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Steve Whitaker

@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social

YT Poem of the Week: 'Ground Gives' by Ian Duhig @ianduhig.bsky.social @picadorbooks.bsky.social
yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem...

Poem Of The Week: Ground Gives By Ian Duhig

Ground Gives Bauman’s Tetley lecture on his Liquid Modernity, how free-floating anxiety is our condition now, brought Heaney’s ‘Anything Can Happen’ to mind, its phrase ‘Ground gives’.

yorkshiretimes.co.uk

January 24, 2026 at 10:34 AM

Reposted by Steve Whitaker

Ellis Rosen

@ellisjrosen.bsky.social

January 20, 2026 at 7:20 PM

Reposted by Steve Whitaker

Association for Scottish Literature

@asls.org.uk

“MacBeth out-Hughes’ Hughes here. A masterpiece of control, ‘Owl’ is stitched with the kinds of metaphor that capture the brutality of evolutionary purpose in simple, uncompromising phrases”

– @stevewhitaker1.bsky.social on George MacBeth’s #poem “Owl”
2/2
yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem...

Owl
by George MacBeth

Is my favourite. Who flies
like a nothing through the night,
who-whoing. Is a feather
duster in leafy corners ring-a-rosy-ing
boles of mice. Twice

you hear him call. Who
is he looking for? You hear
him hoovering over the floor
of the wood. O would you be gold
rings in the driving skull

if you could? Hooded and
vulnerable by the winter suns
owl looks. Is the grain of bark
in the dark. Round beaks are at
work in the pellety nest,

resting. Owl is an eye
in the barn. For a hole
in the trunk owl’s blood
is to blame. Black talons in the
petrified fur! Cold walnut hands

on the case of the brain! In the reign
of the chicken owl comes like
a god. Is a goad in
the rain to the pink eyes,
dripping. For a meal in the day

flew, killed, on the moor. Six
mouths are the seed of his
arc in the season. Torn meat
from the sky. Owl lives
by the claws of his brain. On the branch

in the sever of the hand’s
twigs owl is a backward look.
Flown wind in the skin. Fine
Rain in the bones. Owl breaks
like the day. Am an owl, am an owl.

January 19, 2026 at 3:01 PM

Reposted by Steve Whitaker

Ian Duhig

@ianduhig.bsky.social

Further to Peter Manson kindly sharing the brilliant Hamlet song by Adam McNaughtan , here it is by Martin Carthy for sassenach ears

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3Ob...

Martin Carthy - Oor Hamlet

YouTube video by Edward George

www.youtube.com

January 17, 2026 at 10:45 AM

Steve Whitaker

@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social

YT Book review: 'A Cool Head in Hell' - Harry Silman's diaries of his experience as a POW on the Burma Railway
yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Book...

Book Review: A Cool Head In Hell - Harry Silman

Stories of the treatment of Allied prisoners-of-war by their Japanese captors in the Eastern theatres of the second world war would have fallen on deaf ears at my secondary school in the late sixties.

yorkshiretimes.co.uk

January 17, 2026 at 9:49 AM

Steve Whitaker

@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social

YT's Poem of the Week: 'And Then the Sun Broke Through' by David Butler @doirepress.bsky.social
yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem...

Poem of the Week: And Then the Sun Broke Through By David Butler

And Then the Sun Broke Through A sea of jade and muscatel; the sky, gun-metal.

yorkshiretimes.co.uk

January 7, 2026 at 8:02 AM

Reposted by Steve Whitaker

Rachel Burrows

@rburrows.bsky.social

Fancy listening to some children’s poetry? There are hundreds at The Dirigible Balloon to read and hear - what a great free resource for #NationalYearofReading2026
Thanks @northernjim.bsky.social for all you do!
Here is one of my latest.
dirigibleballoon.org/poem/Space
#poetryforkids #kidlit

January 5, 2026 at 8:00 AM

Steve Whitaker

@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social

YT Arts Review: Ways of Seeing - Katharine Holmes' at Settle

yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Ways...

Ways of Seeing: Katharine Holmes And Three Generations Of Dales Artists

The process of artistic apprehension is relentless for Katharine Holmes, as if her landscape – the precipitous limestone terrain of Malhamdale – will only yield to endless scrutiny.

yorkshiretimes.co.uk

January 3, 2026 at 7:41 AM

Reposted by Steve Whitaker

Rachel Burrows

@rburrows.bsky.social

A poem from the Winter Edition of @dreich.bsky.social about a very different Christmas - from my younger, fieldwork days 🦟
Merry Christmas poetry friends - wherever you are and however you spend it! Thanks Jack for your support this year!
#poetry #Christmas #writing
🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴

December 23, 2025 at 11:36 AM

Reposted by Steve Whitaker

Bill Manhire

@pacificraft.bsky.social

"What do you say about a guy who plays an old, battered guitar that he treats like it’s the last loyal dog in the universe?"

Dave Itzkoff @ditzkoff.bsky.social · Dec 22

Bob Dylan attempts to explain Willie Nelson in The New Yorker's profile of Willie: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

December 22, 2025 at 7:10 PM

Steve Whitaker

@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social

YT's Poem of the Week: 'Last Christmas Cracker' by Steven Matthews
yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem...

Poem Of The Week: Last Christmas Cracker By Steven Matthews

Last Christmas Cracker From the last Christmas cracker I pulled ever with dad, it seemed there flew not just the golf-tees I will never use, but my yellow kite the line broke from, and the wind waft...

yorkshiretimes.co.uk

December 22, 2025 at 9:10 AM

Steve Whitaker

@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social

YT Review: 'Snagged on Red Thread' by Jazmine Linklater @jjhlinklater.bsky.social
yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Chil...

Our Children's Playless Days: Snagged On Red Thread By Jazmine Linklater

Jazmine Linklater’s new long-form poetic meditation is an open admission of failure to describe the ‘widening gyre’ of geo-political chaos.

yorkshiretimes.co.uk

December 17, 2025 at 8:22 AM

Reposted by Steve Whitaker

Philip Larkin Society

@plsoc.bsky.social

Grumpy Christmas Larkin

youtu.be/zTWO3Hv6fnc?...

Grumpy Christmas Larkin

YouTube video by The Philip Larkin Society

youtu.be

December 16, 2025 at 8:53 AM

Steve Whitaker

@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social

YT review: Earth, Fire: Jayant Kashyap's 'Notes on Burials'
@poetrybusiness.bsky.social @jaydkash.bsky.social

yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Eart...

Earth, Fire: Notes On Burials By Jayant Kashyap

The etymology of words pays much more than a passing role in Jayant Kashyap’s award-winning new collection for Poetry Business: his journey into the katabatic underworld of ritual and cultural observa...

yorkshiretimes.co.uk

December 13, 2025 at 8:21 AM

Reposted by Steve Whitaker

James O’Brien

@mrjamesob.bsky.social

brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

...

Achilles Micawber @achillesthe2nd.bsky.social · Dec 5

Which lines of poetry live rent-free in your head?

December 6, 2025 at 9:09 PM

Steve Whitaker

@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social

YT's Poem of the Week: 'River Mother' by Isobel Dixon @isobeldixon.bsky.social @ninearchespress.bsky.social

yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem...

Poem Of The Week: River Mother By Isobel Dixon

River Mother O the sideways fullness of crab heavy chassis low-slung on the riverbed she is a teeming mass clawed boat tip her a bit to spot the freight her pouch clutched pearls and now she seeth...

yorkshiretimes.co.uk

December 6, 2025 at 8:24 AM

Steve Whitaker

@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social

YT Poem of the Week: 'Silk shirtwaisters from Paris' by Janice Warman @flyonthewallpress.bsky.social
yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem...

Poem Of The Week: Silk Shirtwaisters From Paris By Janice Warman

Silk shirtwaisters from Paris Clearing clogged cupboards and cluttered shelves, among cracked compacts and drawers stuffed with wads of cotton-wool, we found bright silk shirtwaisters from Paris, a ...

yorkshiretimes.co.uk

November 29, 2025 at 8:24 AM

Reposted by Steve Whitaker

Rosanna McGlone

@rosannamcglone.bsky.social

This sounds great and just my thing. Many congrats, Peter! 🎊 People often ask how to put together a collection, and this anthology seems to have it spot on with The Life, the Strike, the Aftermath.

Peter Devonald @pdevonald.bsky.social · Nov 24

So delighted to be in this wonderful anthology which is out now

Great review here: Thanks to Greg Freeman for posting it and also Tim Fellows for making this wonderful anthology

www.writeoutloud.net/public/bloge...