Liam Bates
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liambatespoet.bsky.social
Liam Bates
@liambatespoet.bsky.social
800 followers 630 following 88 posts
Funded PhD student @ MMU (ecopoetry, friendship & the more-than-human city)/ Northern Writers’ Award winner/ Human Townsperson (Broken Sleep Books)

www.liambatespoet.com
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liambatespoet.bsky.social
Dean Browne (@deanbrowne.bsky.social)
The Triangle I should never have written the instruction manual illustrating the 52 distinct tones that can be struck from the triangle, popular now in concert halls from here to Berlin. It's brought me nothing but success. The joke, at first, was exquisite as a devilled egg and the expression on their faces like a sweet pimento. You put the phony in symphony tonight, grinned back the shiny hand-dryer in the gents. Gobs dropped and I went on, describing the point tapped just so for the blackbird's dawn trill, the ripple on a clear lake in Sweden, the squeak of gas that jets from a roasting coal. One tone only audible to toddlers, another only to dogs. Of course I reddened when those rich fools googled me, the search results proved it true. The hits were legion. Not only that, the book had entered its fourth print run and was forthcoming in Russian and Nynorsk. That's when it occurred to me that I was late to deliver the keynote address at the annual summit for triangle-lovers, my lecture on the sweeter octaves of beryllium copper - how to damp it for the rustle like the train of a bridal dress over cobbles. Or pitch it like the mice celebrating the owl's demise by lightning. Or the ting! so crystalline it's called 'frost creeping'. So I jotted some notes, grabbed my jacket, and said taxi.
October 7, 2025 at 12:03 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
I’m clearing the house out so have some copies of my debut poetry collection, Human Townsperson, going cheap. A BARGAIN EVERYTHING MUST GO SALE PRICE £5+P&P if you’d like one.
Two copies of Human Townsperson Human Toznsperson, the debut collection by Liam Bates. centres around a heroic quest. The hero? Somebody. The quest's objective? Unsure. Utilising Bates' engaging and absurd poetics. Human townsperson follows the journey of a poet leaving town bearing gear and supplies: a pack full of fantastic weaponry, potions and prescription medication. The work will be precarious and the costs grave, but out in the wilderness for long enough, maybe we'll remember why we're here. Al the speed of human brain synapses Liam Bates poems in Human lozensperson zing around conceptually but always hold the dry wit at their centre. The poems constantly strive to make sense of a world that plays out as if it's a dream state. As the book progresses we become aligned with Bates' mode of thought. because it scems like the only sanity in a constantly discombobulating world. A book we all need. to guide us gently back to the ordinary from the bizarre times weire in. - Roger Robinson To encounter these poems is to embark on a surreal quest, where the language of gaming and fantasy act as waymarkers to move deeper into our understanding of ourselves. - Andrew McMillan Reading a poem by Liam Bates is like embarking upon a mysterious mission. You don't know who the enemy is, or where you're going. but the poet hands you a scroll and a sword and an office stapler and sends you out to seek yourself. - Caroline Bird Bates makes ludic operations, life as endless side quests, magic potions and mysterious exchanges collide with the hyper-real. Intense invention is balanced with a compassionate sensibility and connection with the world. The voice is so charming and the experimentation worn so naturally that the moral challenge and heartfelt Ivricism arrive by stealth and take your breath away. - Luke Kennard
July 14, 2025 at 4:43 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
I see a blurb from @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social and I can’t help myself. I liked this a lot
The cover of Infinite Ground by Martin Macinnes, with a blurb by Jeff Vandermeer which reads ‘Stunning… I doubt you’ve read anything like it.’ The cover is a white background and in the foreground a human-shaped figure made of vegetation/flora.
June 10, 2025 at 12:26 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
Strong epigraph combo
If money, according to Augier, "comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek," capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. Karl Marx The family is essentially the institutionalization of our unwaged labor. Silvia Federici God only knows what I'd be without you Brian Wilson
April 8, 2025 at 4:18 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
Some books to (re)read for the old PhD. Recommendations always welcome
Things that Are Amy Leach AERTH DEBORAH TOMKINS Rachael Allen God Complex Elvia Wilk Having and Being Had Eula Biss NEAR FUTURE SUZANNAH EVANS Baby Schema Isabel Galleymore A CHILDREN'S BIBLE Oval ELVIA WILK DEATH BY LANDSCAPE Elvia WILK DIA MILLET ursuLa Le Guin aLwaYs cominG Home FAUNA DAVID HARTLEY The Ground Aslant — An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry
April 2, 2025 at 6:20 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
- Al Overview "Get in, Loser - We're seizing the means of production" is a phrase attributed to Karl Marx.
February 21, 2025 at 2:00 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
Has anyone else been teaching metre and discovered that the lyrics to the original English Pokémon theme tune are written in common metre, so anything in that metre can be sung to the same tune?
TELL ALL THE TRUTH BUT TELL IT SLANT Emily Dickinson Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind —
December 17, 2024 at 10:18 AM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
Subscribing to my Substack is a great option if you’re a fan of my nonsense
liambatespoet.substack.com/p/you-got-one
You got one friend Hundreds commented on my previous post with questions along the lines of: how can you be researching friendship, Liam, when you're a total prick and probably have no friends? LIAMBATESPOET.SUBSTACK.COM
December 3, 2024 at 4:58 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
‘Once I was on earth
and I liked it.’
Mary Ruefle
Elegy for a Game Once I was on earth and I liked it. I got to look at my toes underwater. They looked bigger than they were in real life. As anyone can tell by looking at it sugar is meaningless. You are not supposed to stay in the hot tub longer than ten minutes. After that it is meaningless. Like white poinsettias. I mean at Christmas. Maybe Christmas is meaningless too but we used to pretend it was not and I liked that. It's pointless. I don't actually know what a football looks like. I think they have something to do with babies. The man is carrying a baby across a field. He is trying to save it. It's hard. Sometimes people die trying to do things. That's OK. There are things more important than life or death. I miss holding my breath.
November 29, 2024 at 9:23 AM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
Any good elegies out there for non-humans? e.g. a mouse or a tree etc.
This by @wendycaitlin.bsky.social is a devastatingly sad example, but I’m open to all sorts
Wednesday the Twentieth I'm letting the flies land on the uneaten food in her bowl because they are alive, and she is not. And I want to imagine that she still is. When I leave the vets at two fifty-four with a basket that is too light, I put it on the back seat and drive slowly, scared, as if I am driving with a newborn in the car, not an empty cat box with a swimming towel inside. It has only been two hours when the bluebottle lays eggs on her food and I want maggots to hatch. Wendy Allen
November 24, 2024 at 4:21 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
If I keep writing these, eventually people will start reading them, and then where will we be??

open.substack.com/pub/liambate...
My Friend Why'd you eat that leaf? I enjoyed writing about MF DOOM so much last week, I wanted to do something like that again. Does it count as Cultural Studies if I clumsily link songs I like with theory books I've read? If I can throw in some Marxism am I following in the footsteps of LIAMBATESPOET.SUBSTACK.COM
November 23, 2024 at 5:55 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
Someone in a previous job once encouraged me to sign up for LinkedIn. I have never used it but occasionally get e-mails like this
LinkedIn To: Liam Bates > 14:32 Liam, follow Keir Starmer - Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at 10 Downing Street
November 18, 2024 at 3:35 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
‘THIS IS MY CHALLENGE TO YOU,
she said, laying a severely
wounded crab on the table
between us. And walked away.’
Matthew Rohrer
THIS IS MY CHALLENGE TO YOU, she said, laying a severely wounded crab on the table between us. And walked away. And slammed the door. And turned on the car. And drove away. The situation was hopeless, and I was nothing, I was just one blade of grass on the prairie. If she really thought I could put our crab back together she would have stayed to watch. She would have leaned over me while I worked, her hands on my chair. She would have turned on a little music. Instead I have to choose the music. A plane flies overhead. I know it's her. All night the moon makes a little sound.
November 17, 2024 at 3:37 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
This one first published in Berlin Lit!
Tributaries An overhead neighbour's up late running a bubble bath or maybe pouring booze away. Only the wet acoustics to go on. I couldn't even describe their face, have never held the lift door in the foyer open, crossing paths coming back from errands or the library. Lucky I had a plastic bag to hand today, or this book would be ruined, pages all fused into rain mulch. The dust jacket swears it's a vital guide, but how'm I meant to focus on my growth if constantly diverted by a mystery slosh. The general flow, fine, I'm missing the particulars.
November 16, 2024 at 12:44 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
Had to get this pamphlet from Nine Pens after hearing @mconley.bsky.social read recently
These are not my dreams and anyway nothing here is purple by Michael Conley. The cover has a repeating pattern of violins, lobsters, balloons and petrol canisters At The Park, A Grown Man Has Got His Head Caught In The Railings Possibly somebody loves, or at some point has loved, this man. But it's hard to imagine right now. It's hard to imagine that for most of his life he hasn't been stuck at this ninety-degree angle, fists flailing, jeans sagging at the waist. He's so angry with the railings, with the soft mud under his boots and especially with the teenagers who are laughing at him from the picnic benches. You could empty a whole tub of vegetable oil onto his neck and tug him out by his belt loops but he wouldn't thank you for it. And of course you can't ask him what he was trying to do in the first place. He doesn't know what his pain looks like from the outside.
November 15, 2024 at 11:31 AM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
Nice doggy
Mulhouse from the Simpsons has lost his glasses and on a beach at night he pets the top of a horseshoe crab
October 11, 2023 at 12:07 PM
liambatespoet.bsky.social
My first course with Poetry School is all booked out. V grateful there’s such an appetite for silliness
A screenshot of my sold out course, with the title ‘Seriously Wacky, or the Importance of Being Silly Studio’ the short description reads ‘Dive into silliness in your writing, as we see how ‘messing about’ can produce unexpectedly profound poems. Attached above is a stock photo of colourful paper confetti on green grass.
September 24, 2023 at 6:47 AM