Gayle J. Greenlea
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gjgreenlea.bsky.social
Gayle J. Greenlea
@gjgreenlea.bsky.social
3.6K followers 6.5K following 1.6K posts
American-Australian poet, novelist, muso, counselor for survivors of sexual & gender violence. Black Bough Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Ice Floe Press, SAR, Kalonopia, Headline Poetry & Press, Rebelle, Wombwell Rainbow. #BLM #LGBTQIA #Climate #Disability
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Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
Note from my notebook (2017).
I know I buy too many books but I like to think that lining the walls of my house with them warns off evil in some deeply important way.
September 4, 2025 at 7:37 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
Enid, the surprising and eccentric owner of the brilliant Sound Records in Stroud, UK, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz, soul, funk, ocean fish and wool.
Enid the cat on top of the Soul & Funk section in (the old, smaller) Sound Records in Stroud.
October 2, 2025 at 7:43 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
thebrokenspine.co.uk
End of month, but just the start. Thanks to everyone who's made this launch matter.
@martinkennedyyates.bsky.social #ThisWilderness
www.amazon.co.uk/Wil...
Book cover of This Wilderness & Other Concerns by Martin Kennedy Yates, published by The Broken Spine. The cover artwork depicts an urban canal or waterway running between old brick and industrial buildings, with graffiti on one wall and a dark, moody atmosphere. A quote from writer and poet Jonathan Davidson reads: “These poems are a pleasure both to encounter and to read.”
September 29, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
thebrokenspine.co.uk
This Friday’s theme: #Mannequin. Frozen glamour. Object over voice. Write about being posed, silenced, moulded. Ideas: window displays, shop floor ghosts, plastic skin. Use Alt Text. Always tag #PoemsAbout so we can find and share your work.
A red, headless female mannequin torso stands against a moody blue and pink gradient background. In the top left corner is The Broken Spine logo, shaped like a black fountain pen nib with white text. The website @thebrokenspine.co.uk appears in white at the top right. At the bottom right, bold white text reads: "Read Repost Reply #POEMSABOUT #MANNEQUIN".
September 30, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
thebrokenspine.co.uk
Something Gothic this way comes… Submissions are OPEN for The Havisham Steps: Modern Gothic Poetry. We want poems of neon dread, fractured love, haunted minds.

Closing date: October 31st

#PoetrySubmissions #SubmissionWindow #TheHavishamSteps #ModernGothicPoetry
Something Gothic This Way Comes: Submit to The Havisham Steps: Modern Gothic Poetry - The Broken Spine
Submissions Open Throughout October 2025 | Publication in 2026
thebrokenspine.co.uk
October 1, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
thebrokenspine.co.uk
One of the most quietly powerful presses out there, @epistemiclit.bsky.social, has been spotlighted for #IndieLitMagGala 2025.

Big thanks to Jennifer (@einetogi.bsky.social) for the heartfelt nomination—this one hit us deep.

Read the full feature here:
thebrokenspine.co.uk...

#SmallPressLove
#IndieLitMagGala 2025 Spotlight: Epistemic Literary - The Broken Spine
This isn’t a competition. It’s a celebration.
thebrokenspine.co.uk
October 1, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
thebrokenspine.co.uk
You don’t need a headshot.
You don’t need a filter.
You just need a voice.
#NotJustPretty
🗓 Oct 4 | 8pm GMT
🎟 Free to attend. Donations welcomed.
thebrokenspine.co.uk...
@karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
#WednesdayWIPs
#NotJustPretty: A Manifesto for Women Who Refuse to Be Flattened - The Broken Spine
Their Breasts Aren’t Perky Enough
thebrokenspine.co.uk
October 1, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
janedougherty47.bsky.social
#NeverAgain is quite a recent expression, one that would have made any monarch or ploughboy laugh out loud in perhaps more honest times.
For #PoemsAbout
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
September 26, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
deemclachlan.bsky.social
Showing my age for #PoemsAbout #NeverAgain

Huge thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk and @alanparrywriter.co.uk for this wonderful prompt every week that keep us pushing words around.
(Alt Text on the image) #poetlife #poetrycommunity #PoemAltText #poetsofbluesky #poetrymatters #poetryforall
Protect and Survive By Dawn McLachlan I still remember what the underside of my school desk looked like Counting the pocks of dried gum to get through the drill and the sound of the siren four minute warning I wasn't sure I could spell everyone's name If I needed to write tags for their toes The leaflet didn't say How long would it take to lose my hair Or my teeth That winter I was jealous of the kids with thick coats That looked as they could hold back fallout If we laid down in ditches To wait for an all clear That might never come
September 26, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
lozzawriting.bsky.social
Happy Friday all. Here's a wee stream.of consciousness prose poem thingy for today's #poemsabout #neveragain for @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk it's meant to be breathless and fast. The lack of punctuation isn't a mistake. I'll check in later and read the others! Sorry it's so small
The Lie Never again will I purposely cut myself on shards of glass as I look through a mirror reflecting the light of the blue of your eyes and never again will I cradle my heart like a baby imagining the years ahead where you might love me. Never again will I lie in a bath or drive to work or stir pasta on the verge of tears while my heart sits at my feet and its all I can do not to try and swallow it back into the cavity I’ve carved in my own chest, and I promise never again to wonder where you are or what you are doing at nine, nine oh five, nine twenty, nine twenty one and so on till its dark and my nerves are stripped raw. Never again will I write, never-mind in a text when I want to write one hundred words and never again will I form the perfect speech only to go mute in your presence, because its better to know. Isn’t it? It’s better to know if never again is really never again! or if it’s never! again! Which is an entirely different thing and cuts the bullshit right out of the lie that is, never again.
September 26, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
johnchmura.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #NeverAgain
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
I will post either a reel or a link in the comments, in which I will say I don’t want to disparage or discount anyone’s service but I don’t like being in a society in which only those who wear uniforms and carry guns can be heroic.
CHANGING LENSES My Dad didn’t own one pair of jeans and I rarely even saw him in khakis. He did yard work in his army pants because they had extra pockets and they still fit into middle age. Younger me was embarrassed when my uncles and the other kids’ fathers narrated war stories or grimly griped of bodies bearing embedded shrapnel. Theirs was the stuff of family legends. My Dad reminisced about watching Willie Mays hit home runs at Ft. Eustis or feasting on cheap steak and beer at some Gasthaus or other while on leave. From what I gather, he passed a fluency test and spent the Korean War in Germany driving spies and informants around and running the officers’ club, where he had a side gig selling bootleg cigarettes. Once, I asked him, “So you were, what, Radar O’Reilly?” And he said, “I suppose so.” His buddy signed the wrong petition, got dropped from that cushy program, was sent to Korea, and didn’t return home the same man. Dad brought back a Leica camera and 7x35 Zeiss binoculars, which still work great. Once I told him my Uncle John had a pair of 10x50 service binoculars that he traded for with a German in WWII. Dad made a sour face and spat back, “Give me a break. Do you really think the infantry makes trades on the battlefield?” In retrospect, he was certainly no dope, but I’d never call my Dad a hero, especially in the decades when his drinking made our house a war zone of its own. Still, there is some solace in knowing his war souvenirs were bought with greenbacks and marks rather than bullets and blood.
September 26, 2025 at 6:12 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @alanparrywriter.co.uk and to #poemsabout #neveragain

Found this tricky, so it’s not quite fully on topic. Apologies.
Honestly I can’t feel war: it’s not that the undersea cables of my empathy have been clandestinely damaged or cut but I understand more those star-bursting cells firing hard their shrapnel-batteries of cancer; or that direct hit in the chest of a familial heart attack; any befuddled refugee seems less lost to me than someone close with wandering dementia. In truth, my only life-changing risk: were I to face that daily press of skin-shredding Ozempic. I feel so unversed to write any war, holding only unearned ink, my clean and bloodless paper.
September 26, 2025 at 5:55 AM
gjgreenlea.bsky.social
Hello, Poets. It’s good to join you on an important theme: #PoemsAbout #NeverAgain. Many thanks to @hool415.bsky.social for the invitation, and to @alanparry83.bsky.social and @brokenspinearts.bsky.social for hosting.
Recurrence Never Again. Words emaciated as immigrants laid end to end in bunk beds, chess pieces tightly muzzled in their coffer. Human cash cows held, then disappeared with no due process, to deserts and jungles not their home. We do not own the dreams ICEd by masked-men with guns, hearts squeezed small in Kevlar. Dreams cannot be barred or crushed like glass under hobnailed boots. They rise like ghosts to whisper forgotten smoke, “Never again. Never again.” – Gayle J. Greenlea Two photos: cramped bunk beds at Trump’s “Alligator Alcatraz” looking very similar to bunk beds at Auschwitz.
September 26, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
thebrokenspine.co.uk
Tomorrow is #PoemsAbout #NeverAgain
Dig deep. Write with precision.
This one demands more than feeling—it needs truth.
Tag your post + tag:
@alanparry83.bsky.social
@brokenspinearts.bsky.social
Then Read. Repost. Reply.
Prompts arrive Saturday: shorturl.at/oEXAM
A solemn military cemetery stretches into the distance under a grey, overcast sky. Rows of white marble crosses stand on green grass, evoking silence, sacrifice, and remembrance. Towering trees loom in the background, their dark silhouettes reinforcing the gravity of loss. The image speaks to war’s cost, collective mourning, and the enduring plea of “never again.” In the top right, white text reads: "@BrokenSpineArts.bsky.social" and "@AlanParry83.bsky.social." The bottom right corner states: "Read Repost Reply #PoemsAbout #NeverAgain." The Broken Spine logo, shaped like a black fountain pen nib, appears in the top left corner—underscoring poetry’s role in bearing witness.
September 25, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
thebrokenspine.co.uk
"Voices... sometimes."
Still echoing down the canals of Birmingham.
@martinkennedyyates.bsky.social #ThisWilderness
www.amazon.co.uk/Wil...
Book cover of This Wilderness & Other Concerns by Martin Kennedy Yates, published by The Broken Spine. The cover artwork depicts an urban canal or waterway running between old brick and industrial buildings, with graffiti on one wall and a dark, moody atmosphere. A quote from writer and poet Jonathan Davidson reads: “These poems are a pleasure both to encounter and to read.”
September 25, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
heidicuda.bsky.social
By predicting the Nazi playbook used by MAGA-Russia to mythologize Kirk, it minimizes the utility of turning him into a martyr.

Knowing history can deflate the potency of their moves and allow pro-democracy factions to regain control of the narrative, ie truth.
September 13, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
brianralexander.bsky.social
I have really come around to the idea that art - all kinds - including street action, writing, music, satire, painting, music is more important now than it has been in awhile, but we have, sadly, allowed too much withering and it’s taking a long time to find its feet.
September 12, 2025 at 11:37 PM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
oliverdarcy.bsky.social
"We’re witnessing, in real-time, a profound consolidation of power & collusion among political & tech elites... wherein the tools and technologies that this industry has built... can now be deployed in service of an authoritarian regime" — @katie-drummond.bsky.social www.status.news/p/wired-kati...
WIRED for the Moment
In a conversation with Status, WIRED’s Katie Drummond argues that Silicon Valley is no longer just innovating new technology—it’s actively shaping American democracy.
www.status.news
August 24, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
DRUMMOND: “.. Ultimately, this era in history is a WIRED story: The United States’ authoritarian turn, aided and abetted by the tech industry’s complicity. And that’s how we’re covering it.”

@status.news @oliverdarcy.bsky.social @katie-drummond.bsky.social @wired.com
www.status.news/p/wired-kati...
WIRED for the Moment
In a conversation with Status, WIRED’s Katie Drummond argues that Silicon Valley is no longer just innovating new technology—it’s actively shaping American democracy.
www.status.news
August 25, 2025 at 12:43 AM
gjgreenlea.bsky.social
"Have you ever written words you thought might get you killed? Have you ever written words you worry might get someone you love killed?

That’s the reality federal judges are facing…."

https://archive.md/2025.08.07-093236/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/opinion/judges-courts-threats-fear.html
Headline from NYT: The Climate of Fear Has Reached Into Unexpected Places Art: Three toothy wolves snarl at a podium mounted by several microphones, but no speaker.
August 7, 2025 at 10:26 PM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
thetnholler.bsky.social
FRIEDMAN: “If the behavior this administration has exhibited in just its first six months continues and is amplified for its full four years, the America you know will be gone. And I don’t know how we will get it back.”

‘1984’ is upon us.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...
August 5, 2025 at 3:26 AM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
rvawonk.bsky.social
NEW: I just published what is probably my most important article in while. In it, I reveal how the Trump administration is covertly manipulating social media platforms & algorithms to boost the administration’s narrative and suppress opposing lines of thought. 1/

open.substack.com/pub/weaponiz...
REVEALED: How the Trump admin is covertly reconfiguring online algorithms
For the first time, here’s a look at the administration’s playbook for reverse algorithmic capture.
open.substack.com
August 1, 2025 at 4:06 PM
gjgreenlea.bsky.social
Fascism is now in the algorithms, the neural pathways, the social interactions. How did we fail to see all this? “We wanted to see Trump in terms of his absences, so that our way of seeing the world would go unchallenged,” @timothysnyder.bsky.social writes.
What Does It Mean That Donald Trump Is a Fascist?
Trump takes the tools of dictators and adapts them for the Internet. We should expect him to try to cling to power until death, and create a cult of January 6th martyrs.
www.newyorker.com
August 3, 2025 at 11:22 PM
Reposted by Gayle J. Greenlea
mikegalsworthy.bsky.social
"There is good reason to believe that Putin, having lost his war against Ukraine completely, would not be able to stay in power. His dictatorship, based on the rule of the Secret Services, could collapse like the Communist dictatorship some 35 years before."

by Dr Helmut Hubel.
Why Putin has to completely lose his war against Ukraine and his dictatorship in Russia
If Europeans can unite around a common cause, Putin is more vulnerable than he seems
westenglandbylines.co.uk
May 29, 2025 at 10:38 AM