Didn't know that there may have been a pre-Christian belief in a "chthonic otherworld"... this book "Twilight of the Godlings" a fascinating cauldron of information @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social

Reading @victoriachang.bsky.social in the small hours, soaking it up. Maybe if I soak it up I could write like this. Poems that make you say "oh my god". & tell such truthful lies. "I have cut eight lines off this poem for no/ other reason except that they were lies. Perhaps all lines/ are lies."

Reading (for the second time) @victoriachang.bsky.social 's "With My Back to the World". I love the way these poems inhabit the artworks they describe. But I also love the moments of distance: "I realized that I needed to/ return on a day when I too could rope off my sadness."

Current read: Monster by @dzifabenson.bsky.social . It's phenomenal. It's like attending a stunning multimedia exhibition - but it's a poetry book.

Amazing 😍 night out at @cambridgejunction.bsky.social seeing @jayahadadream.bsky.social and Lowkey (Kareem Dennis). Words are not just for nerds!! Restoring faith in humanity.

Day 7: Prelude to Bruise by @theferocity.bsky.social . "The dress is an oil slick. The dress/ ruins everything." Sexy, slick lines and commitment to personal story, all of it gay, all so hot I don't get a dull moment to figure out the pitch perfect techniques.

Day 6: When God Is a Traveller by Arundhati Subramaniam. After yesterday's tough reading this book was refreshingly lightweight. No bad thing - there was even some humour. My favourite poem was "Bhakti": the suggestion was to put God in a hip flask to "keep it illicit".

Day 5: Gathering of Bastards by Romeo Oriogun. It's solid and powerful. Each is a travel poem but it's not "travel": it's exile. He grieves for home, and for the dead, killed by colonialism. "your language is extinct, /a dead thing wandering at the boundary of darkness; you must/ hold it and shout".

Day 4: "Blade By Blade" by @danushalameris.bsky.social. These poems show a bright, painful love of life, and each tells a story: "Many things are inherited./ Whole histories, for example - and the long paths walked in the heat, /in the dead of night -away from them."

I didn't realise this was a book of essays till I unwrapped it. But I devoured this book. It explores the lives of several West Coast US poets and digs up gold. for me it lit up the question not of "how good" a poem is but why write poetry? How to live & practice? And how to use poetry for change?

The End of Everything and Everything that Came After That by Nick Lantz. My favourite poem ended up being the first poem "Ruin". It takes huge strides between continents, stanzas, ideas. "Everyone// has a burning building inside them. (Maybe / just a dollhouse /smoking from its dormers."

Gephyromania by TC Tolbert was a great way to kick off the challenge. Muscular, fun and passionate. Plays with grammar and preconceptions: "Because letting you go/is a trip to the mailbox. And to think of you/ near is to prepare a picnic by slitting the paper bag..."