John Adlam 🌈🌍
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johnadlam.bsky.social
John Adlam 🌈🌍
@johnadlam.bsky.social
720 followers 630 following 1.3K posts
groups 🔄 activist research ✍ #welcometheboats ⛵ #antiracistpractice ✊ #traumanotpd ❌ Gaia theory 🌍 psychosocial studies 📚 practices of equality 🤝 open mic poetry 🎤 Bob Dylan 🎸 Brixton 🧡 https://barrelblog.org https://open.substack.com/pub/johnadlampoems
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johnadlam.bsky.social
October 29, 2025 at 12:22 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
Oh dear a very quiet day for #WednesdayWIPs @thebrokenspine.co.uk
I have been kicking around something outdoorsy with trees and that, and getting ready meantime for this evening's webinar from @northseapoets.bsky.social on 'Writing with Bishop' 🥰
October 22, 2025 at 6:33 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
I wholly forgot #LiftToTheSky last week! I meant to and now do raise up the learned and irrepressible @zoomburst.substack.com, capo of the long-running Sixty Odd Poets, who did a fab gig at the Colony Room, downstairs at Ziggy Green, Saturday before last. A joy to behold! 🙏❤️
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
October 20, 2025 at 12:04 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #BreakTheMould
@thebrokenspine.co.uk @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social @alanparrywriter.co.uk
"I reckon I broke the mould": this older poem of mine, first published in @asylummagazine.bsky.social, is right on theme. Also here with brief commentary:🙏 johnadlampoems.substack.com/p/the-death-...
The death of Diogenes Many a dogged mile I’ve marched, and for this? None of you droogs strayed so far from the fold. It’s death and death only: piece of piss, come to think of it, what with (truth be told!) my dodgy knees, and nothing much left in the tank. Something’s amiss, if all that gets me barrelling down the road is crystal meth of a morning. Hellfire and hyperkinesis: my kind of a roll! Now I’m a touch too old for battery, theft – or vagabondage. Still, vis à vis the powers that be, I reckon I broke the mould: never been one for shibboleths or slogans, or shotgun shamings. Lately it’s the abyss which beckons. I’ll lift up my cup at the threshold, leave you bereft in the blink of a fucking instant. You’ll not dis or dismiss me again! I’m paroled: one deft move, I’m dusted and done, and you all can kiss my raggedy arse goodbye. Nothing for it but to hold my breath –
October 17, 2025 at 8:08 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
#WednesdayWIPs
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
Did an unusual thing y'day, scribbled something on the tube in memoriam Lou Reed, read it right away, in roughly v.2 form, at the Survivor Poetry open mic. Felt like it landed well, now fine tuning. Title was wrong: not 'Me and Lou', natch, but 'Lou and I'...🥰
October 15, 2025 at 12:27 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
Another great evening of open mic with Survivors Poetry at the Harrison in London Kings Cross ❤️❤️
October 14, 2025 at 10:43 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #ImperfectMe on #worldmentalhealthday, here's one of mine posted here earlier this year 🤜🤛
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
Insecurity alert We can argue the toss over separations and losses, but this much is for sure – I am insecurely attached. Mostly I depend upon your warmth and acclaim to scaffold the edifice of my ramshackle sense of self. But hey – no pressure! It's not like you owe me any special consideration – no need, as such, to frack my mudrock offerings for depth or distinction. I'm not proud – I can do naked and abandoned in the void every bit as easily.
October 10, 2025 at 10:57 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
#WednesdayWIPs
@thebrokenspine.co.uk

'The Uncertainty of the Poet' by Giorgio de Chirico (part of the open collection at Tate Modern)

Seemed apt for this space! 🥰
October 8, 2025 at 9:52 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
Oh my there is SO MUCH POETRY in this collection (at the Royal Festival Hall), and SO little time... 😆❤️
October 7, 2025 at 2:04 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
This just arrived today - I have three poems included - clustered together as a mini-section of the Journal under the heading "At Gordium: of Fog and Storm and Hubris". I am very excited! Massive thanks to Anthony Barnett and Ian Brinton for all that they do abar.net/snow.pdf
October 1, 2025 at 4:38 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
#WednesdayWIPs
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
That rollercoaster ride when you dig out a poem you thought might work for a call for contributions, find that it won't do at all, rewrite the thing in a flurry of seeing suddenly where it should have gone all along - then worry you've made it worse....anyone? 🤔🥰
October 1, 2025 at 11:12 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
@rfsmith.bsky.social
#promptcombo #characters
Thank you for this lovely prompt. This is one of an occasional series of poems (revised; first posted for #PoemsAbout), touching on legends of figure of Diogenes - a character for our times... South London is also a character in my writing, I think...😊🙏
Cadenza Marooned along Coldharbour Lane, the shipwrecked street philosopher sorties doggedly from the colonnade that shelters his paperscrap Academy. He raises his saxophone voice to the dome of the Camberwell night - summoning the perfervid blue cadenzas of his storytelling from the deep storm cellars of his vagabond soul.
September 30, 2025 at 12:42 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
A #LiftToTheSky for this wonder-filled & venerable anthology. Choice moments so far: "...the other hand fingered the pistol.  My asshole / dropped out / and crawled all the way back to El Paso" (Paul Blackburn); "Everything is water / if you look long enough" (Robert Creeley) ❤️
September 29, 2025 at 10:00 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #NeverAgain
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
At serious risk of over-exposing this poem from the Spring 2025 anthology, but partly based on 'The Zone of Interest' as it is, it stands for the sorrow that #neveragain is often just words, even when it comes to genocide 😔🙏
Epitaph how did our gardens grow? with alabastrine layers of ash, and powdered bones how did our high halls rise? on stolen land, and cinereal sediments of plundered dreamtimes how will our passing be known? a gray wind wailing – bindweed trailing a tumble of stones
September 26, 2025 at 9:07 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
#WednesdayWIPs
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
Today is week two of the 'Writing with...' webinar from @northseapoets.bsky.social. Last week it was @dharmabam.bsky.social on Sylvia Plath. Thanks to him & Sylvia I seem now only to be able to write in 3-line stanzas of (7-)syllabic verse. Two of these so far!🥰
September 24, 2025 at 12:27 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
Survivors' Zoom Poetry Cafe again this evening - looking forward to another session of open mic creative energies surging....🥰
September 23, 2025 at 6:28 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
I think before that the smoke must have got in my eyes, because I have realised there's an obvious revision that I completely missed - all those lines were pressed too close together, most unlike cigarette smoke - or dominoes - or cards! So here's v2 - still free-form, but no longer amorphous!!! 🥰
Smoke (For Walter Dillam) Everyone knew him as Jack. He smoked sixty Pall Mall a day on a good day, traded bootleg liquor with the American airmen at Lakenheath – nightly fleeced his cronies at dominoes. He showed us how to shuffle cards, taught us all the patter and subterfuge of the mighty game of cribbage fifteen-two, fifteen-four, look all day, see no more he would drive our mother half-crazy whenever he visited. He called himself the Old Crater, hinted obscurely at war wounds. He would drift towards his corner armchair – low hanging, like a cyanic stratocumulus – touting some tall old tale, a twitch to his lips, tiny diamonds of mirth twinkling in the ashes of his eyes.
September 23, 2025 at 12:57 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
@victoriaspires.bsky.social
#PromptCombo #ancestry
Wonderful prompt, Victoria! Sorry I have lately not been much around these parts, mining some side-tunnels in my writing at the mo, but here's one of my ancestors, my mother's father - a free-form poem I posted in January for #PoemsAbout #smoke 🙏😊
Smoke (For Walter Dillam) Everyone knew him as Jack. He smoked sixty Pall Mall a day on a good day, traded bootleg liquor with the American airmen at Lakenheath – nightly fleeced his cronies at dominoes. He showed us how to shuffle cards, taught us all the patter and subterfuge of the mighty game of cribbage – fifteen-two, fifteen-four, look all day, see no more – he would drive our mother half-crazy whenever he visited. He called himself the Old Crater, hinted obscurely at war wounds. He would drift towards his corner armchair – low hanging, like a cyanic stratocumulus – touting some tall old tale, a twitch to his lips, tiny diamonds of mirth twinkling in the ashes of his eyes.
September 23, 2025 at 11:06 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
Look what landed here this morning, because, you know, I am always well ahead of the curve in my reading matter...🥰
September 23, 2025 at 10:57 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
This morning may I #LifttotheSky the wonderful @rosannamcglone.bsky.social , whose fascinating book on the process of poetry and the journey of different writers, from first draft to published piece, arrived on my doormat Saturday...?👌🥰
September 22, 2025 at 6:47 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
#WednesdayWIPs
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
On the stove - an essay about anger; an essay about reflective practice groups; an essay about hospitality; a poem about friendship; a mound of correspondence; two training sessions to deliver in the next two days; a mound of reading; and then it gets serious...
September 17, 2025 at 2:59 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
🎶 "Frog went a-courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh..." 🎶
New #poetrytheme prompt from @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social 👏👏
September 15, 2025 at 11:45 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
Online launch event Friday 26/9 for the @asylummagazine.bsky.social Autumn issue. I am looking forward to hearing contributors speak to their work, and to reading my poem, 'A psychiatric hospital is not a factory' (an obvious point, you'd think, but one sadly now only upheld from the margins) 😠🤜🤛🙏
September 9, 2025 at 8:19 AM
johnadlam.bsky.social
The death of Diogenes, reimagined...

"... never been one for shibboleths / or slogans, or shotgun shamings. Lately it’s the abyss / which beckons. I’ll lift up my cup at the threshold / leave you bereft / in the blink of a fucking instant...."

johnadlampoems.substack.com/p/the-death-...
September 6, 2025 at 3:51 PM
johnadlam.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout
#Facades
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
This is something that I came up with earlier this year for #PromptCombo but I thought it might fit here this morning as well... 🙏❤️🙏
Insecurity alert We can argue the toss over separations and losses, but this much is for sure – I am insecurely attached. Mostly I depend upon your warmth and acclaim to scaffold the edifice of my ramshackle sense of self. But hey – no pressure! It's not like you owe me any special consideration – no need, as such, to frack my mudrock offerings for depth or distinction. I'm not proud – I can do naked and abandoned in the void every bit as easily.
September 5, 2025 at 8:50 AM