David Ralph Lewis- Poet and Writer
David Ralph Lewis is a poet and short story writer based in Bristol, UK. Follow for poetry, articles and updates
New Blog Post: Dungeness
- Nothing grows here but sea kale
and spite. We walk towards a horizon
that refuses to get any closer,
under the sun’s pixelated glare.
Having no sense of perspective,
I almost trip over rusting cogs
of some unidentifiable machine.
We are watched by a power plant,
it’s polygonal bulk threatening
to heave and shiver. The brutalist
structure is devoid of sound effects.
We have noclipped into a staging area
where broken textures are stored
and defragged on repeating shingle.
And here is where the boats will land
this glitched landscape full of errors.
Here bodies will become headlines,
become local gossip, become a way of life.
And here is where people in wool suits
will shove mothers, brothers and children
back into the broken waves of the sea.
I really hope we get rid of this unusually cruel government soon.
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New Blog Post: Our Voices in the Chaos- now Free
- In 2018 I was writing poems and putting erasure poems onto Instagram (much the same as today.) A small press called Selcouth Station approached me and asked if I wanted to make a pamphlet around those erasure poems. After a lot of work, the result was a hybrid pamphlet called Our Voices in the Chaos .
I used the blackouts I created as prompts and wove them into my poetry. Often I would use the blackout as the first lines then write underneath, but I also use used them as the last line or a line in the middle. The poems were shaped by the erasures and tended towards surreal and vaguely apocalyptic.
It’s strange reading it back now. The pamphlet was published in October 2019 and builds towards an imagined crisis. Of course, five months later we were in the middle of an actual crisis and it was nothing like the idea. The way I write poems has also changed a lot in the years since I published this pamphlet. I would do things very differently now and would probably get rid of half or more of the poems. This is necessary I think, because if you don’t look back at your old work and cringe a little bit, you haven’t evolved as an artist.
Anyway, Selcouth Station sadly closed down in March of this year. I really appreciate them for taking a chance on a fairly new poet and for publishing my work. They put care, attention and passion into their press and were willing to go along with my hybrid experiment. I’ll always be grateful for what they did.
With the press gone, I’m faced with the dilemma of what to do with this pamphlet as you can no longer buy it. So I’ve decided to put it here for free. You can download it, share it, remix it, do what you want with it. It’s no longer my work, it’s yours. No catches, no newsletter signups (unless you want to of course, go here ). Just a free pdf.
Download here (direct download, pdf only)
You are welcome to [buy me a coffee][https://ko-fi.com/davidralphlewis] but is by no means essential.
Read on website: https://www.davidralphlewis.co.uk//Our-Voices-in-the-Chaos-now-Free/
New Blog Post: A Reminder to Myself
- If you are reading this on a screen
your face glowing cold and blue
your hand reaching out across air,
put down your device. Look around.
Notice the wind rushing at your face,
muddling and whipping your hair,
numbing your fingertips and toes.
You have been falling for so long
at terminal velocity it is typical now.
You have grown acclimatised to seconds
dropping into the nothing. You are
rushing towards that same absence.
Try to hold onto what you can
as you plunge. Grab moments;
the mutating clouds of indigo,
the emerald grass that grows and dies,
dreams that flicker above your head
like localised electrical storms.
Even here, even above the planet
in the mesosphere, there is oxygen.
Breathe.
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New Blog Post: Cloud Song
- Erasure poem taken from Crack magazine, May 23
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New Blog Post: As Above So Below
- 0.2
Mud as a river. Mud as a theoretical concept, the transistory state of matter rarely glimpsed. Mud described in complex equations. Mud as the consequence of our actions we refuse to acknowledge or take responsibility for, despite it chewing at our shins. Mud in our boots. Mud in our hair. Mud clogging up our pores so we sweat mud. Mud turning our hills to waterslides. Mud washing away our temporary shelters. Mud as a non-Newtonian fluid we can bounce across if we hit it hard enough. Mud as the inevitable future. Mud as penance. Mud as the herald, the herald of the flood.
0.6
Technical difficulties-
Oh.
Maybe if I-
Oh.
Or perhaps-
Oh.
Could you-
Oh.
1.1
Ice receedes like a hairline,
little at first then all at once.
The problem lies beneath the skin,
down under a mile of compressed blue,
where strange bodies skitter and wriggle.
where pressure will implode careless bones.
Down there, in the dark, it is warmer.
Only by a degree. But pressure and salinity
are poorly understood and difficult to model.
And there, unnoticed by passing survey ships
or penguins, tunnels are being carved
into the glacier like delicate incisions,
bringing warmer water to what lies above.
1.7
The gulf stream splutters,
croons to us like a drunk -
croaking, hoarse.
We are held captive
by its sporading warbling
feel its hot breath
rattling.
2.5
Just two morals before Rishi Sunak
opened hundreds of lifespans
for ommission and gasket extravagance
in the north sea, an IT fishmonger
founded by his fault-in-law
signed a 1.5 billion binge death
with enigma guilt BP.
3.2
I stand vulnerable under artifical rain,
enjoying the luxury of not reading headlines.
I count everything I know for certain,
Watch it swirl and vanish down the drain.
4.0
On the surface of this new lake
hundreds of worms rejoice,
then as water keeps cascading,
twitch as one, stop moving.
Section 2.5 was adapted from the first sentence of this article in The National .
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New Blog Post: Ambient II
- After Aphex Twin
All I conjure is the vertigo of ancient cliffs
while listening to voices from the radiator,
muffled sentences- ‘rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb’
they murmur, a bad tv play. I clutch a hanky,
concentrating on horizontal tree roots, the grass
clinging to granite. I try not to think of the mold
that grows logarithmically behind the curtains.
My future is a distant ocean below, a grey blur.
What is my life compared to weathered stone?
Already my fingertips are mutating into blue calx,
already my forehead is developing parallel stripes
of strata. The decay inevitable, like shiny metal rods
over thousands of years. This house will be a grey strip
soon, our dwelling marked only by a mutated ‘z’ twig
growing in the cracks. Look, how worn the windowsill
is already. I sigh to the silence, tracing a hexagon
in dust. This world is not ours, it is owned by lichen,
ours is only the shadow. We see reality in spots,
in all those neglected corners, on the damp tassels
of curtains. My body is indistinct, only a blur too,
edges forgotten, bones crumbling to matchsticks.
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27/07/2023
New Blog Post: Cacophony
- Erasure poem taken from Gigwise magazine, issue 8 June 23
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Cacophony Cacophony July 27, 2023 less than 1 minute read Erasure poem taken from Gigwise magazine, issue 8 June 23 Categories: erasure poetry Updated: July 27, 2023 Share on Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Previous Next
New Blog Post: Shhhh
- Listen, in between these seconds
plummeting like raindrops -
away from your constant
rotation of breath,
tuning out a fuzzing
whirr of fans, the growl
of idling engines -
behind it all, unnoticed
the slow churn of a motor
deep in the planets core,
and below, a cosmic bass note
(the wheel grinding)
and distant still,
beyond all that commotion-
all the frantic cycles of our being,
faint, forgotten -
the click of apertures,
the scratch of pens.
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New Blog Post: May and June 2023 Input
- This is slightly late as I’ve thrown myself back into the world after a halting start to the year. I joined a gym, started going to more things and exploring the new area we live in. I also went to Birmingham and other places around the country a bit more.
This is the media I’ve consumed in the past couple of months.
Books
The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisen - I’ve gushed in previous editions of this blog about the first two books. This is no exception. I think it might be my favourite series of books I’ve read this year. Jemisen expands the world once again, while deepening the flawed characters and the choices they make. It’s a macro and micro approach that is unlike anything else I’ve ever read. There are answers to questions but they are not what you would expect, and it all finishes with a climax that genuinely could go either way. I was completely and utterly bowled over by these books. Seek them out.
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon- I was completing the trilogy after years. It was odd coming to this book after the other two, as I feel like I’ve incorporated a lot of this advice already into my creative practice. Still, it was good to be reminded about some of the concepts, especially in a year when I’m digging into my practice more. I feel like I’m going to keep coming back to this one.
M Train by Patti Smith- In the first chapter, Smith is challenged by a dream to write a book about nothing. So this is a chronicle of her writing in cafes, but infinitely more interesting than that sounds. It expands to cover memory and life and everything inbetween. Smith is such an inspirational artist, full of passion and reverence for the creative act. I liked it all, even the diversions into tv mysteries I haven’t seen.
Faulty Manufacturing by Josie Alford- A poetic exploration of grief that is at times funny, moving and painful. I know Josie a little through the Bristol poetry scene and this book is a fantastic evolution of their style. Each poem is pared by to just the essentials, with not an unnecessary word in them. Each final line is razor sharp and their is humour, sadness and anger mixed together. Recommended.
Walking Towards the Noise by John Bowie- Poetry written during the pandemic, with sections called mask on, mask off, mask on again. I enjoyed a lot of the descriptions and individual lines, but overall this collection didn’t quite click with me.
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell- Sprawling horror novel across different times that parallels the military junta in Argentina. I liked a lot of this novel- the initial growing tension, the horror that unfolds from different perspectives and the complex, deeply flawed characters. However, I found that some parts dragged once the occult madness reveals itself, then it races too fast to the end.
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield- A woman returns from a submarine trip which went on too long, and her wife is trying to communicate with her. I spent the first half of this book waiting for the weirdness to kick in and missing most of the subtext of grief and illness that runs throughout it. Partly there’s some inertia in the story telling, but it kicks in around the second half of the book. The ending is deeply moving, in a dreamlike way and it is beautifully written through.
Films
Blades of Glory - A deeply silly film. Already now it seems quite dated, joining the ranks of other films in the mid 2000s that are based around a specific sport. But Will Ferrell and Jon Heder have enough comedic chops and charm to elevate it and make the most throwaway lines funny.
Asteroid City - Wes Anderson has leant more into his style as his films go on. This is charming and of course, absolutely beautiful. For me, it felt like a collection of scenes rather than a coherent statement, especially with the framing device parts which don’t add much to the film. But it’s funny and unique throughout.
TV Shows
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson - We binged all three seasons of this sketch show. None of the sketches goes in the direction you expect and it’s endlessly inventive and quotable. Tim picks up on small societal irks and expands them to surreal proportions. It’s brevity helps as well as each episode is only 15 minutes long, so it avoids the hit and miss aspect of a lot of sketch shows. I really enjoyed it.
Theatre
The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Before this, I hadn’t been to the theatre in a few years. This was a brilliant introduction back, which showcased what makes theatre special- the collective imagination. This production is stunning, using puppets and set changes to fullest effect. It’s utterly magical at times, terrifying at others and works to bring the fantastical story to life. The acting across the board was superb- the lead actors especially acting young was impressive. What an incredible production.
That’s it for now, come back next time to see what I’ve been enjoying.
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New Blog Post: Another espresso shot sky commute
- I define myself by edges–my skin,
car bonnets- but I am oh so permeable.
Chest matching thumpthumpthump of potholes.
Clemency lies between radio stations,
in the pause before windshield wipers
swish back to starting positions.
Hands tapping morse on the steering wheel,
messages to distant and unseen agents.
My party trick is dissolving into vapour.
Rumble strips and cat’s eyes broadcast:
“Forget all you know. Unlearn your old self.
A new world is forming in articulated lorry spray.
Rewild your petty dreams and ambitions.”
Infusing clouds reach swirling fingers
to stroke my embossed flesh, damp comfort.
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New Blog Post: On Threads
- By now you would have seen there’s a new social network in town. Threads is a Twitter alternative made by Meta1 and closely linked with Instagram. I signed up out of curiosity and almost immediately regretted it.
I quit Twitter over a year ago because I found the signal to noise ratio to be too weak. My feed was being flooded with irrelevant information instead of people I actually follow. In the year since, I have valued quiet and going slower instead.
Threads has launched with an algorithmic feed by default and I hate it. Each constant refresh brings tons of irrelevant information from people I’ve never heard off, all vying for your attention. It creates a feeling of overwhelm which I’m sure will be very profitable. Opening it was like turning on a firehose of nonsense. They have taken the worst parts of Twitter and copied them wholesale.
My main annoyance with an algorithmic feed is it defeats the point of social media. I want to see updates from the people I follow, not random stuff. Part of the reason I stayed on Twitter so long was the writing community, and I enjoyed seeing updates from people I followed through there.
My other annoyance is deeper. I think a algorithmic feed is more anxiety inducing, more frantic and less likely to bring you calm. The twitch and pull of a constantly refreshing stream of in information is overwhelming and always leads to a sense you are missing out on something. I found I’ve been a lot calmer by not exposing myself to random arguments constantly and not absorbing a thousand opinions at once.
At the moment it seems like there is no good alternative. I don’t want to shut myself off completely from the world. There are people I want to follow, events I’d like to know about. Threads just isn’t for me.2 I’ll stick with Instagram, because its a bit more low and chill. Other than that, I’ll continue to follow interesting people’s blog and newsletters by RSS.3 It’s a slower but more managable way of staying in touch.
So closely linked, I can’t deactivate Threads without removing my Instagram account. How very annoying. ↩
Not to mention the various data sharing issues. ↩
cough * My newsletter is here
↩
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New Blog Post: Elsewhere
- Erasure poem taken from the horoscopes page of The Metro .
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New Blog Post: Between them is a canyon
- They sometimes shine torches over the strata
of compressed time, with sweeping, shaking
hands. Eternity is present in their half smiles.
He carries a sadness for a long dead myth
that he longs to bury in the river far below.
She longs for a bridge in the same way you
want to win the lottery but never buy a ticket.
They talk in clouds that never quite merge.
Unnoticed by them both, in the shadows,
a man sits at a piano and plays Debussy,
the notes falling and fading into red dust.
This isn’t a climax to a Nora Ephron film.
They avoid eye contact. Later, she will text him
‘I searched for your flashlight but got lost.’
Night falls across the mesa like a stone
bouncing off a cliff into the welcoming earth.
Sorry to the people I saw who inspired this poem. I’m sure you were having a perfectly nice time in reality.
I was experimenting with consistency of images here. Not sure it fully works, but I liked some of the lines.
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New Blog Post: Personal Thoughts on Submissions
- I’ve spent a lot of this year purposely retreating from my typical ways of writing, to try and reinvent my practise. As such I made a conscious decision not to submit to literary journals or competitions this year. While previously I have had some moderate success, I found I was basing too much of my perception of my writing on how it was received.
When you first start writing, there’s no feedback. You need external validation to progress and grow your work. Submissions to literary journals are a good way to polish and improve your craft. When I sent poems out, I would give them a final edit to try and improve them further. Make them the best they can be. Occasionally, I would get feedback which would further help improve my work.
The problem was, I invested my self worth in getting accepted. Last year, I submitted to 17 places and was rejected from all of them. Rejections happen, and the best advice I’ve heard is just to be resilient, to keep going and trying. But for whatever reason, I found I couldn’t do that and took each polite email personally.
I think it’s the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for art. Slowly, I had changed my reasons for making poems to an extrinsic motivation of journal acceptances, rather than creating art for arts sake. This is why this time off has been valuable, because it’s allowed me to refocus on the intrinsic reasons for writing a poem and reassess what I think a good poem is. I’ve gone back to playing more with my writing, slowing down and evaluating each rough first draft for what it is, rather than where I can submit it to.
Halfway through the year and I’m still not ready to go back. I’m still trying to recalibrate my internal appreciation of what I want to write. I’m enjoying throwing poems onto this blog and Instagram and forgetting about them. I might throw out a pamphlet towards the end of the year, I might not. All I know is this space has cleared the way for multiple projects I would like to create. It has been a good reminder that art can just be made for yourself and doesn’t have to be published in any way at all.
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New Blog Post: I love walking in the woods so much I’m going to change my name to Forest
- Here, under the glitter of a multi-coloured canopy I am finding a new serenity, the peace of lives measured in centuries. I am removed from glaring lights and constant haze, breathing in a million micro-organisms. My pulse no longer has the twitch and shuffle of muffled drum and bass bleeding through the wall from next door, my heartbeat settles to the pace of my slow stride. I have left behind the disarray of the city, exchanged it for the slow drowning of moss. I am stopping walking, gazing up at the branches and the distant sun, falling faster. Recently I have been too much concerned with electrical misfires inside my head, I have forgotten to watch lichen climb a felled trunk. My toes are rooting into the soil. They are sending signals into the mycellium network. It responds with a sustained hum. This long note holds me captive. I breathe out poison, nutrients for the leaves encircling me. We sway in symbiosis. My legs bend together. Merge. Time is syrup. Here is stillness. My pulse is. Slowing. To a beat. per minute. Hour. Days dropping. Dead leaves. Pile. Mulch. Regrow. My skin now. brittle. Wrinkled. Bark. What was. My name? I am. reaching. Arms. Twigs. Arms. Branches. To sky. My smile. Frozen. My blood. sap. I reach. Up. Decades. Collapse. Sky. Branches. Reach. towards. Light. Light. Light. Light.
Another Bristol Tonic prompt (the title.) I had a lot of fun with this one
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New Blog Post: Omen at Fishponds Junction
- Down the central reservation he strode,
unbothered by exhaust fumes or concrete,
face encased in a leather mask.
I was idling in my ordered world
watching gridlock for signs of movement,
Lifeblood on my Micra’s stereo.
He stared at me, eyes covered
by stitched holes, mine shielded
by sunshade and plexiglass,
raised a single finger towards
the broiling, pyretic sky
and marched onwards, message delivered.
My spine became a melting glacier.
I opened the passenger door, left
my laptop and future on the hard shoulder
as traffic crawled to the bear pit.
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New Blog Post: Shiny
- Erasure poem taken from a random page of an unknown music magazine I had lying around.
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25/05/2023
Shiny
New Blog Post: Roaming
- Overnight, loam has been churned.
A fresh furrowed field before me.
footpath now forgotten, land lost
thanks to vast machines that chew
and crunch, split fresh green shock
into parallel mounds of uniform brown.
But a monarch still goes
where it pleases,
wings of eyes and flickering flame.
Dandelion clocks, half extinguished
persistent ground elder
and carpets of clover
still thrive on edges, under dry stone walls.
Wishing for lighter boots, I take a step,
Press down petals and blades Into soil
when they yearn to stretch skywards,
start a new desire line.
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New Blog Post: April 2023 Input
- It feel like this year has flown by. April vanished in the blink of an eye. I enjoyed being fully recovered and starting to explore more of my new home. I also got out a bit more and did things, so reading time was reduced.
Here’s the media I consumed when I was at home:
Books
Hello world by Hannah Fry- A book from 2018 about algorithms and how much they dominate our lives in different areas. I knew about some of it but a lot of this was new to me, especially in law and medicine. It feels particularly relevant five years on with the rise of ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, but also already a little out of date. A good introduction to a complex subject.
On Mutability by Jo Shapcott- I was aware of the title poem but had never read the full collection before. This is lush, dense poetry reflecting on the fragility of life. I loved this collection and could have highlighted the whole book.
Katabasis: Forking Through Memory by Saili Katebe - I’ve known Saili from the Bristol Poetry scene for a while now but his pamphlet passed me by. I read it as part of a workshop where we all read it in silence then asked questions. The poems in this pamphlet grapple with masculinity and faith and feel intimate and personal, while inviting the reader in. It was especially interesting to me how Saili has adapted his performance style to the page, condensing and distilling his poetry. I’d really recommend savouring this collection.
Films
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves - I’ve been running a D&D campaign for a year or so and this film captures the fun and chaos of the tabletop game. It’s not revolutionary as a film, but everyone in it is having a lot of fun, especially Hugh Grant as the villain. It’s what Marvel films want to be- breezy, funny and entertaining.
Three Thousand Years of Longing - Tilda Swinton is a professor of narrative who accidentally uncorks a djinn and is granted three wishes. I really enjoyed this, it’s a beautiful, slow meditation on the power of story to change our lives as well as a mediation on loneliness. It has some slow subtle touches and is well done.
Polite Society - A delightful film that really commits to its absurd premise. Lens is getting married but her sister Ria wants to stop it. The film is told in an over the top way, with martial arts sequences and heists. It is a lot of fun throughout.
TV Series
Reservation Dogs series two - I loved the first season of this comedy drama and the second lives up to the hype. It expands and deepens the cast, delving into some side characters stories. Ultimately, it’s a story about how a community and individuals respond to sudden loss, and how they process the trauma afterwards. One of the best tv series around.
That’s it for this month. I’m going to try and get outside more now summer is (almost) here.
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05/05/2023
In these days of sushi terrorism
Bit of a collage poem. I've been making little collages with found words. I expanded one of them with some notes I've taken recently.
New Blog Post: In these days of sushi terrorism
- second hand bright ghosts collide,
lighting up our motorways in sparks
of emerald and indigo. Disruption
in the supply chain is our mantra,
repeated often to become meaningless.
Fish is mostly off the menu now
hidden currents flourish incandescent.
I barely think about my death machine
despite piloting it twice daily.
Watched by an arrogant pigeon,
I flex my fingers, ready to push
the correct button at the correct time.
I have trained for this all my life.
An email arrives with a cruel squawk:
‘Do your best. Fire is still needed.
Please answer these questions asap:
How many sunflower seeds would replace your body?
How long until cargo containers become sentient?
What government mandated checks must you perform on each wasabi packet?’
I throw another spectral log into the hearth
watch it flicker like growing grass.
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New Blog Post: Recovery
- Somewhere, possibly close, the kettle boils.
I am waiting for my insides to knit together
around an absence, watching petals a shade
off clouds emerge on phalanx thin branches.
RNA is imprinted with memory, like lore.
Most days I attempt to escape myself
with bright lights and pleasant fictions.
Scattered stem cells turn, united as one.
Naming is violence, so I resist identifying
the birds that visit daily, just watch wings
flash egg yolk, variegated vine, shimmering
petrol spill; collecting seeds for longer days.
From waterlogged soil, from the base of a cut down
magnolia tree, I stretch towards an ink blot sky
stitching out of sap a fresh spinal cord.
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New Blog Post: Flower Moon
- It’s Easter and all the daffodils are screaming
at the awakening ground- “Lazy arsehole!”
“Good for nothing useless compost!”
Rhubarb cracks fresh bones as it stretches
towards a terracotta sky, body on new body.
The stillness you found among roadkill
and in the cold and muddy verges
has been shattered by sudden ferns.
We have read the skies like scripture.
Now is the time to live- breathless, unforgiving.
I hold my unnoticed, selfish serenity close,
feel it crack open, send out exploratory shoots,
mutate into this fragile yellow dream.
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New Blog Post: 2023 March Input
- title: “2023 March Input”
layout: single
date: 2023-04-17
categories: [input]
permalink:
—
For the first couple of weeks in March I was recovering from gallbladder surgery, so had a lot of time to read and reflect and watch things as I let my body knit itself together. (I’m back to full health now.) As a result, it’s been quite a rich month, with lots to recommend. Here’s what I read and consumed in March:
Books
If All the World and Love Were Young by Stephen Sexton-A series of poems that merge Super Mario World with the story of the author’s mother being treated for, and ultimately passing from, cancer. It’s a beautiful collection where each poem takes the title from a Mario level, creating an odd juxtaposition. Contrasting the virtual world with the physical one is powerful throughout, and Sexton’s control and play with language is beautiful. It’s interesting to see a collection of poems take inspiration from a video game and is something I hope we see more of.
Illuminations by Alan Moore-A collection of short stories by the former comic book master. I loved Jerusalem , but wasn’t as enamoured with this collection. There are some stand out stories- the eponymous story is creepy and lingers for a while, where others are weaker. In the middle of this collection is a novella, which sums up Moore’s feelings about the comic book industry. It will surprise no one who has followed him that he is not a fan. It’s infuriating as he using characters for his mouth-piece but then also wildly entertaining as it veers into surreal situations. A mixed bag.
The Obelix Gate by N. K. Jemisen - This is the second book in The Broken Earth trilogy and continues the high quality. Jemisen picks up the story immediately after the first and complicates the world she has created, while deepening the characters and the situation. Tense and propulsive, this is brilliant writing that manages to be extremely strange and deeply relatable. I’m reading the third book at the moment and love this series.
Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency by Chen Chen - A collection of poetry that is wry and sad, often at the same time. Chen Chen feels like the successor to Frank O’Hara to me, which is no bad thing. He writes from a q***r Chinese perspective, with humour and joy that is refreshing and unique.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman - I knew nothing about this novella going in and was blown away by it. It’s a very strange book. Forty women live in a bunker and do not why they have been captured. The whole story is told from a detached, almost nihilistic perspective, and unfolds with the vividness and intensity of a waking dream. Recommended, but not an easy read.
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire - This debut poetry collection from Warsan Shire is brilliant, confident and controlled, with poems that ring in your head for days after. It also hangs together incredibly well as a collection, with poems linked by different blessings and familial history. It’s a powerful exploration of refugees, immigration and also Islam from a female perspective. I read it twice in row and want to go back again.
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (translated by Neil Smith) - A rare book, full of laugh out loud moments but also humour and empathy. A bank robber takes people hostage (accidentally) and the police are trying to piece together what happens. Each character has issues which are never diminished by the plot, but explored and expanded on. It’s a great exploration of anxiety, fears and what makes people tick as well as a plea for understanding.
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone - Epistolary science fiction novel dealing with two rivals involved in a time war. This is richly poetic, with most of the details of the world never explicitly stated, but available in close readings. It’s unique in it’s writing style, rich and lush and different to anything I have read before. I loved it.
Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles- Another poetic science fiction novel (must be something in the air.) This is poetry written in an Orkney dialect, set on a distant space station far from the centre of the galaxy. Giles touches on issues of gender and national identity, while creating a rich world. The science fiction elements enhance the poetry, and the poetry enhances the strangeness of the situation. Giles also provides translations, sometimes merging three words together which creates a whole language of its own. This won the Hugo award and I can see why, it is completely unique.
Films
Akira - It’s odd to watch this film now, because I’ve seen so many other films and tv series that take direct inspiration from it. This film remains a mesmerising combination of detailed, beautiful animation and strange ideas, interspersed with overblown action scenes. There was a lot more body horror than I was expecting. I enjoyed it but found it hard to fully engage with.
TV series
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared - Originally a YouTube series, this is presented as a kids tv show with puppets where horror creeps in. It’s weird, existential and powerful. I wondered how the short form would translate to longer episodes, but actually it gives them more chance to explore the strange world and experiment with different animation styles. Great, but maybe not one to watch when you are recovering from surgery.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 7- Our great Buffy rewatch, which has taken three years, has finally come to an end. The series finished really well, with the last few episodes being excellent. But the season is uneven, with too much time spent going over the same ground. The main villain is also pretty boring. A shame, but I have generally enjoyed rewatching Buffy . It’s a show that generally seems ahead of it’s time, even if some parts didn’t work out.
Daisy Jones and The Six - A band that was popular in the seventies and is definitely not based on Fleetwood Mac looks back on their heyday and why they broke up. Although this series hits a few of the rock documentary tropes, it’s elevated by strong performances across the board, with each member of the band being complex and rich. The songs are also super catchy, and the musical performances are great. The series focuses on the songwriting process which feels refreshing. I really enjoyed it.
That’s it for this month. I’m looking forward to getting out into the world more.
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