing him he was a knight in shining armour – he might have made a better fist of telling wrong from right, and not left a trail of destruction. People like him continue to be moulded and made, in part because we continue to believe in a superior kind of person. We believe that greatness is a quality that a person can possess, and behave as if we need that greatness beaming into our lives. 

This post can also be read on my Substack, Stray Bulletin.

DIARY

My resolution this year is to write in a slightly more disciplined, less sporadic manner, and to use the internet to cultivate a space for the things I write – which is to say, I mean to publish more and react less. It’s a familiar resolution; I’ve made it many times before, and it is terribly difficult to keep. Social media is designed to facilitate chain reactions. It sustains great Mexican waves of anger, commiseration or jubilance. When I give in to frustration and respond to that which frustrates me, it can generate a fire that lasts for days and I’m suddenly, in a small way, at the center of a conversation. Similarly, on those occasions when I have good news, I’m guaranteed to be kept busy accepting people’s good wishes.

But publicising work and disciplined writing of any kind is much more of a gamble. Lacking a habit or a formula, I find it impossible to draw any conclusions from the results: sometimes a thing burns faintly for a while, often it sits unattended. Very quickly, I grow bored with the project of attracting attention. I’m interested in making a kind of public garden, and contact and exchange with others, but not in producing objects for admiring. But then, as far as I can tell, that is what people (in the main) desire from writing published on the internet, or on social media at least: something to admire, which asks only that you perceive its glimmer.

Why do I have an aversion to glimmering? Something to do with thieves, foxes, rats, ruins, and all those other dank things I admire.

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SANDSNARL SALE

Sandsnarl is currently on sale for £4 at the Emma Press shop, until the end of the month. That’s the same price as I paid yesterday to send one of the last copies of Scarecrows to the US. Unfortunately, I made nothing out of that sale, since I didn’t charge postage and Scarecrows also costs £4.

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PROGRESSIVISM

It’s nearly 20 years since Halle Berry and Denzel Washington won Best Actress and Best Actor at the Oscars, with Sidney Poitier receiving an honorary award. At the time, John Cleese was quoted as saying, “It actually felt as if something in society shifted.”

And did it? Is racism significantly less of a blight today than it was then? Vanity Fair hosted a party on the night of the awards, and their write-up begins thusly:

In one corner of the room, Hugh Grant whispers in Nicole Kidman’s ear. She giggles. Nearby, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke greet Gwyneth Paltrow. Salman Rushdie huddles with his girlfriend, model Padma Lakshmi. A grinning Ron Perelman has his arm around Ellen Barkin, who is decked out in diamonds. Rupert Murdoch weighs an Oscar in his hand …

‘It seems everybody is here,’ says Rushdie. Nearby, Elvis Costello talks with friends as Mickey Rourke approaches Chloe Sevigny. Model Sophie Dahl, in a sparkly dress, smokes a cigarette as Hanks breezes through.

Whether Rushdie really used those words or not, the sentiment ‘everybody is here’ is extremely telling. The notion that racism could be dispelled by giving awards to black actors is only realistic so far as we believe in the possibility of benevolent rule by these few. As long as there is a representative mixture of people at the party – people who count – then society is moving forward, the logic goes. 

But at the root of inequality is the fact that most people, most of the time, do not count. We are not guests at the party. That’s not to say that there’s nothing momentous about occasions when awards culture catches up, but these are aftershocks at best. The real work goes on at ground level, and is performed by networks of activists, educators, artists and workers.  Their goal, and ours, must ultimately be to redistribute power in such a way that no elite gathering can think of themselves as constituting ‘everyone’. It would help in reaching that point if we were to disengage, even if only slightly at first, from spectacles of triumph.

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POETRY

I’m currently reading Penelope Shuttle’s Lyonesse and hope to be able to write a short review soon. The subject of the book is right up my alley: a lost underwater country! Progress, however, has stalled because I keep being drawn back to one of the early poems, ‘The Gownshops’, which begins:

The Gownshops

of Lyonesse
took satin for granted, silk
was cheaper than salt,
but velvet rip-roared
like the water-lions of the west
who dealt the city its fate

This post can also be read on my Substack, Stray Bulletin.

DIARY

I’m elbow-deep in preparation for the new teaching semester, trying to work out how much I want to depart from those approaches to poetry teaching I’m familiar with. I’ll also be teaching plays and publishing, but here I’m more content to work within the existing templates I’ve been given (or rather, more ginger about carving out my own path). Where poetry is concerned, I feel some disenchantment with the practice of showing examples of a form or genre to students, discussing the rules with them, and then asking them to construct an imitation. I’d like to teach them to use poetry as an explorative tool – that is, to get them to think of what is beyond the poem and to use the poem as a way of reaching that. Easier said than done. Perhaps this is not so much disenchantment with existing techniques (after all, we teach the use of tools by first asking students to perform simple actions with them) as it is a desire to break down preconceptions as quickly as possible, since so much beginner poetry seems concerned with the idea of being ‘poetic’ (as a stance, as a pose) or with reframing what is already known. I would like students to embark upon writing poetry with the notion that it leads to discovery, that it is like following a trail in a strange land. That way, its practice has uses beyond that of becoming a poet. 

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FICTION

I’m currently reading The Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo (translated by Bryan Karetnyk), the third Kosuke Kindaichi mystery to be released in English by Pushkin Vertigo. It was originally published as Yatsuhakamura in 1950, and made into a spooky film in 1977 (no English version available, as far as I know). One thing I’m enjoying, just one chapter in, is the minor obsession the main protagonist has with weighing his experiences against what one might expect from a work of fiction, as if he himself is not a character in a work of fiction. Here is a passage that (unintentionally, I think) made me laugh:

“After Mr Suwa left, we sat together in silence for a long while. It wasn’t at all like it is on the stage or in novels. Although we were blood relations, there was no outpouring of heartfelt emotion; instead, the fact of our being related made it only more awkward, as it meant we couldn’t fall back on pleasantries. At least, that was how I interpreted my grandfather’s long silence at the time. Unbeknownst to me, however, he was in fact experiencing such excruciating pains in his stomach that he couldn’t talk.”

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CONTROVERSIES

Nick Buckley MBE was one of the ‘stars’ of Twitter yesterday, for a boilerplate ‘old man speaking his mind’ routine. From a quick skim of his feed, most of his opinions are the usual white-van-man fare, but it was a couple of Substack posts about men being the ‘real victims’ of women’s sexual superpowers that made him a brief sensation. The ridicule heaped on him, however, is almost as frustrating as his own skewed logic.

There is, after all, real pain behind his tenuous claims. Like many men, he clearly feels a mixture of humiliation, confusion and paranoia when faced with dress styles that accentuate women’s sexual features – as if he is being taunted. The message behind such dress styles, he implies, is something like “I am sexually available to a suitable man of status – so try harder, menial worker”. He says this is deliberate provocation, that it’s women’s choice and women’s fault. In return, he is told that it’s actually men’s fault, and specifically his own problem if women in sexy clothes make him feel small.

The truth is surely that no one involved in this game is fully in command of their choices or feelings. We all participate in, to differing extents, a system in which men are expected to compete for status and women are expected to offer themselves as a reward for that status in exchange for security. That’s more-or-less what defines patriarchal culture – power resides with men, but not evenly. All of us are made agents of that power by our being trained in ritual behaviours. Boys who brutalise girls, women and other boys don’t consciously do it for the sake of upholding this system, and neither do women (or men, for that matter) who dress to accentuate certain features of themselves. But that is, nevertheless, why these rituals are so deeply embedded.

So Nick is right, in a sense, that women actively participate in their own sexual objectification, but entirely wrong to suggest that men are mere bystanders, let alone comparative victims. We’re all brought up to enact these routines. Even though they damage us, often irreparably, the punishments we face for rejecting them completely are also severe. The hard work many undertake, therefore, is to transform them, through subversion, into a means of resistance. So there is little use in continuing to talk about the rights and dignities of men and women as if it were a competitive team sport, the one taking from the other.

Marble Poetry, edited by Aisling Tempany, produces both a journal and a broadsheet, as well as a number of pamphlets, all with a distinctive visual style – very impressive for a one-person operation. The theme of broadsheet #8 is animals, and features six poems, including Mandy Beattie’s charming ‘Catticus’, about an “emerald-eyed half-kitten and his tangerine snub-nose”, and a very short and very simply poem called ‘Dog’, which is by me.

‘Dog’ is the third of five animal-themed poems in a mini-sequence that I’ve managed to find a home for over the past year or so. Previously, ‘Frog’ was published in Gramarye 19, and ‘Woodlouse’ (lately retitled ‘Bug’) in The Rialto 80. ‘Cat’ is imminent as well, while ‘Fox’ has yet to find his place. Fingers crossed for him in 2022.

Meanwhile, here’s ‘Dog’:

The broadsheet is currently only available as part of a subscription from here. Other poets featured are Gaynor Kane, Ben Banyard, Rachel Bruce and Alice Stainer, with poems covering horses, spiders, cattle, cranes and … a second dog.