{"id":564,"date":"2025-10-20T20:35:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T19:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/?p=564"},"modified":"2025-10-20T20:49:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T19:49:05","slug":"i-goon-march-and-glide-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gojonstonego.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/20\/i-goon-march-and-glide-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"“I goon-march and glide”, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NB. This piece is duplicated from my Substack, Stray Bulletin<\/a>, and was originally published on September 8th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the new university semester and two new Sidekick Books titles imminent, it\u2019s time for a significant update to Stray Bulletin, recounting key happenings from the year so far. I\u2019m going to do it in three parts released over a week. Let\u2019s continue with:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part 1: Events!<\/a><\/s>\u00a0<\/strong>|\u00a0Part 2: Reviews & Critical Writing!<\/strong>\u00a0|\u00a0Part 3: New Work!<\/s><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I know I keep saying it but \u2026 I\u2019d love to have more time to review books and write critically. Writing critically about something is a way of wading into it, thinking your way through it, adding something to it. I\u2019ve got pages of notes towards reviews that never materialise. The beating heart of poetry criticism in the UK, meanwhile, is blogs and small-circulation journals \u2014outside of this, it isn\u2019t encouraged very widely or enthusiastically. Even among those who speak passionately of reinvigorating it, too many seem to approach criticism as part sorting machine (a way of ordering books into a hierarchy of quality), part ritualistic act of obeisance, whereby critics contribute to the aura of respectability enjoyed by a heroic figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yes, I complain about this too often as well, but it disturbs me to see people of my own age talking, almost vindictively, about \u2018sorting the wheat from chaff\u2019 or lamenting a failure to recognise \u2018great poets\u2019 in this, an age of untold poetic abundance. They\u2019ve benefited from a rich vein of work they value \u2026 but seemingly won\u2019t be satisfied until their personal choices and tastes are allowed to supersede others\u2019. I\u2019m tempted to say that a golden rule of reading poetry should be that if you don\u2019t sometimes come round to liking something you initially felt cool towards, or wind up disappointed in something you expected to knock your socks off, then you need to rethink your angle of attack. Anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u30ceo_o)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My published reviews so far this year are thin on the ground: P.W. Bridgman<\/strong>\u2019s The World You Now Own<\/a><\/em> (reviewed for London Grip<\/em>) was passed on by another reviewer who was indisposed. This can be a risky job to take on \u2014 what if you can\u2019t productively connect with the book in question in any way? Luckily, I found Bridgman\u2019s voice to be a \u2018gentlemanly presence\u2019 in a well-rounded and skilfully written volume:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same care and courteousness is evident in the arrangement of many of the shorter poems \u2013 impeccably detailed realist dioramas, drawn from various stages of life \u2013 and in the overall structure of the book, which is divided into \u201cOur Better Selves\u201d, \u201cOur Lesser Selves\u201d and \u201cOur Contemptible Selves\u201d, so as to faithfully depict psychological messiness in as neat a fashion as possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A little later, I submitted a review of Alex Mazey<\/strong>\u2019s Ghost Lives: Cursed Edition<\/a><\/em> to Tristram Fane Saunders<\/strong>\u2019 new magazine The Little Review<\/a><\/em>. As its name suggests, TLR <\/em>is particularly dedicated to criticism. There\u2019s poetry as well, but all poets who submit work must also include a review of something recent \u2014 I wish this policy were more widespread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ghost Lives <\/em>impressed me a lot <\/em>\u2014 more than half the book is made up of ASCII art poems featuring a character called Ghost. It sustains the atmosphere of a somewhat abandoned, neon-and-rainfall-spattered late-night-bar district throughout. I\u2019ve written a follow-up review of another Bad Betty title \u2014 we\u2019ll see if, when and how that one emerges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Volcanoes, supernovas etc.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How about this for an even shorter section? The only article I\u2019ve published this year outside of personal blog entries is a brisk dive into time loop video games<\/a>, via Retorisk Arena<\/em>, a Danish online journal focusing on rhetoric and communication. The brief was: don\u2019t slip into academic jargon. Mission accomplished, I think? I talked about Outer Wilds<\/em>, an already much-beloved sci-fi time loop game set in a tiny galaxy, and two less well-known titles: The Forbidden City <\/em>and Pocket Watch<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One might reasonably infer, therefore, that the time loop had been invented as an ingenious solution to the problem of video games jolting players out of their stories whenever the protagonist \u2013 their avatar \u2013 anticlimactically snuffs it. Instead of having the player artificially retread the same story beats, like someone who\u2019s lost their place in a book, a time loop game follows the lives of one or more characters who are themselves trapped in a temporal circuit. Certain events and interactions recur, but it is the protagonist\/s \u2013 not just the player \u2013 who negotiates encounters differently with each visit, and in so doing learns more about the world and their place in it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

My conclusion? Interactive time loops might just be better at representing certain aspects of modern experience than chronologically coherent narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a>
They added a little drawing of me, which means I\u2019m two for two, \u201824-\u201925. Can I keep it going?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Barbarian Yellow Crane<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What else for this part of the three-part catch-up post? Well, I\u2019ve joined the editorial board of Jordan Magnusson<\/strong>\u2019s Game Poems Magazine<\/a><\/em>, and a chunk of my summer was spent reviewing and discussing with my fellow editors the various submissions for the first issue, due out later this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What kind of work is being published? Terminology around the field of poetry-game crossover is still fluid, but Jordan\u2019s term \u2018game poems\u2019 roughly maps onto my term \u2018poetic games\u2019 from Dual Wield<\/a><\/em>. So: video games that are primarily lyrical, seeking to express or explore a subjective experience through their mechanics and\/or audio-visual systems, ideally without too much emphasis on narrative. Most are the work of individual game developers, very short \u2014 a few minutes from beginning to end \u2014 and either focus on a particular moment in time or offer up an entirely figurative landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as those submitted to the journal, many are shared by their authors on the Game Poems Discord. Here are a few recent ones I\u2019ve looked into:<\/p>\n\n\n\n