Jon Stone
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shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Jon Stone
@shotscarecrow.bsky.social
750 followers 670 following 550 posts
Undercover skeleton. 💀 Writer/researcher/lecturer. Ludokinetic/interactive poetry 🃏, collaborative and amalgamatic writing. Editor at @SidekickBooks. 📚 He/him.

www.gojonstonego.com
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shotscarecrow.bsky.social
On my way to #Poetry in Aldeburgh. Have got my hands on Ragged Band of Travellers: Writing from the Threshold of Dungeons & Dragons, a new anthology from Calque Press based on our Future Karaoke event series! Also: Sidekick catalogues!
November 8, 2025 at 10:51 AM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Finishing a few tasks then heading off to this -- the Transformation Poetry Showcase at Thrive, where I will introduce seven poets.
October 27, 2025 at 5:05 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
These have arrived, and I am celebrating with a glass of beetroot juice. It's the seventh 10 Poets book!

You can get it here: sidekickbooks.com/booklab/book...
Physical copy of Ten Poets Spend the Night in a Vampire's Castle, with Lego minifig of Strahd von Zarovich from Dungeons & Dragons stood atop it. A photograph of the Foreword. "A tall figure descends the stairs at the centre of the great hall. He is the very picture of calculated languor and boredom, though passion burns in the depths of his bright, dissimilar eyes. He wears a frock coat like a second skin. His open shirt collar erupts from it like the spathe of an arum lily. He is himself peculiarly pale -- not the pallor of death, but that of a beautiful alabaster vase. There are fine blue veins upon his features. He is possessed of a boldly prominent brow and delicately cut nose. The hairline recedes around the temples, but the hair itself is dark and thickly curled. The smile strikes at you like a knife -- it is contemptuous, almost vindictive. Vampire? Or poet?
October 16, 2025 at 12:09 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
RIP Tony Harrison.
National Trust Bottomless pits. There's one in Castleton, and stout upholders of our law and order one day thought its depth worth wagering on and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb. Not even a good flogging made him holler! O gentlemen, a better way to plumb the depths of Britain's dangling a scholar, say, here at the booming shaft at Towanroath, now National Trust, a place where they got tin, those gentlemen who silenced the men's oath and killed the language that they swore it in. The dumb go down in history and disappear and not one gentleman's been brought to book: Mes den hep tavas a-gollas y dyr (Cornish-) 'the tongueless man gets his land took.'
September 27, 2025 at 10:05 AM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Well, I've spent the morning trying to get Bluesky's card function to load the intended preview image with no luck, but Sidekick's new anthology, 'Ten Poets Prowl the Seas in Search of Plunder' is out next week, and you can pre-order copies now from sidekickbooks.com/booklab/book...
September 4, 2025 at 1:50 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
A short blog post about some of the earliest stories I wrote, including the entirely unlicensed 'Paddington Goes Swimming' and an eco-terrorist fantasy in which children transform into Zodiac signs:

gojonstonego.com/blog/2025/08...
August 28, 2025 at 10:46 AM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Dipped back into art last week -- simple images for a few hand-made micro-pamphlets. Action Princesses!
August 17, 2025 at 8:12 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Sidekick mystery zines just before they get tucked into an envelope.
August 15, 2025 at 6:05 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Poem by Amy Clampitt, from The Kingfisher. I like how it undercuts its own tone of heavy assertion with more casual phrasing: 'hardly more than a sprout', 'cheerful tousle', 'outdoorsy'.
August 3, 2025 at 12:27 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Heading off to help with the set-up for this: Cambridge Poetry Festival, 50th anniversary reading -- featuring poems and poets from the original 1975 lineup! 6.30 at the Pembroke Auditorium, with music and dance. £5 entry.
July 12, 2025 at 12:33 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
'The Great Wall of Malta'
July 10, 2025 at 1:42 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Abandoned Subaru dealership.
Me, in lurid yellow tee, standing outside an abandoned Subaru dealership with dust-covered cars from the 1990s in it.
July 8, 2025 at 5:22 PM
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July 6, 2025 at 5:15 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
As has become (albeit briefly) an annual tradition, I've printed up some booklets to hand out at #Digra25 / #Digra2025. This time it's a simple novella extract that contains a key/password to a part of an online text-world.
Pink booklets with the title 'ninjas'
June 28, 2025 at 9:45 AM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Snaps from Readings, an exhibition of poems and artwork at The Grand Arcade, including one of mine, 'Another Labyrinth', and the visual pieces based on it.
June 19, 2025 at 12:46 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Sidekick stall in Norwich today, up at Dragon Hall.
May 25, 2025 at 9:43 AM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Just because it's #WorldBeeDay, here is a poem (or a minute story -- take your pick) about a red-tailed bumblebee.
The Red-Tailed Bumblebee It’s taken all day to net these shabby reliquiae. She is tired – tuckered – tucked up in her tiredness. Her black-bristled jerkin is grubby with dust and mud and a little paint. Both quantities and timing must be precise; she’s never attempted this concoction, this particular druggy spell before. She pats down her black-bristled pluderhose, then mouths the names of the items heaped on the nightstand: a claw of broken demitasse, a broken stone, a broken half of leaf, a broken chatelaine, a sleeve of savaged parachute, a broken cane, a broken whistle, a hacked-away hank of her own ginger tail, a broken pocket-knife, a broken pocket-doll, a broken pocket racer, a blade of broken bath tile, a broken rain gauge, a scrap of heliotrope, a broken-backed book. Next they must be arranged in a circle. But not yet. Not just yet.
May 20, 2025 at 7:37 PM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Thought I heard -- but didn't see -- swifts yesterday. Here's a poem from 'Death of a Scarecrow' by Peter Dunn, published in 1984.
The Swifts 'You must learn to pay more attention,' the master said. There seemed no urgency, for swifts were screaming Across the pupil's window. 'God, how they scream, Those little black darlings, tearing the sound to shreds With unselfconscious joy. Flight is their song, The daring of children, swooping, doubling, Chasing and changing, snatching at moths and flies, In the first bloom of dusk. Behind their dartings High on the down one window from a thousand Has trapped the sun by chance. A golden eye Without a pupil dazzles the shifting pattern, The dancing sands of the brain. Oh, stridency, Oh little black swifts against the whitening sky, Retreating upwards, swooping, and faintly screaming, You will sleep on the wing at last, when darkness flowers! I beg your pardon, sir. What were you saying?' Dryly and patiently, then: 'I was explaining Just why, my son, you must learn to pay more attention.'
May 20, 2025 at 10:36 AM
shotscarecrow.bsky.social
Pig Dyke Mollies at yesterday's Eel Festival in Ely.
May 4, 2025 at 8:58 AM
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Shots from last night's Future Karaoke: May Eve Mixology, where we shared cocktail-inspired poems and drank ... well, cocktails.
May 1, 2025 at 11:02 AM
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A couple of shots of our stall at Free Verse Poetry Book Fair yesterday. Refreshing to catch up with so many old faces!
April 27, 2025 at 8:55 AM
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Some textures from Haugesund on the Norwegian coast.
April 22, 2025 at 11:14 AM
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Back in the rolling green hills of England!
April 19, 2025 at 9:41 AM
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Harriet took a photo of me in Norway.
Jon is standing in front of a Norwegian fjord with an ice-capped mountain in the background. He is squinting, and a bit wind-bullied, in a red scarf. For once, he almost looks his age.
April 15, 2025 at 2:47 PM
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Adaptation of one of my labyrinth poems into a prototype artists' book by one of ARU's MA Art students.
April 12, 2025 at 1:16 PM