Sastry & Burnside, Saint & Greavsie

25/01/202625/01/2026 / Mat Riches / 2 Comments

“Imagine it:  
not loving less, but more..”

Hello, HNY and all that jazz to you. Welcome to day 706. of January. I hope you had a good end otherwise 2025 and a good start to 2026. God, it feels impossible to type that when the world is on fire around us.   I told someone last night that I’d been injury free for this morning while running…It could be ok, but with 6 weeks till a half marathon and then I get to start ultra-marathon training straight after, so it feels a bit shit. But it’s not really bad is it..It’s not…well, look-around-you-at-everything-else-bad. Stop being so trivial, Mat…

I’m just going to post a poem or two as proof of life, then despite it feeling crass there will be some mild self-promotion to follow.  Pleas entree it’s just the poems today..no why I think they are great, but know that I do.    The first poem is by Tom Sastry. It’s featured here with his permission (Get well soonest, sir) and is taken from his most recent collection, Life Expectancy Begins To Fall (Nine Arches Press, 2025).

NB I’ve gone with the album mix of this rather than the single edit from a recent issue of Under The Radar. Ironically, the single edit has the extra stanza.

Everyone loves the end of the world  

We all hope to enjoy the apocalypse
from a distance. A good storm
spares  the roof but rattles the glass.
Children know: destruction is funny, sometimes beautiful. 

A distant inferno would enchant your night
 if you saw it from the next coast.
So much torment is shut away, you might even be comforted  
by a Hell with space for your friends. 

We build great telescopes to watch stars die  
send divers to explore drowned cities, give prizes
 for pictures of flaming sinkhole
s or bones bleaching by a dry lake. 

An old man reads of a decade he won’t see
lethal heat, scarcity of food.
It aches softly, like a sunset.
A new desert at the edge of town, some murders on the news.    

The second poem is by John Burnside, I don’t have permission from anyone at Cape Poetry or within John’s circle. I hope no one minds a 25-year old poem going up online. i’ll take it down if needs be. It’s taken from John’s collection, The Asylum Dance (Cape Poetry, 2000)  

ARCHAEOLOGY
for Melanie and Kate

Imagine they knew already: a loved one  
singled out in permafrost, or sand;  
fingertips laying stitch-marks in the skin
 that might be read; each  
wedding-feast or name-day laying claim
 to birth-marks, dimples, curvatures of bone.
Imagine they treasured scars for what they tell
of summers, traces set into the flesh  
for August noons; or winter solstices  
remembered in a burn. Imagine it:  
not loving less, but more, for knowing time  
would quietly erase a lover’s voice,
 a grandchild’s hand;
and how, unwittingly,
they planned each afterlife, concealing seed  
and pollen in the hemline of a gown,
 or carving timberwork with hidden signs,  
seasons and gifts that someone else would find.

+++++++++++++++
 I love both, both feel right at present. And that will do for me as a reason.   

Now, I must do some self-promotion.

  I have a run of gigs (it’s not a tour) coming up   to tell you about.

9th Feb, Oxford
I’ll be reading with Laura Theis at Art & Talking 
Thanks to Robin Vaughn-Williams for the invite

  21st Feb, Faversham
I’ll be reading as part of Faversham Literary Festival with Lesley Sharpe, and the lovely lad that is Christopher Horton.
Thanks to Christopher for organising this.

  28th Feb, St Albans
I’ll be reading as par of poetry’s answer to Saint & Greavsie with Matthew Stewart at Ver Poets in St Albans.

2nd March, London
Rogue Strands is back with a bang.
We’ll be at the Devereux with Christopher Reid, George Szirtes, Jemma Borg, Katharine Towers and Matthew and me.  
See you there.  

Thanks to Matthew your sorting both of these. I’ve done very little on this wave of Rogue Strands, but I’ll be there like some full kit wanker on the 2nd to take the glory

A song that seems appropriate

Magazine, Permafrost

Title Giveaway

Jung Beetle 
The Great Pandering
Coccyx Avenger
UNO Stubbs
A Quarter of Qatar
Dances with Woolworths
DIYing on the Insider
 With Friends Like This Who Needs Anemones
R2 Detour

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 6,6,5, 5, 5, 16, 7, 11, 18, 8, 6, 18.5, 8.5, 7 (retired hurt) 
Workouts: 5
Walks: 6 
Yoga:
Days in a row without alcohol: 0 
Days in a row without cigarettes: 0 
Bouts of Insomnia: 2

LIFE STATS
1 x 1000 piece jigsaw
 1x trip to Emirates Stadium
1 x late night after the Arsenal game
1 x trip to Turner and Constable exhibition
1x game of Hues and Cues
4 x games of UNO
1 game of Sherlock Holmes
1 x reading
1 x fox sighting
1 x bathroom undercoated
1 x bathroom painted and resealed
6 doors with new handles
1 x load of skirting boards rubbed down and prepped for painting
5 focus groups
1 x 60th birthday do (missed. Happy birthday, Andy)
1 x 20th Wedding Anniversary (Happy anniversary Meg & Euan)

POET STATS
Notes for poems: Hack, MS, Shrinking, Munch 
Worked on: The Lookover, Maybe Let the Monkeys….
Finished/In the Drawer: Acceptance Prayer, 
Abandoned 
Submissions:  
Total Poems Out: 23
Rejections: Pomegranate
 Acceptances:  
Withdrawn:0 
Longlisted: 0 
Books sold:  
Readings: Finished Creatures 
Attended: Christopher James 
Read at:  Workshops:  
Friends poems looked at: 1

REVIEWS
Review finished:
Reviews started:
Reviews submitted:
Reviews to write: 1

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music/Listened to
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music

The Archers
various playlists
In the Loop (p)
Kikagaku Moro: Forest of Lost Children
Cassandra Jenkins: My Light, My Massage Parlor 
Smashing Pumpkins: Zodeon At Crystal Hall
Swell: Too Many Days Without Thinking 
Kalia Vandever: Another View  
Stephen Vitiello with Brendan Canty and Hahn Rowe: Second  
Bournemouth VS Arsenal (R)
Yasmine Hamdan: I remember I forget
 The Wedding Present: Maxi 
Thee Headcoat Sect: Deerstalking Men
 Oren Ambarchi: Ghosted 3 
Yorkston/Jaycock/Lagendorf: ST
Alan Sparhawk: With Trampled by Turtles
Bananagun: the True Story of Bananagun 
Joey Gregorash: North Country Funk
Tapes N Tapes: Outside
 The Fall: Palace of Swords Reversed
John Murry: The Stars Are God’s Bullet Holes
 The Cramps: Stay Sick 
Spacemen 3: Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To
 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever: Talk Tight
Billy Bragg: Talking To The Taxman About Poetry
Ganavya: Nilam, Daughter of a temple 
Little Feat; ST
 Tallies: ST, Patina
Floating Points: Elaenia
Elliot Galvin: The Ruin
 Sharp Pins: Balloon Balloon Balloon 
Wild Billy Childish: Step Out!
Emma Swift; The Resurrection Game
Joy Formidable; Aaarth 
Jenny on Holiday; Quicksand Heart
 Dry Cleaning: Secret Love
Steve’s Mixtapes: Ethan Miller, Thurston Moore, Sally Hamilton (P)
Clementine March: Powder Keg, Songs of Resilience
Sir Richard Bishop: Hillbilly Ragas
Blue Hour Radio
That’s How I Remember It: David Balfe (p)
Jim Noir: AM
Emma Rawicz: Inkeyra
Scary Monsters: The March of Hope
SML: How You Been
This Cultural Life: Maggie O’Farrell
Chelsea Vs Arsenal Carabao Cup Semi final  
Madness: Absolutely
Mary Lattimore & Julianna Barwick: Tragic Magic 
The Leaf Library: About Minerals
 They Might Be Giants: Flood
 Pearl Charles: Desert Queen 
Sea Power: Everything Was Forever
 Craig Finn: Always Been
 Godspeed You! Black Emperor: No Title As of 13 February 2024, 28,340 Dead
REM: Monster, New Adventures, Document
Pharoah Sanders & Floating Points: Promises
Sunstack Jones; Luminous Hands
David Zinman: Gorecki: Symphony No.3
The National: Rome 
Wilco: Kicking Television 
Lola Kirke: Trailblazer 
David Axelrod: Heavy Axe 
Howlin’ Rain: Magnificent Fiend
VA: Gather in the Mushrooms: The British Acid Folk Underground 1968-1974 
The Clientele; Bonfires on the Heath, I Am Not there Anymore
 Carl Broemel & Tyler Ramsey: Celestun
A House; I Am the Greatest
Fergus McCreadie: The Shieling
The Dears: Life is Beautiful 
Yo La Tengo: They Shoot, We Score
Massacre Massacre: Bunkaa 1 
Dropsonde Playlist
Illuminated: The Metaphor Consultant (p)
Only After Dark: At the Docks (p)
Lost In The Trees: All Alone In An Empty House
Aoife O’Donovan: All My Friends
Glok & Timothy Clerkin: Alliance
Dry Cleaning: New Long Leg
Tristeza: Dream Signals in Full Circles
Racing Mount Pleasant: ST
This Will Destroy You; New Others Part 1
Elbow: Leaders of the Free World
Craig Finn: A Legal of Rentals
Flyying Colours: Mindfullness 
Johann Johannsson: Fordlandia 
Neko Case: Neon Grey Midnight Green

Read
Finished Creatures 9
Andrew Waterhouse: In
The London Magazine
 Matt Bryden: The Glassblower’s House 
Peter Kenny: The Nightwork
Tom Sastry: Life Expectancy Begins to Fall
John Burnside: The Asylum Dance

Watched
The Big Lebowski
The Lowdown
Bob Monkhouse: The Last Show
Ishtar
Early Doors
The Morning Show
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Arsenal Vs Liverpool
Prime Suspect
The Wicker Man
28 Years Later
Inter Vs Arsenal
Lynley (fucking awful)

Ordered/Bought
New running trainers 
Rialto 
Door spindles
 Paint, brushes & various sealants
Acumen 114
Christopher James: England Underwater & The Manly Art of Knitting
A belated Xmas present

What a count…

28/12/2025 / Mat Riches / 2 Comments

I wasn’t going to do a chart for the end of the year…all a bit of a busman’s holiday and the like, but the arrival this week of the wonderful new issue of Finished Creatures containing a new poem by me made me reconsider…Thanks to Jan for taking a new new poem from me…A poem written and finished in 2025 as well which is good work; looking back at my notes I can see the first scribbled notes/draft was 30th January and the final draft was sorted on 4th August.

So, let’s see what that new arrival (the mag, not the poem) has done to the scores on the doors.

The collected data would suggest that 2025 has seen an overall increase in the number of poems sent out, and certainly an increase on recent years. I’ve crunched the numbers and the number of unique submissions has gone up YoY again – which is good, I think.

But it comes down to the success rate (or does it?)

Maybe it’s working (maybe it’s Maybelline, etc), but we’ve seen a 100% increase on 2024 in successes. It looks a little different if we present this as counts, but either way the numbers are up. And I thought this had been a crap year (for many reasons). **Spends ALCS money before it’s come in**

I can’t imagine I’ll get another post done this side of the new year, so thank you for reading. Thank you for everything. Thanks to all I’ve read with and/or seen read this year.

Have a wonderful New Years, I hope you had a wonderful Xmas. Don’t forget to buy some books. Go to readings. Tell the poets you read that you love them (they really like it) at readings, in emails, on the socials. Go to the library.

A song that seems appropriate

The Cure, Endsong

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 6.5, 5.5, 15
Workouts: 1
Walks: 1
Yoga: 0
Days in a row without alcohol: 0
Days in a row without cigarettes: 3
Bouts of Insomnia: 1

LIFE STATS
2 x epic drives (7 hours + 9.5 hours)
Many x snacks
4 x service stations on motorways

POET STATS
Notes for poems: Nowt
Worked on: Nowt
Finished/In the Drawer:
Submissions: XX
Rejections: Snakeskin, The Shore
Total Poems Out: 23
Acceptances: 1
Withdrawn:0
Longlisted: 0 
Books sold: 0
Readings:
Friends Poems Looked At: 1

REVIEWS
Review finished:
Reviews started:
Reviews submitted:
Reviews to write: 1

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music/Listened to
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music

SML: How You Been 
Fleet Foxes: live on Boston Harbour 
Jeff Tweedy: Twilight Override
 Big Thief: Double Infinity
SG Goodman: Planting By the Signs
The Archers
 The Verb: The Adverb 
Michael Kiwanuka; Small Changes 
This Is The Kit: Careful of your Keepers
Keith Jarrett: Köln Concert
My Morning Jacket: is
Bill Janovitz: Days of Heaven
Arsenal Vs Brighton (R)

Read
Poetry Wales Winter 2025 
Wendy Pratt: Blackbird Singing At Dusk 
John Glenday; Grain

Watched
The Roses
Various Kids TV things with my 5 year old great niece  
The Lowdown
 Die Hard
Die Hard 2

Ordered/Bought
The London Magazine
 Andrew Waterhouse: In 
Finished Creatures 9 
Rishi Dastidar: A Report Clear…

Peace to all on this Cluttered Earth

22/12/2025 / Mat Riches / 3 Comments

Hello, hello…Hope we’re all well. Nothing says Christmas like Beef Rendang (Did someone mention I had a poem about that up at Ink Sweat and Tears recently??), so you catch me writing this in the middle of making that ahead an early Christmas evening. We’re off to see Family so Xmas Day is happening now, and this is the only way I can achieve my dream of a curry at Christmas.. one year it will happen on the day.

It seems a bit wrong to leap from that, but the first thing to acknowledge is the very sad loss recently of the wonderful poet that is Richard Meier. I’ve said elsewhere that I was late to his work, but I was very glad when I finally found it. Other people have been better than me at reviewing his work, so I will point you to this and this by John and Rishi, respectively, of his last collection. I know there’s another review on the way, so keep an eye out for that, but basically go any buy all of his work. You won’t regret it. My condolences, of course, to Richard’s family and friends. He seemed like a fine and kind man.

After my last post where I published a poem by Maura Dooley, it was a pleasant surprise to see a poem from here in Jonathan Davidson’s excellent November Out of Office email. Do sign up. I think it came in the day after my post. I’d say great minds, etc but that would be doing Jonathan a disservice, I suspect.

My thoughts are with Michael and team at London Grip for their recent technical disasters that mean the majority of the London Grip archive has gone. LG is a source of wonderful poems and reviews, and I feel for the folks there as the disaster was not of their making. Poets, if you’re published online make sure you take a PDF download after…

In lovely and unexpected news this week, I saw there was a new episode of Planet Poetry. That , in and of itself, is cause for celebration. And it was great to hear the interview with Niall Campbell that was the main focus off it. I mean, I say main focus, but arguably he was more of a support act to Robin reading one of my poems in the second half. I wasn’t expecting it at all, but what an honour.

Robin did an excellent job reading Riches (about 48 mins in) from Collecting the Data. It was very strange to hear someone else reading my work. It’s a new experience for me, and has made me look at the poem again in a new (and good) way. I hear the beats of the poem differently now, even if they haven’t changed. It’s know the advice is to read your poem aloud when writing, but you’re still yourself when you do it, so to hear someone else do it is really quite educational. And very moving. Thank you Robin and Peter. Listen to the ep for the poems and interview , the poem from Kay Syrad and the bloopers.

Now, two poems. I was going to spread this out, but I’m not sure I’ll manage another post this year..I can’t be faffed to chart the publications as per usual, largely as there haven’t been that many, but we’ll see. Regardless, these two poets are sort of linked in my head because I’ve read with both twice this year on the same occasions.

A poem please, Matthew

Earth
For days spent at 1 Green Meadow

Every time we talked about selling
my heart cracked:
shattered glass the Snow Queen dispersed
around the earth, the splinters that lodged in the eye.
The hellebores spoke to me then, and the ferns.
The montbretia held their thousand breaths
and the poppies did what they did best:
opened their hearts and sang.
The stream ushered in a chorus, bardic
to the bone, altering its rhythm over the stones:
you can’t leave yet, we’re not yet done,
the salmon haven’t yet come home.

+++++++++ Taken from I Sing to the Greenhearts by Maggie Harris, Seren Books, 2025. Published with the poet’s permission

I’ve chosen this poem because since the last post we’ve had to arrange a new Mortgage (Thanks R. for sorting it). While we were doing that we had a conversation with Flo that said something about thinking about our next move. Do we start thinking about selling up and moving out of London, etc? Where might we fog? Do we need to factor her into it anymore? That evening I picked up Maggie’s book to read, and flicking through it I alighted on this poem, and it just resonated .

The whole collection is one about place, about recall, about where you’re at and where you’re at. And sometimes you just see the thing that lands when you need it to. I’ve long wanted to get the story of Kai and the splinter in his eye from the Snow Queen into a poem…Basically since I read/heard it on a Storyteller tape as a nipper, but the poem just resonated…I want to leave London, but I don’t. It also resonated as I’m working on a poem about when my mum moved out of my childhood home.

That;s a bit too unwieldy at present, but Maggie has caught those feelings in such a small space. The location may be different, but the feelings aren’t. Factor in those last lines about the salmon coming home, the instinctive return to a place of importance, the poetry in the word “hellebores” and the beautiful image of the poppies doing what they do best and it’s easy to see why you’d never want to leave the poem, let alone the place it describes.

If we want another connection, there is also a wonderful poem (among many) in the collection call Tamarind. I’ve just added the Tamarind paste to my curry….

Now, normally I’d only put one poem up per post, but as mentioned above these two poets are both folks I’ve read with this year, both poets I love reading and in the spirit of giving I want to give more.

I’ve said before how much I enjoy Christopher’s work, his work to promote poetry and his kind words a bit my own work. I am always greatful to be invited to read with him, and to go for a pint with him too. It was especially pleasing then to see that we can focus on his own work for a while rather than the work he does.

I sat down this week to read his new pamphlet, Clutter Jar. I’ve been lucky enough to read to some of the poems in advance, but to have the complete thing in my hand was a joy. The collection is a finely judged look at humanity, masculinity, location, family, types of people, music, frustration, work, modern living, boiling over and/or not quite boiling over…and much more, often in the same poem. It’s very easy to read the I of the poem as being the I of the author, but I don’t think they all are “guilty” (for want of a better word) of that. They are finely wrought and worked character studies of place, time and people. And yes, I’m sure some of the author pokes through, but they are fine poems that land on the first go and then keep surprising you like a carousel.

It sometimes feels like cheating to choose a poem from early in the book (and I did say to him I could have chosen several), but this one just hit right this week.

EXPERTS
We like to forget that in fact everything in our life is chance.
– Sigmund Freud

There are those who calculate
the prospective density of snow,
the day it will come, where it will fall,
how many people will, in all probability,
stay off work because of it…

…and there are those who walk gingerly
on the thick ice – with measuring devices
and high-vis jackets – to gauge
when the covered roads will reveal
old markings through sludge and grit…

…and there are lives given over
to predicting the median velocity of wind
in Iowa years from now,
and others dedicated to forecasting
the quantity of frogs and fish that will drop
from a specific league of sky.

But you and I have slipped the radar,
bucked the trend, as we head out
where traffic darts from every angle
and, further on, the Thames does what it wants,
laving and lapping against the quays.

Night might steal us away
under its star-spun cloak.
Even this is measured by astronomers.
Best put a hand on your heart
and feel how sometimes, just sometimes,
it jumps or skips a beat.

+++++++++ Taken from Clutter Jar by Christopher Horton, Broken Sleep Press, 2025. Published with the poet’s permission

It may be because I’ve read a few times with him now, but I can absolutely hear him reading this (and as far as I can remember, I’ve not yet). I can hear his pause between the first two stanzas to the nano-second – this is a good thing.

I love this. It’s worth turning up just for the last three lines, but everything that precedes it is wonderful. The religious overtones of the frogs falling from the sky, the cold of the first two stanzas feeling apt for this time of year, the fourth stanza where a bit of natural chaos creeps into the data collecting, the way nature is given it’s due for just doing what it does.

I’m going back in later to think about the trust element in this poem too. The way we put faith in the science, the lack of trust in the thick ice, the night possibly stealing away from us, etc…but that’s for the next read through.

There’s something, perhaps, of an ars poetica here in the sense of all the information available, the science and data, the extrapolation of things from sheer magnificence of snow, ice, wind, weather cycles and regular heartbeats…the poetry comes in both that, our capacity to measure it and understand it, but also in the thinness of the ice, the danger in the collecting, and the heart skipping a beat. The beauty of where we are and who we are with when that happens. Actually, you bastard, Horton…this is too good.

Onwards and into Xmas.

I hope you’ve finished for the year, that you’ve got a lovely break ahead of you. Thank you for reading.

PS. Based on recent text messages, keep 2nd March free for an excellent Rogue Strands night.

A song that seems appropriate

The Chemical Brothers, Salmon Dance

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 4, 5, 6, , 2, , 11, 5, , 5, , 4, , 12
Workouts: 2
Walks: 1
Yoga: 0
Days in a row without alcohol: 5
Days in a row without cigarettes: 3
Bouts of Insomnia: 2

LIFE STATS
1 x Poetry Office Xmas party
1 x child home for Xmas
2 x pub trips for Football
1 x trip to see Shack
1x stinking cold
1 x trip to see 808 State
X trip to see The Wonder Stuff/Vent414
1 x trip into town to see my mate Geller and his family.
1 x pile of ironing
1 x OOO for work. Thank fuck

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music

West Ham Vs Liverpool (r) Chelsea Vs Arsenal 
VA: Bláha, Kvěch, Teml, Vacek: Týden nové tvorby, 1981
Lawrence English: Trinity 
Bratmobile: Ladies, Women and Girls 
Hem: Rabbit Songs
Yuya Wakai; Poem
Nadia Reid: Enter Now Brightness, Listen to Formation, Out of my province, Preservation
 Fergus McCreadie: The Sheiling
The Mountain Goats: Beautiful Rat Sunset 
Constant Smiles; Moonflowers
Naima Bock: Below A Massive Dark 
Goat Girl: Below The Waste 
Richard Hawley: Coles Corner, They Call you Love…Further 
Shack: Waterpistol, On the Corner of Miles & Gill, Here’s Tom With the Weather 
The Shed; Richard Hawley (P), Angel Harding 
Chico Freeman: Spirit Sensitive 
Cameron Winter: Heavy Metal
Geese; Getting Killed, Projector 
The Strands: Magical World of…
Aston Villa Vs Arsenal
Muluken Mellesse With the Dahlak Band: ST
Collections of Colonies of Bees; Flocks 
The Bewitched Hands:Birds & Drums 
The Rosebuds: Birds Make Good Neighbours
Goat: Headsoup
Talking Heads: Naked Agnes Obel: Myopia (instrumentals)
Lonnie Liston Smith: Flavors
Vent 414: ST Unwed Sailor: Truth Or Consequence 
Mal Waldron: Mal 3
 Blur: The Magic Whip
Saxon Shore: Luck Will Not Save Us From a Jackpot of Nothing 
The Counts: Love Sign
The Afghan Whigs; Big Top Halloween, How Do You Burn?
 VA: Love Peace & Poetry Vol 9 Turkish Psychedelic Music 808 State: EX:EL, 90
Jimi Hendrix: Are You Experienced?
Aretha Franklin: Aretha Now
Mogwai: The Bad Fire
The Tallest man on Earth: Dark Bird Is Home
The Wedding Present: Maxi 
David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights: End Time Undone
Sonic Youth: Murray Street  
Sam Amidon; Salt River
The Bevis Frond:Vavona Burr
Poems we made: Isabelle Baafi (p)
Steve’s mixtapes: Gavin Morgan, Andy Gillespie…(p) 
The Wonder Stuff: Better Being Lucky, Oh No, It’s the WS
 Eels: Oh What A Beautiful Morning
Clem Snide: Oh Smokey 
Beezewax: Oh Tahoe 
Diane Cluck: Oh Vanille / Ova Nil 
Blood Everywhere: Oh Yeah
My Morning Jacket: Live, At Dawn
 Cowboy Junkies:All This Ferocious Beauty
 The Jazz Butcher: The Highest in the Land

Read
Southword
Elizabeth Parker: In Her Shambles
Maggie Smith: I Sing to the Greenhearts  
Christoper Horton; Clutter Jar
Wendy Pratt: Blackbird Singing at Dusk
Ragged Trouserered Philanthropist
Michael Bartholomew Biggs: Unidentified Flying Objects

Watched
Inspector Morse
Arsenal Vs Brentford
Man U vs West Ham
Above Suspicion
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi 
Force Awakens 
The Last Jedi
Rise of Skywalker (What, I was ill)
Down Cemetery Road Shetland
Noelle 
Brassic
The Morning Show

Ordered/Bought
Andrew Waterhouse: In
Poetry Wales
Xmas presents

Rocks abide in shallow ways

30/11/202508/12/2025 / Mat Riches / 1 Comment

Hello, hello…Hope we’re all well.

I have two vague train-related things for you this week.

Firstly, the week before last it was my beloved wife’s birthday. The night before the big day I took her to see the excellent musician, Emma-Jean Thackray at Koko in Camden. For those of you that know the area you will know Koko is near Mornington Crescent station (Hurray – one for the I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue fans).

Both R and I worked at the building opposite Mornington Crescent for a while in the early 2000s—different times, but still a nice coincidence. R was working for an advertising agency, and I was working for Emap, providing audience research for four magazines: Pregancy & Birth, Mother & Baby, Top Santè and Yours. Birth to death and a way to stave it off was the way I saw that particular portfolio.

In other coincidence news I know now that two of my dear friends in Beckenham both worked at Emap in the same building at the same time as me. We may well have crossed paths many times. Even spookier is that one of them was in Liverpool at university at the same time as me, and now our respective daughters are both at Liverpool university too…

But I digress, in the same week of this gig going I’d taken delivery of issue 7 of Finished Creatures. It’s an old issue, but I realised I was missing that particular one to complete my collection. As the official first ever purchaser of FC I felt it important to keep the collection going. Jan does a wonderful job with each magazine, and it’s always a joy to get one of her envelopes with it’s string and handwritten address, etc.

I’ve been working through the issue to get back up to speed, and it was wonderful to stumble across a poem by Vanessa Lampert (and other people too, obvs, but give me my moment) called Budgie.

The poem is typically excellent, but makes reference to Top Santé magazine. Nice little coincidence there.

A couple of weeks ago there was an excellent radio programme on about dealing with Writer’s Block – I’m buggered if I can remember the name of it at the mo, but it will come to me. Anyhoo, it popped back into mind while reading some John Clare the other night. I’m slowly working my way through a Selected of his…And that book includes selected passages from a wider poem called To the Rural Muse

Here’s the second stanza (that they include)

Muse of the pasture brook, on they calm sea
Of poesy I’ve sailed, and though the will
To speed were greater than the prowess be,
I’ve ventured with much fear of usage ill,
Yet more of joy. Though timid be my skill,
As not to dare the depths of mightier streams,
Yet rocks abide in shallow ways and I
Have much of fear its mingle with my dreams.
Yes, lovely muse, I still believe thee by
And think I see thee smile and so forget I sigh.

When the Words Leave…that was the name of the show; seems ironic somehow…Give the show a listen. I enjoyed it.

I think Mr C (not that one) is dealing with some writer’s block brought on by fear of being able to say the things he wants throughout this poem..among other things.

A poem please, Matthew

And now to the poem for this week. At our recent Rogue Strands night I was lucky enough to get to say hello to Maura Dooley. I’ve been working my way backwards through her work since reading Five Fifty Five last year. The most recent I’ve read is The Silvering, and the poem I’m offering you is taken from that. I emailed Maura to say thanks for coming and for having bought a copy of CtD. She’s passed my poem about the Arecibo telescope on to a friend of hers, and also sent me this wonderful article. Both are lovely things to do.

When I asked her for this poem I was about to go and collect Flo from the train station when’s he came home for reading week. Next week I get to collect Flo again as she’s coming back for Xmas (a week early, but all good)…so this poem feels doubly relevant today.

At Streatham Hill Station
It is good to wander a little, lest one should dream all that the world was Streatham, of which one may venture to say, none but itself can be its parallel.
Dr Johnson, Letter to Mrs Thrale

My daughter waits opposite
on the Up platform. A going-nowhere
train stops between us and in the time
it takes to pause and shift she’s first
hidden from me, then gone.

It’s true there have been too many
partings this year, too much sorrow,
but what her vanishing trick reveals
is the empty platform, on which,
not even dust has had time to settle.

+++++++++ Taken from The Silvering By Maura Dooley, Bloodaxe Books, 2016. Published with the poet’s permission

I mean..come on…I barely need to say why that’s so right, but what a poem, what a level of compact force that is. It weighs down on you the more you read it. I feel a little like I’ve stood too close to the edge of a platform as an intercity train rattles through..a smidge knocked off my feet by it.

The Dr Johnson quotation really adds something to it for both parties, in the sense of someone going off into the world to widen their experience beyond their local environment, so it feels relevant to Flo as much as to me though I’m less sure she’ll read it. Not poetry, dad…etc. It does add a little local flavour as we were a stone’s throw from St Reatham Hill station in West Norwood when she was born…especially when I’d take her to ballet lessons.

The daughter travels away, the parent is left behind on the platform to feel the effects off the “vanishing trick” – like all good tricks we want to see behind the curtain, but can’t. And she’s right, there have been “too many / partings this year, too much sorrow”. I’m sure it’s the same for many/most of us.

A message came from home recently that my old friend Trefor had passed away, and just last week we lost our 94 year old neighbour Pat. I’m ashamed to say I’d not popped into see Pat for a couple of months—it was always I must do that this weekend…and I didn’t, but that’s part of the last line…no sooner has the child gone away and then you’re on an empty platform and no time…

The platform is both the literal train station platform, and, I think, also a platform with which to build on, a basis for getting on. There’s no time to let the dust settle. We have busy lives, a parent isn’t just a parent, we have other responsibilities. We must permanently flit from one thing to another.

What a poem, what a set of emotions to come from something so economical. I have Maura’s collection Life Under Water on standby to read soon, and I can’t wait.

Finally, I was listening to something on the radio the over day..unsurprisingly, I forget what, but it mentioned the phrase Wolf notes which captured my imagination.

“A wolf tone, wolf note, or simply a “wolf”, is an undesirable phenomenon that occurs in some bowed-string musical instruments, most famously in the cello. It happens when the pitch, or more particularly the fundamental frequency, of the played note is close to a particularly strong natural resonant frequency of the vibration of the instrument’s body”

I have a pathological fear of the use of the word wolf in poetry..Not sure why, but I think I”m keen to overcome it in order to get a wolf note into a poem. Who know if I’ll ever get to it. I have got a week off ahead of me to write, so who knows. **Moves a comma all week and calls it a hard week**

I may also get round to reading about how poetry is defeating AI

Onwards and into Sunday.

Title Giveaway

Tonic At the Disco
B Sides besides the Seaside As an Aside for A Sides on the Sideboard 
The Sideboard
Hateful Dodger

A song that seems appropriate

The Cure: Going Nowhere

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 25K
Workouts: 0
Walks: 2
Yoga: 0
Days in a row without alcohol: 0
Days in a row without cigarettes: 0
Bouts of Insomnia: 5

LIFE STATS
1 x tip run with old fridge
1 x poetry reading (Attended)
1x weird cold
1x lovely and quick trip to the 3H
1x failed attempt at making bread
1x attempt at a GF cake
1x trip to Liverpool to see Flo
1 x wife’s birthday
1x gig with said wife
1 x Grayson Perry talk that was shit
1 x work Xmas do and leaving drinks
1 x night out with mates

POET STATS
Notes for poems: The Lookover, Imaginary Brother
Worked on: In the Freezer, Acceptance, Speech, Sand Haiku, The Lookover
Finished/In the Drawer: In the Freezer
Finished/In the Drawer:
Submissions: Pomegranate, The Lonely Crowd, The London Magazine, The Shore
Rejections: Bad Lillies
Total Poems Out: 23
Acceptances:
Withdrawn:0
Longlisted: 0 
Books sold: 0
Readings:
Friends Poems Looked At: 1

REVIEWS
Review finished:
Reviews started:
Reviews submitted:
Reviews to write: 2

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Caroline Bird: When The Words Leave (p)
 Elizabeth Alker: Unclassified
REM: Reckoning, Monster, New Adventures
Constant Smiles: Moonflowers
SML; How You Been
The Archers
Poems we Made: Nick Mahoka, Sarah Howe (P)
Wilco: AM
Let’s Eat Grandma: the Bastard Son & the Devil, I, Gemini, I’m All Ears, Two Ribbons
Buck Meek: Two Saviors
Tatiana Shebanova: Chopin: Complete Solo Piano 
World of Twist: Quality Street
Slowdive: Souvlaki Space Station
Stone Club Podcast: Jeremy Deller
The Cure: Songs of a Lost World
Emma Jean-Thackray: Weirdo
Cowboy Junkies: 200 More Miles
 Thee Headcotes: Beached Earls
 Sister Ray Davies: Holy Island
The Mission: God’s Own Medicine, Aura
Hop Along: Painted Shut Miracle legit: Glad
Jake Xerxes Fussell & James Elkington:Rebuilding 
Horse Lords: Comradely Objects
 Television Personalities: The Painted Word
Jesus & Mary Chain: Psychocandy
 North Americans: Long Cool World
Ash Ra Tempel: Starring Rosi
Elbow: Flying Dream 1
The Verb: Shaun Usher, Katrina Naomi, etc, Train Poems, Doors (Armitage, MacGowan, Taylor) (p)
Samantha Harvey: Orbital (a)
Unruly Distance: Melodic Drone Dropsonde Playlist
Mal Waldron:The Quest Mark McGuire: Get Lost
The Shed: Suzie Dent (P), Rita Chakrabati
Beethoven 5th Symphony  The Open Mind; ST
Dick Gaugan: Handful of Dirt
 Ganger: Hammock Style
Fuzz; St
Frightened Rabbit: Pedestrian Verse
Sg Goodman: Planting By The Signs, Teeth Marks
Making trouble: Kate Stables(p)
Adem: Love & Other Planets, Seconds Are Acorns 
Ride: Nowhere 
Poems We Met Along the Way; Vona Groake (P)
Magazine: Secondhand Daylight
Matthew Ryan: East Autumn Grin 
Thirteenth Floor Elevators: Easter Everywhere
 Alfie Bowman Mix 
Julia Jacklin: Don’t Let the Kids Win, Pre Pleasure
Tortoise: TNT, Millions Now Living….
Travis: the Invisible Band 
A Winged Victory for the Sullen: Invisible Cities 
The Coral: Invisible Invasion
KT Tunstall: Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon
Lots of playlists
Illuminated: Hearing Aids (p)  
Prefab Sprout: Steve McQueen
 The Durrutt Column: Return of The Durutti Column
 Daniel Barenboim: Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Read
Acumen
John Clare: Selected Poems
Pennine Platform 
Christopher James: The Invention of Butterfly
DA Prince. Continuous Present
Ragged Trouserered Philanthropist

Watched
TriggerPoint
Monster: Ed Gein Story
Inspector Morse
Leonard & Hungry Paul
Man Alive: The Office Party
The Beast In Me
Empire
Shetland
Come See Me In The Good Light
Arsenal Vs Spurs
Thick of It

Ordered/Bought
Matthew Paul: The Lammas Lands 
Pomegranate 7
Christopher James: The Ice Sonnets
RF Langley: Complete Poems
Ragged Trouser
Christopher Horton: Clutter Jar
Xmas present for Flo

Captain Haddock in Monte Carlo

09/11/2025 / Mat Riches / 1 Comment

Christ on a Penny Farthing, it’s been a week. Yes, since the last post (perhaps the song choice of words on a day like today, but hey ho…), but it’s been a week. And I felt like that by Tuesday, like the Tin Tin meme had been brought to life (NB my autocorrect changed that to Gin Tip—I’m not sure whether I should be impressed or depressed). While I think I’m more Captain Haddock than Tin Tin in this I’m, t I think Snowy has the right idea…Cin Cin, Tin Tin for Snowy it’s Win Win…Or something.

Anyhoo, I could complain about a shit week at work, the expense of a new fridge and that then leading to a need to knock my kitchen about which leads to more expense, Arsenal conceding two in a match for the first time in a while, or I can focus on the good parts.

Flo has been back from uni this week – we’ve just packed her back off again. My beloved and I have been to see the Lee Miller exhibition at Tate Modern today (s’alright, I suppose*), I had a lovely impromptu evening with some friends on Thursday, and I’m in the middle of making a roast.

Oh yeah, and in the week that Collecting The Data turned two, there were signs of new life emerging as two new poems made their way into the world. It still feels surreal to have a pamphlet in the world, a publication with my name on it. I have 11 copies of CtD left (message if you want one), or visit the lovely folks at Red Squirrel to get a copy. Should I order more??

If I ever pull my finger out there might even be a full collection. I was saying to someone recently that I don’t think I’ve written much since the launch of CtD, but actually when I look at the box of new poems, there’s probably an average of 2 new poems per month since then, so they are accumulating. If I take a few from CtD, some that didn’t make it in due to space, and what I have now, I reckon there are 60 poems there. I need more because not all will make the cut, but there’s certainly a kernel of a collection there. There are also 6 in some state of getting ready staring at me as I type, and loose notes for about another 25 floating about, but let’s focus on the now rather than the future.

Ink Sweat & Tears published my poem called Beef Rendang. I’m very happy to see that one out in the world, and at a Norwich-based publisher.

My poem Tough Cookies was also published this week in Southword # 49. I was paid for this too. I am lucky enough that I can afford to reinvest, so I’ve ploughed the money from that back into a year’s subscription of Southward.

Check out the magazine as it looks ace, and don’t forget to look at my poem and its reference to Monte Carlo (the statistical modelling technique, not the place).

The remainder of the payment has been spent on two books by Sarah Doyle. I’d meant to buy her books, but this reminder from Rory Waterman about the recent issues Sarah has faced with plagiarism in light of Graeme Richardson‘s recent review of Len Pennie’s book in the Sunday Times gave me the kick up the arse to get on with buying them (Sarah’s, not Len Pennie’s).

A poem please, Matthew

I think I trailed this last week, but I’m including a poem by Andrew Neilson. It feels especially apt as I think Andrew was actually the second person to hear about CtD being accepted about a billion years ago. I think we were in a pub on Lamb’s Conduit Street (???) when the email came in and I let it slip then…

I’m sure you all know Andrew for his role as chair of Trustees for the Poetry Society, his TV appearances with his and work on behalf of the Howard League, his essay writing in Dark Horse, etc, for being half of Bad Lillies alongside his lovely wife, Kathryn Gray, and you’ll probably know he also writes poems. So you’ll know all of the above, but it’s there in case you don’t.

You’ll know, if you read last week’s post, that I recently went to see him launch his debut pamphlet.

Andrew Neilson launching Summers Are Other

It feels odd/wrong/strange/right (delete as applicable) that this is only his debut, but here we are. Some that can be chalked up to a long time away from writing, but some will just be spend crafting. And Summers Are Other, the pamphlet, has been worth the wait.

As the blurb states, “the poems are drawn from a sustained meditation on transience and the ties that bind us”. Those are the sort of poems you write in your 20s…You might start them, but you won’t finish them.

I was erring between two poems, but given my move towards acceptance above, and the note about transience, I’m going with this poem.

Winding River
After Du Fu

Spring fades with each blossom
flying in the wind .
Ten thousand points now float,
grief and beauty limned.

Passing is the petal,
fallen are my eyes.
Only wine, a skinful,
will see my gaze rise.

The gall by the river,
a kingfisher’s nest,
the hall which is a tomb
where unicorns rest.

Joy is the only law
worthy of study.
What use immortal fame
to mortal body?

+++++ Published with permission of the poet. Taken from Summers Are Other, Rack Press, 2025.

I’m sure we all know Du Fu was an incredibly prolific Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty, so we won’t recap all of that, but a poem After Du Fu very much places us in that long term development place, it’s built on the shoulder of experience and it’s attendant learning has not come lightly. I think, in many ways, you should all go and read Summers Are Others first and then come back to me to discuss, because the placement of the poem at the end of the pamphlet is a masterstroke.

Many of the poems that lead to this one are about grief, loss, mistakes and it’s quite the heavy ride (a great one, and there are smiles to be had on the way—the opening poem’s first two lines raise a smile from me. There are others), but this poem initially feels like a gentle coda to all of that. It’s talk of impermanence and blossoms, but we/I start to get suspicious at the use of “limned” in the 4th line of the first stanza.

Limned

To describe or depict by painting or drawing.
To suffuse or highlight with light or colour; illuminate: “There was just enough juice left in Merrill’s flashlight to limn the outlines: A round lobe here. Another lobe over there” (Hampton Sides).
To describe or portray in words.

I think this transitive verb (yes, I looked it up) shows us exactly what he’s up to here. I think he’s managed to employ all three meanings here. The first three lines painting us a pretty picture in our minds, via words (it is poetry, Mat, FFS)…

But it’s that second meaning that really lands the punch. The highlight with light or colour, this poem highlights all that has gone before with context for the grief, the crises, the loss, etc.

The 2nd and third stanzas highlight this, we must take our pleasures in the good stuff. I don’t believe the skinful here is the modern idea of getting absolutely rat-arsed, it’s a reference to the container of the time…That said, a consuming a skinful may lead to the modern interpretation.

Joy is the thing we can take from the world, but we can’t take it with us…

There are many poems in SAO that make excellent use of rhyme (and we don’t see that much these days, or in confirmation bias news, I don’t…), so it’s a joy to see it done so deftly, and to see it in this poem…The assonance of the closing rhyme of the last stanza versus the full rhymes of the preceding stanzas just make it hit that much harder.

I came out this poem calmer, more aware of our/my place in the world, less interested in mortal pursuits like promotions or clean sheets (for Arsenal), etc…And I thank Andrew for that. I thank Du Fu for the lineage of the poem…

And then…and then…my beloved wife shouted up the stairs that she thinks the dishwasher is fucked..And so I’m off for a skinful.

* Lee Miller exhibition was very good.

Title Giveaway

Pop Peacock
Partying is such sweet sorrow
Aprons on Equines, or Pinnys on Donkey

A song that seems appropriate

Jonsí: Cherry Blossom

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 15.5k
Workouts: 0
Walks: 1
Yoga: 0
Days in a row without alcohol: 0
Days in a row without cigarettes: 1
Bouts of Insomnia: 1

LIFE STATS
1 x visiting child
1 x visiting child returned to the train
1 x shit week
1 x new fridge
1 x battering kitchen about
1 x trip to Tate Britain for Lee Miller exhibition
1 x night out with mates on Thursday
1 x house clean

POET STATS
Notes for poems:
Worked on: In the Freezer
Finished/In the Drawer:
Submissions:
Rejections: Manchester Review
Total Poems Out: 14
Acceptances:
Withdrawn:0
Longlisted: 0 
Books sold: 2
Readings:
Friends Poems Looked At: 1

REVIEWS
Review finished:
Reviews started:
Reviews submitted:
Reviews to write: 1

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Mono: Forever Home
Florence + The Machine; Everybody Scream, High As Hope, , How Bright
 Roger O’Donnell: Projections
Poems We Made Along the Way: Clare Pollard (P) 
The Archers (P) 
David Lance Callahan: English Primitive 1
Poetry Bath: Rosie Johnson 1 and 2 (p)
The Shed: Frank Skinner (p)
B-52s: Bouncing off the Satellites
Adrianne Lenker: Bright Future 
Katheryn Calder: Bright & Vivid
Unwed Sailor: Heavy Age
Moby Grape: ST
Akira Kosemura: One Day
 Matthew Halsall: Oneness
Sea of Bees: Orangefarben
 House of Love: Babe Rainbow

Read
Acumen
John Clare: Selected Poems

Watched
Triggerpoint
Down Cemetery Road
Frankenstein (New version – visually great, but bollocks otherwise)

Ordered/Bought
Finished Creatures 7
Southward 49 
A jumper 
Sarah Doyle: (m)othersongs + 1
Brackets for shelves

A School for Gifted Horses

02/11/202503/11/2025 / Mat Riches / 1 Comment

We’ll do the poem first…

I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve been reading The Lost Folk by Lally MacBeth recently. I’ll let you look it up to see more about it, but I recommend it to you all…I found it endlessly fascinating.

I finished it on Thursday evening just gone, but I’d taken a break from it last week to read some poetry. I’d picked up a copy of Ian Duhig’s Nominies (I think I bought it in a seconds hand shop in Faversham during the Lit festival there at the start of the year..I’d read with Matthew, Chris Horton and seen Maggie Smith and Rosie Johnston). Anyhoo, I started flicking through Nominies, and while you might otherwise believe me, the first poem I opened to was called The Folklorist.

Now, I’m not going to look that kind of gift horse in the mouth and not come away with something good. As an aside, I’m now thinking of setting up a school for gifted horses…

Here’s the poem.

The Folklorist
(for Katherine Grant)

She ripped the fur up to the rabbit’s ears
   and the red tore left by her snare,

saying some resurrection man once fell
   hauling kin of hers up church wall:

he pitched forward while the corpse tumbled back
and the slipknot rose to his neck

they hung like justice by the yew thicket
   and would I like a lucky foot?

+++++++ Published with permission of the poet. Taken from Nominies by Ian Duhig, Bloodaxe Books 1998. I think it’s out of print. It’s not on the Bloodaxe site, but do try to find it if you can. It’s a fine collection from a fine poet.  

I’d explain why I like the poem as per normal, but one this occasion it’s mainly driven by the timing and synchronicity of the discovery. That said, the economy of travel in 8 lines, 4 short couplets is astonishing. The brutality of the opening images is matched by the horror of the tale told in stanzas 2 and 3. We could spend a lifetime looking at the line “they hung like justice”..Is it sweet justice for the hauling – we never find out why the kin was being dragged up the wall, or just the strong image of the scales of justice, the balance of it? Or both…I like to think both.  

I like the final line and the way it tallies with folk world as described by Lally Macbeth (read the book to see what I mean), and the way the poem travels across time. I can’t be sure it brings us into the 20th century because we don’t when the lucky rabbit’s foot is being offered, but we do know it’s crossed a few of generations at least to allow for the practice of people being hung. I’ve not even mentioned the end rhymes…Ok, now I have.

Not bad for what is one sentence…NB I think the Katherine Grant of the dedication is this lady. She sounds amazing and definitely worthy of further reading..

Now the last couple of weeks have been what can only described a relentless gigging out in the meatspace for me..Ok, ok..3 readings…It’s hardly Bob Dylan’s Never-ending Tour…

First up, we had another Rogue Strand Night. There were excellent readings by myself, Fiona Larkin, Jonathan Davidson, Philip Hancock, Hannah Copley, and his nibs. NB not being snobby, this was the reading order. We had at last 30 people there – it was wonderful to read with everyone. Despite a last minute technical hitch when I discovered the mic wasn’t working due to a broken cable, it felt like a top night was had by all. It was lovely to see some friends from various works there – non-poetry pals, work pals and poetry pals…and I met some new folks too. Bravo us. And, I think in a RS first we fail managed a full team photo at the end of the night.

Also, thank you to Jonathan for including Unlimited Texts from CtD in this Out of Office messages- do sign up if you’ve not already. I’m chuffed to have been included. I want to actually keep an email forever (I’ll file it with the one I got from the lovely Sheila about being published by Red Squirrel).

Then a few days later I was reading at The Torriano Meeting rooms with Louise Walker and Neil Elder. I’ve read with both before so i knew it would good. I’ve long wanted to read at this venue, so that’s a poetry bucket list venue ticked off. A damp night and the Forwards being on means I think we could have had more folks there, but we didn’t do badly. The place wasn’t empty by any chalk of any length. The 3 open mic readers did us proud, and new poems were given a run out by all involved.

After that whirlwind, I had to go ~~home from tour to do my washing, etc~~ back to work for a few days, but last week was broken up by a visit to a place that has been added to my reading bucket list, The Music Rooms at Great Ormond Street. It was the 30th Anniversary do for the excellent Rack Press, and the launch of books by Mari Ellis Dunning, Nicholas Murray and Andrew Neilson.

Sadly Mari couldn’t make it, but someone stood in for her (I didn’t catch her name) and read the title poem, Crocodile, excellently. Nicholas started us off with some fine poems from his pamphlet, The Culture Man and then Andrew took us to school with his readings from his debut pamphlet, Summers Are Other. I won’t dwell on that for too long because I’ve asked for and received permission from Andrew to put a poem from there up here*, but that’s for next time.

Lastly, I was back on the road yesterday to read in Canterbury as part of the Canterbury Festival. It was great to be invited back again by Christopher Horton. He puts on a. good event. The big was great – Again, I was first (after 4 excellent open mic readers – inc Jess Mookherjee), then Jessica Taggart Rose, Connor Sansby, Poppy Cockburn, more open mics, Rosie Johnston, Katy Evans-Bush, Barry Fentiman-Hall and Maggie Smith.

It’s fair to say the event overran a bit, but I think it went well, everyone certainly got plenty of poetry for their £7. Poets got paid (and that’s rare), books were sold and/or swapped. I got to meet some new folks (Hello, Kevin) and then spend the evening catching up with my old mate, Paul (write the fucking book, Paul)…Some lovely wine was drunk…Ah yes, I did nearly brain myself leaving the venue after the reading when a door jumped out at me and attacked my forehead.

After my two weeks of readings, now we must prepare for the return of our beloved child tomorrow for her reading week. The fatted calf is backing away from me.

* Second reference to Up Here of late. I mentioned the album by that name by Bill Janovitz to someone on BlueSky recently…

Title Giveaway

Picnic at Weather Rock
AI is a load of old shite
Speed-Time-Distance Calculator
Hot Butter
Photo Booths
Songs the seem appropriate

A song that seems appropriate

The Cure: Icing Sugar. Not at all relevant, but it came on today and quite frankly just because of that…

We’d better have a folklore song..Not TayTay…Here’s Planetary Folklore by Caverns of Anti-Matter

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 30k
Workouts: 0
Walks: 1
Yoga: 0
Days without alcohol: 0
Days without cigarettes: 0
Bouts of Insomnia: 1

LIFE STATS
3 x readings + 1 for someone else
 1 x soaked to skin walking home
1 x paid for a poem in a mag
1 x paid for gig
2 x train rides this weekend
1 x night out with mates on Friday
1 x house clean

POET STATS
Notes for poems: Doc & Marty
Worked on: Slinky, In the Freezer
Finished/In the Drawer: Slinky
Submissions: Banshee
Rejections: Dust
Total Poems Out: 14
Acceptances:
Withdrawn:0
Longlisted: 0 
Books sold: 0
Readings: 3 + 1 attended
Friends Poems Looked At: 2

REVIEWS
Review finished:
Reviews started:
Reviews submitted:
Reviews to write: 1

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Seefeel: Pure, Impure
 Carla J Easton: Impossible Stuff
Śirom: In the Wind of Night
 The Besnard Lakes: Are the Ghost Nation
Bobby Darin: Commitment
Geese: Getting Killed
 Ivan The Tolerable: Linthorpe Crepuscule Vol 1
Paul McCartney: Flaming Pie
Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, Pink Moon
The Weather Station: Humanhood, Loyalty, Ignorance
Holler, Wild Rose: Our Little Hymnal
Julien Baker & Torres; Send A Prayer My Way
Rural Tapes: Oneric
Akira Kosemura: One Day, Polaroid Piano, True Mothers, For
Chartreuse; Bless You & Be Well
Cagoules Des Décalomanies: ST
My Morning Jacket: Chocolate & iceE Ep, Circuitial
The Cure: Songs of a Lost World
Jeff Parker: The Wayne Out of Easy
Arsenal Vs Crystal Palace
This is the Kit: Live at Miniack Theatre
Bill Janovitz: Up Here
Mudhoney: Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, Five Dollar Bob’s Mock Cooter Stew, The Lucky Ones
The Archers (P)
Radiohead: The Bends, Hail To the Thief, In Rainbows 
Michael Jones & David Darling: Amber
Jack DeJohnette: Pictures 
John Abercrombie, Dave Holland & Jack DeJohnette: Gateway 
Horsegirl: Phonetics ON And On
House of Love: St
Poems We Made Along The Way: George Szirtes
Lift To Experience: The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads
Archie Shepp: Stream
David Darling; Cycles
Dan Deacon: Task OST
Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson, Jon Christensen: Sleeper
Buffalo Tom; Sleepy Eyed 
Hüsker Du: Everything Falls Apart, Flip Your Wig
The Charlatans: We Are Love
R Seliog: Dispatch All Gods 
Snocaps: ST
Mono: Forever Home

Read
Lally MacBeth: The Lost Folk
Ian Duhig: Nominies

Watched
Slow Horses
The Handmaid’s Tale
The Morning Show
Invasion
Celebrity Traitors
Leonard & Hungry Paul
Inspector Morse
Ed Gein 
Arsenal Vs Athletico Madrid
 Ian Parks’ book launch
Task

Ordered/Bought
Mic cable
1 x Rilo Kiley ticket for 2026
Jonathan Davidson:A Commmonplace
Jumper via Vinted
Brighton Half Marathon Place
Race To the King Ultra marathon place (I’m going to be unbearable next year…even more so)
Southword Subscription
Pennine Platform
& Some book buying/swaps in Canterbury

Weather rocks and kangaroos

19/10/2025 / Mat Riches / 2 Comments

It’s a funny old world, innit? On Friday morning I was idly musing on the idea of writing a poem about playing air guitar. I mean, I’d probably turn it into something miserable about being a creative failure or make some cheap gag about it being permanently out of tune (**Makes notes**) , etc, but the point here is I was thinking of the idea in the morning, and then in the afternoon I saw a link to this article about the air guitar champion of the world . Weird, eh?

Now, we won’t dwell on the loss of a few poets recently; plenty has been written abut them all by far better people than me, but I will say I was especially gutted about Brian Patten going. He was one of the gateways into poetry for me..(some say we should blame him..some would be right). And I’ve read his now well known poem, How Many Lengths of Time at at least two funerals, including my dad’s…

I regret not trying to see Brian live again in recent years, but I have fond memories of being probably one of about 3 people to have ever taken out his third collection, The Irrelevant Song, from North Walsham library (and I had it on near constant loan for a year or so). I was lucky enough to see him read and say hello, and to get his autograph on a couple of books a couple of times. I’m pretty sure there was a Patten/Henri doubleheader at Norwich Arts centre a million years ago now. I can’t recall if Roger McGough was there.

After I heard about his death, I went to dig out a letter I had from him from many, many years ago. I can’t have been more than 18 or 19 when it was sent…I’m not sure how to date it, but…hang on, it has a telephone number he gives me for someone on Norwich with the area code as 0603…not 01603. That must narrow things down to pre 1995. which would make me 18 or 19. Crikey. Anyhoo, I could’t find the letter, despite it being a prized possession.

I’ve not taken Brian’s books off the shelf for a while, and while I was hoping for another book from him, it’s fair to say I thought his last book, The Book of Forgetting, wasn’t his finest work by a long stretch, so it took an email from another poet (Hi, Roy) that mentioned a poem by Patten I didn’t know to send me back to my book shelf to check if I had this poem…and would you Adam and Eve it, the letter was there tucked inside my copy of Little Johnny’s Confession. Thanks again, Roy

I won’t repeat all of the letter here, but having solicited advice from him on what I will freely confess were some dreadful juvenilia that I sincerely meant at the time, he was kind enough tosa y he like a couple of them and then said

“There’s not much I can say about poems that come from the heart; as yours do. I think you will find which work and which have clumsy parts that stop them working if you give readings yourself”

**HANDBRAKE TURN**

Readings you say…well I have two this week. I won’t be reading the two poems Brian mentioned (they were called Anniversary and On Such Occasions, for the deep heads), but I will be reading some from CtD and some newer stuff.

As mentioned before, there’s a Rogue Strands evening on 22nd of October at The Devereux. The evening will feature readings from Hannah Copley, Fiona Larkin, Jonathan Davidson, Philip Hancock, that Stewart bloke and me. Do come through; what an ace line up this promises to be.

NB I’ve borrowed a sack barrow from a neighbour to help me transport the PA (NB It’s hardly the back line at Donnington Monsters of Rock or a Dinosaur Jr gig, but it’s a heavy box and it’s a pain in the ‘arris to transport, so after 6 or seven of these things I’ve finally decided to make life easy for myself.

I am tempted to take photo of myself looking like Hannibal Lecter on it…More news there as I get it

Rogue Strands @ The Devereux…

On the 26th October, I’m reading with Louise Walker and Neil Elder at the Torriano Meeting House. It will be an honour to read with both, and to read at a bucket list poetry venue. Kick off is 7.30, so see you there. NB we are competing with the Forward Prizes that night, but hopefully you can make it.

Shall we have a poem

His was a name I knew of, but I only recall reading Richard Meier*’s poems for the first time when I read Muscle Memory on The Friday Poem in 2022. It was enough to make me think I must follow this up, and not just because it mentions Norfolk. I am ashamed to say that it’s only in the last couple of weeks that I’ve done any serious reading of Richard’s work. I was prompted by the news he had a new collection coming out via HappenStance, After The Miracle…

I bought Richard’s two previous Picador collections, and have raced through them. I’ve gone back slowly too, but I inhaled his work…

3 books by Richard Meier left to right Search Party, Misdeameanour, After The Miracle

All three have trees on the front. Search part is mainly blues, Misadventure more greys and blacks with a murmuration of bats/birds After the miracle moire like charcoal sketch of trees over a red and orange background..A sunset — My Richard Meier Books

The circumstances behind his latest work are, as the blurb says on the sales page ,“difficult”, but I don’t want to cover that here. I’m going to ficus on something else the blurb says, and that’s “Richard Meier’s style has always been to make much from little and to find beauty in plain speaking. He even dares to write from the heart.”

I should really be using this to sell the new book to you, and I commend it to you in the strongest terms—it’s reviewed here at London Grip, but you know me and a connection. So I’m going with something from his second book, Search Party.

An east coast resident stays put

Crazy place to live,
in a field, on a cliff
that every year or twenty
unstitches along one edge …
Yet see it how I see it:

evening after evening,
considering the waves,
the field a good way up
your window. Then one morning
wake to find the grass

sits lower in the frame,
one fewer row of caravans
between the sea and yours.
To know how things will go.
In what precise order.

+++++++Taken from Search Party, By Richard Meier. Picador Poetry, 2019. Shared with the permission of the poet+++++++

I’ve chosen this poem for a few reasons.
Firstly, because it’s wonderful.
Secondly, it seems to me to be about Norfolk. It made me think of Happisburgh when I first saw it
Thirdly, I saw this article about coastal erosion in Norfolk this week.

I love the short lines; they feel cut back like the coast itself. It would be too much too say they jut in places like the coast, but I won’t not say it. I love the 4th line of the first stanza, the way the break before it gives is emphasis. Again, it might be too much to say the “unstitches” is deliberately untethered from the previous line, but, again, I’m not not saying it. I could spend hours enjoying the way the stanza break between stanza 2 and 3 quite literally has the first line of stanza three lower in the frame of the page (**Pretentious wanker alarm goes off**)

But what I love the most is that for all the natural disaster elements in the poem, there’s something really quite Norfolk and belligerent about this, and a seizing of the unknown from it. To have that kind of view right up until you don’t and to stay there despite knowing what’s coming.

I could also read this as a warning poem, a sense that the world is collapsing (**R.E.M.’s Radio Song starts playing), we can see it falling away in front of us and we stand still doing nothing. Especially given the lack of knowledge of eactls when this might happen (“a year or twenty”). In a week (or so) where articles came out about the coral reefs now reaching the point of no return, this reading of the poem perhaps feels more compelling than the first one.

I think I could use this poem as a yardstick for whether I’m in half-empty or half-full glass situation each morning..Like some sort of poem version of a weather rock** (albeit one that’s actually useful). think I could just choose to live in the view the poem paints in stanza 2 for as long as I can manage.

I’d like to also include Richard’s poem, The achievement of naturalism in Greek sculpture, because like the poem above it’s excellent, but also because i think it feel immediately applicable to the world of AI, creativity and the conversations being had there. It feels relevant in week of dealing with shite tech at work. I won’t quote all of the poem (go, buy the book, see for yourself), but the last line is “What in earth had they begun?”.

It reminds me a little of the Simon Armitage line about not inventing an acid that will eat through anything without giving some though to the container (Or words to that effect). **Subs to check which poem it comes from**^. I used to use that line in presentations about the impact of Video on Demand on the TV industry…this was back before Netflix moved to digital away from DVDs (yes, I was around then). I was a harbinger of doom then, especially when the competitions commission killed off Project Kangaroo.

I’m not sure how I ended up here, or how I get out, so **THROWS SMOKE BOMB AND DISAPPEARS IN THE CONFUSION**

* make sure you look up the correct one as there appears to be two poets…Do we need Poetry equivalents of Equity card?
**Hmmm, makes a note to think bout a poem using this idea
^ Ha, the idea I have a sub editor for this..Have you seen the types that get through each time?

Title Giveaway

Picnic at Weather Rock
AI is a load of old shite
Speed-Time-Distance Calculator
Hot Butter
Photo Booths
Songs the seem appropriate

A song that seems appropriate

Aphex Twin: Cliffs

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 56k (been bit busy)
Workouts: 0
Walks: 2
Yoga: 0
Days without alcohol: 0
Days without cigarettes: 1
Bouts of Insomnia: 6 (I think)

LIFE STATS
1 x door handles replaced
1 x tidy of back garden
Garden furniture put away for winter
1 x Shakshuka
1 x Beef Rendang of the season
1st woodburner of the season lit
1x poorly child (Fresher’s Flu kicked in late)
9 x focus groups
1 x work away day
1 x conference
1 x work 70th party
1 x 60th birthday party
1x Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern
1 x night out in Soho
1x trip to the bar I met my wife in (Bradleys Spanish Wine Bar)
1 x offer of a tarot reading (declined )
1 x prize won from Seren books = 10 books and a notebook)
2x lovely dinners with some ace mates.
1 x room repairs for Flo

POET STATS
Notes for poems: Milky Bars, Weather Rocks
Worked on: Slinky, Motivation, In the Freezer, Voice Mail
Finished/In the Drawer: Caravaggio
Submissions:
Rejections: Perverse, Poetry Ireland Review
Total Poems Out: 19
Acceptances: IS&T, Finished Creatures
Withdrawn:0
Longlisted: 0 
Books sold: 0
Readings: 0
Friends Poems Looked At: 6

REVIEWS
Review finished:
Reviews started:
Reviews submitted:
Reviews to write: 1

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Kurt Vile: Believe I’m Goin’ (Deep) Down
Suede: The Blue Hour
Adverb in Bradford (p)
Field Ramble: Lally MacBeth (p)
Poems We Made Along the way: Steve Ely, Erica Hesketh (p) 
Arsenal vs Manchester City
Sammi Smith: Something Old, etc
Black Lips: Season Of the Peach Stealing Sheep: GLO
Arseblog Podcast Extra 659
The Archers
Boo Boos: Young Love 
The Clientele: The Violet Hour, I Am Not There Anymore, It’s Art, Dad,
Tim Buckley: Dream Letter
Darrell Banks: Darrell Banks is Here
Sonny Rollins: Sax Eternal
The Beta Band: 3 Eps
Pearl Jam: Riot Act
Poems We Made: Rishi Dastidar (p)
That’s the Way I Remember It: Matt Berninger (p)
Dropsonde Playlist
SG Goodman: Planting By The Signs, Teethmarks
Cate Le Bon: Michaelangelo Dying
Bitchin Bajas: Inland See
Dr John: Such A Night
Emma-Jean Thackeray; Weirdo, Yellow
Ryley Walker: Golden Sings, Terror of the Lowlands
Explosions In The Sky: End, Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, Those Who Will Tell The Truth, Take care x 3, All of A Sudden ,Live, How Strange, Innocence, Big Bend, American Primeval My Morning Jacket: Z Niculin Janett Quartet: Toxicology Report
Arsenal Vs West Ham
Jeff Tweedy: Twilight Override
Supergrass: Road to Rouen
Danny Thompson: Whatever 
Buffalo Tom, Let Me Come over, Quiet & Peace, Skins
Cerys Hafana: Angel
Hold Steady Live In London 2024
Joy Zipper: American whip
Jess Kerber: Any Other Way Sarah Jarosz; Blue Heron Suite
Eric Dolphy; Outward Bound
Vic Mars: The Land & the Garden
Kathryn Williams:Mystery Park
Maria Somerville: All My people
The Lemonheads: Lovey
Patti Smith: Horses, Wave
The Hold Steady: Price of Progress, Teeth Dreams, Boys & Girls In America
Charles Lloyd; Figure In Blue 
Dorris Henderson & John Renbourn: Watch the Stars
 Laura Veirs: Live With the Choir Who Couldn’t Say 
Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan: Public Works & Utilities, Appendix 1 Rozi Plain: Prize
Comsat Angels: Sleep No More
Sugar: Beaster, Copper Blue
Orcutt Shelley Miller: ST
Jessica Pratt: Quiet Signs
Mary Lattimore; Collected Works. Goodbye Hotel Arkady, Hundreds of Days
Bill Fox: Resonance
The National: Rome, Trouble Will Find Me, Alligator
Matt Berninger: Get Sunk
Wednesday: Bleeds 
Fulham Vs Arsenal 
Michael Kiawanuka: Kiawanuka
 Four Tet: New Energy
 McCoy Tyner: The Real McCoy
Pearl Jam: Dark Matter 
Andrea Laszlo De Simeone: Imensità
Hank Mobley: The Flip

Read
The Frogmore Papers
Suzanna Fitzpatrick: Crippled 
Siegfried Babar; Twice-Turned Earth
Lally MacBeth: The Lost Folk
Ian Duhig: Nominies
Richard Meier: Misdemeanour, Search Party, After the Miracle

Watched
The Wire
Suspicion (Hitchcock)
Slow Horses
The Handmaid’s Tale
Match of the Day
The Morning Show
Invasion
Celebrity Traitors
The Thirty Nine Steps
Meg 2
Inspector Morse
Frauds
The Diplomat

Ordered/Bought
USB adapter for Flo
Helena Nelson: The Unread Squirrel
Alan Buckley: The Long Haul
Richard Meier: After The Miracle
Acumen 112
Gig tickets
Lally Macbeth; The Lost Folk
15 x bags of logs
Jessica Goodheart: Earthquake Season
Marianne Moore: Complete Poems
Tony Parker: The People of Providence
Robin Houghton: YoYo
12 x books from Seren (Competition Win)
Poetry Scotland
Pre-ordered Christopher Horton’s Clutter Jar – you should too

Telephone call for unpredictable sands

20/09/2025 / Mat Riches / 3 Comments

Now, as I was saying last week **Voice in earpiece** Oh, as I was saying a month or so ago…Where does the time go? **voice in earpiece again, a bit more exasperated this time** Ok, no, I didn’t say that either.

As I said to a terrible sniper the other day…Hello, did you miss me?

I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’ve been listening to the poetry podcast, The Poems We Made Along the Way a lot recently. It’s into series 3 now, and has had a wide variety of guests. I’d urge you to seek them all out via your podcast provider of choice, but the most recent guest was Lewis Buxton. I’ve been listening to it this week, and, as ever, found much too enjoy.

Gregory has an interview style that seems to put the poet at ease because he asks such diligent questions, often reaching back into previous interviews for sources. The questions are mostly about craft and attitudes towards writing, etc rather than about specific poems, and for fans of process it’s always a fascinating hour or so. The set pieces of the ‘Lightning round’ and What would you do to help poetry if money was no object’ sections are always illuminating, often surprising and never fail to set my own mental hares running towards imagining what I’d say if I was a guest. NB that’s not a request, Gregory—Christ no, I’d be far too dull as a guest. Even I don’t care what I have to say about poetry, so why would anyone else?

NB I will come back to this later (not today), but it’s most remiss of me to have listened to all of these podcasts and not followed up on Gregory’s own poems. I’m going to point you to this one for now, and return to this theme another time. My apologies, Gregory.

Why am I telling you this all now? Well, this week I was at a session at work where we had a few people in to help our whole team become better communicators, better deliverers of presentations, etc. That was on Tuesday. One of the guest speakers said something about being more yourself when presenting, that we should aim to be “5% more yourself”, e.g. if you’re a nerdy person being a little bit more nerdy, if you’re shy, be a little more that. If you’re exuberant, then amp that up a bit more…but be yourself. It seems obvious, but I quite liked hearing it that way.

On Weds, I was finishing off listening to the podcast while on I was on Beckenham High Street* and heard Lewis say the following about stage craft…

“It is never a bad thing to speak slower on stage. So, and it just, you just remember you’ve got time. Like you can slow that, so that’s not just time for you, time for me, time yet for a hundred and decisions, right? So one of them is go slow. The second one is, it sounds trite, but be yourself. I love, my favourite thing on stage is seeing a, I suppose what I love seeing is an affected version of someone’s self on stage, right? I love, if you are like a super shy person, and you don’t want to be anything other than that, then be that on stage. But that’s entertaining.”

NB: I’ve taken that from the podcast transcription, so errors may have crept in, but you get the gist. The second point was the second time I”d heard the same thing said, and well…you don’t need to tell me twice. Oh, ok, yes you do, but hopefully you see what I’m getting at.

So, it was weird to be reminded of these things twice in a week. And you know how I love a random connection. Stand back for some further weak covalent bonding, loose connections, etc.

1. Gregory is based in Liverpool. Last weekend we dropped Flo at uni in Liverpool (we’re not ready to accept she’s gone for longer than a week or two’s residential course, but she seems to be throwing herself into life in one of the world’s best cities). Also, big shots of love to those of us sending our kids off this weekend too…

2. Later in the podcast, Lewis also referenced looking outside of poetry for inspiration in terms of performance. I often think I’d like to be more animated on stage like Craig Finn from The Hold Steady and Craig Finn “fame”. He’s an absolute whirlwind of arms, facial gestures, etc like some sort of manic preacher, and naturally I can’t find a video to do it justice, but please take my word for it. This week The Hold Steady announced the dates for them being back in London in 2026. (Weak enough for you?)

3. Lewis talked about a poem of his with the excellent title ‘Everyone’s Got a Christopher Walken Impression, Except Christopher Walken’. In the podcast he declared that he doesn’t have a Christopher Walken impersonation, but can do an Alan Bennett one, although he demurred from proving this. It made me think of my friend Simon H who only seems to be able to impersonate David Gedge from The Wedding Present. It’s niche, but I like it. This week The Wedding Present announced a new mini-album.

4. Elsewhere in the podcast, Lewis makes reference to an Alan Buckley poem from his pamhlet, The Long Haul. Now, I am waiting on a copy of The Long Haul to arrive (Not a nudge at all, Nell…if you’re reading). You may be able to get a copy and help Nell clear some backlog via the HappenStance sale

5. Finally, Lewis mentioned he was into cults** at present. Rach and I have been listening to the Jesus Army Cult doc on the BBC Sounds and watched the TV version a week or so ago…I mean, come on…you want more….?

Stop pissing about, Mat…Get to the poem

6. The final connection is that since my last post I have taken delivery of Lewis’ new pamphlet, Mate Arias. I had and enjoyed his debut collection, Boy In Various Poses, so I was keen to see what followed it. So it makes sense (to me) to have a poem from the new pamphlet here.

Mundesley

We stand on one of the groynes
as if posing for an album cover.

Behind us in the cold arcade, coins
drop into penny falls. It is December

and no one is winning here; whatever
they win is never something they want.

They leave with hands smelling of copper,
to the town, the shops, their teenage haunts.

We watch a dog barrelling after a ball,
challenging the strict routines of the sea.

From where we’re standing we can hold it all:
how she moves with the tide, we can see

the way time passes, the way things stay still,
the unpredictable sand, the drop of penny falls.

+++++ Published with permission of the poet. Taken from Mate Arias, Lewis Buxton. Published by The Emma Press, 2025. Buy it here, or wherever you get it your books from. Not via Amazon if possible.

Why this poem? Well, aside from the obvious why not, how am I meant to refuse any poem set in Norfolk? Mundesley is not far from where I grew up. I know that beach, I may have stood on the groyne referred to, but beyond that I can feel the chills from this poem, I can feel all the feels as the young folks say. NB it’s pronounced Munzlee…

There’s a meme of sorts that takes photos that look like they could be album covers, and I love that the poem opens in such a way. A grey beach in December could easily be the backdrop for an album cover. I mean, it worked for Echo & the Bunnymen’s Heaven Up Here for example. NB No groynes were harmed in the making of that cover… I know, however, there was a lot of “chum” used to get the seagulls in shot. Give Will Sergeant‘s autobiography’s a read/listen for more details on that.

Echo & the Bunnymen's Heaven Up Here album cover. Bluey-grey beach scene with 4 shadow figures of the and on get beach. Seagulls around them in the background. white writing at the top of the band
and album's name

The simple description of the poem belies a powerful punch, especially when paired with the line breaks employed. Consider if you will, the example below from the second and third couplets.

[…]It is December

and no one is winning here; whatever
they win is never something they want.

The ending of the second couplet is pretty matter of fact in the way to dates things, but you can easily picture a beach in December, and feel the wind and the failing light, but the enjambment into the 3rd couplet gives it something more asides to the lack of work, the hardship, etc in the area… “no one is winning here”.

The poem, I think, sets things up to observe two sets of mates. One is a couple (it could be a romantic couple, it could be purely platonic mates- not sure it matters) observing the second set, e.g the younger folks with “teenage haunts” in the 4th couplet.

There’s something about the way the poem pulls back in, like a photographer focuses, in the fifth stanza. It’s a neat call back to the album cover shot of the first couplet, but we’re pull back to the older couple who watch a dog (theirs? Someone else’s? Relevant???) “challenging the strict routines of the sea” (what a line) and it becomes clear that this a poem about getting older, about acceptance of time, they way things changes also as much as nothing changes depending on the sales you use to look at the world, how our world are built on shifting or “unpredictable sand”. How this realisation can hit at any time.

And it’s the realisation I think that important to the poem. Twice we get references to pennies dropping (I don’t need to labour the description here, do I?), and twice we get realisations. Firstly, about the challenges of life, that no one is “winning here”, and secondly that in the face of time we can choose to accept all of this; that we can learn to live with it.

I’ve not even got to the lovely rhymes within the poem, but you can see and hear them in your head for yourself above.

I think the above might just be the most philosophical thing that has ever come out of Mundesley.

Some Parish notices

I think I’ve now booked a couple of gigs for 2026, so firstly, a reminder about some gigs coming up in 2025.

There’s a Rogue Strands evening on 22nd of October at The Devereux. The evening will feature readings from Hannah Copley, Fiona Larkin, Jonathan Davidson, Philip Hancock, that Stewart bloke and me. Do come through; what an ace line up this promises to be.

Finally, for 2025 (So far), I’m back in Canterbury for the Canterbury Festival to read with Barry Fentiman Hall, Jessica Taggart Rose, Maggie Harris, Katy Evans-Bush, Rosie Johnston, Connor Sansby, and Poppy Cockburn. Thanks to Christopher Horton for organising, and hopefully we can convince him to read to.

I think I’d better stop here

* buying a birthday card for my niece, random fact fans. She’s called Amelie, not Random Fact Fans – that would make my brother a cruel man.
** I’m often called a cult, etc

Title Giveaway

The film of the poem of the musical
Woking Title
Sumer is Vacuumin
For Whom The Toll Roads
Beryl, My Heart’s At Wounded Knee

Songs that seems appropriate

The Kipper Family. I couldn’t get a Mundesley song, but this is from Cromer which is just cup the road. The Kipper Family’s All On The Shore mentions Overstrand, but I can’t find it online. Mundesley is just a bit further along the Norfolk coast from Cromer and Overstrand…Coincidentally, Lewis used to put on his TOAST nights in Norwich Arts Centre..which is where I used to see The Kipper Family…

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 30k (been bit busy)
Workouts: 0
Walks: 2
Yoga: 0
Days without alcohol: 0
Days without cigarettes: 1
Bouts of Insomnia: 3 (I think)

LIFE STATS
1 x trip to Wing Yip
Way too much food ordered
1 x trip to Dunelm
1x trip to Ikea
8 x focus groups
1 x drop off for wife and child at East Croydon
1 x MOT
1 x reading @ Chener Books (Kath Gray, Tamar Yoseloff, Sarah Corbett)
1x afternoon of people-watching
1 x drive to Liverpool and back to drop child off at uni
1 x meal on Lark Lane with Rachael
1 x family breakfast on Lark Lane
6 x loops round Sefton Park
1 x child left at university
1 x 6 hour drive back from Liverpool in the pouring rain
1x take away curry
1 x daughter turning 19
 1 x curry with some friends

POET STATS
Notes for poems: Policy wonks, Sugru, Correspondence Maps
Worked on: Caravaggio & Candles
Finished/In the Drawer: New Skeleton Dance
Submissions: The Manchester Review
Rejections: 0
Total Poems Out: 28
Acceptances: 0
Withdrawn:0
Longlisted: 0 
Books sold: 0
Readings: 1 x Attended
Friends Poems Looked At: 1

REVIEWS
Review finished:
Reviews started:
Reviews submitted:
Reviews to write: 1

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
The Cave Singers: Naomi 
Amber Arcade’s; Barefoot on Diamond Road
Angel Olsen: All Mirrors
Animal Collective: Centipede Hz
 Anjali: ST, World of Lady A
Arthur Russell: Another Thought
Arlet: Clearing Another Sunny Day: London Weekend
Seren Poetry Podcast: Vanessa Lampert
Poems We Made Along The Way: Deryn-Rhys Jones, Katie Hale, Lewis Buxton (P)
The National: Rome  Andrew Bird: Are You Serious
The Afghan Whigs: Gentlemen, Live At Bowery Ballroom 2012
 Baden Powell: Tristeza On Guitar 
Alexandre Desplat: The Tree of Life OST
 Explosions In The Sky: End, Live 
Modest Mouse: The Moon & Antarctica
Blood Orange: Essex Honey
Superchunk: Songs In The Key of Yikes
The Minus Five: Oar On, Penelope 
The Felice Brothers: Tonight At the Arizona 
Unwed Sailor: Truth or Consequences
LYR: The Ultraviolet Age, An Unnatural History 
Warpaint: Heads Up 
Chick Graning: MT 
The Monkees: Headquarters
 Luke Haines & Peter Buck: Going Down To The River..To Blow My Mind
 Luke Haines: I Dream of Glue
Elvin Bishop: Rock My Soul
 The Stranglers : The Raven
Suede: Autofiction, BloodSports
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists: Living With the Living
The Teardrop Explodes: Kilimanjaro
Kenny Rankin: Mind-Dusters
 Sviatosolav Richter Beethoven Sonatas (The Lost Tapes)
 Van Morrison: Veedon Fleece  
Arseblog Podcast: Injuries  (p)
Cassandra Jenkins: My Light, My Destroyer
Rilo Kiley: The Execution of All Things
Baltic Fleet: ST
Suede: Antidepressants
Blue Hour Radio 
Big Thief; Double Infinity
Case Oats: Last Missouri Exit
Kathleen Edwards: Billionaire
 Beirut: Gulag Orkestar 
My Morning Jacket: ST, Okonokos, Is
Horace Silver Quintet: The Silver Vibe 
Mstislav Rostropovich: Dvořak Cello Concertos
Thee Oh Sees; Abomination Revealed At Last
Red River Dialect: Abundance welcoming Ghosts
Victorian English Gentleman’s Club: ST
The National: Rome, Trouble Will Find Me, Black Sessions
Margo Price: Hard Headed Woman
SG Goodman, Teeth Marks,. Planting By the Signs, Old Time Feeling 
Nathan Salsburg: Landwerk
Suburban Lanws: ST
Michael Hurley: Broken Homes & Gardens
 The Archers (p)
Wayne Shorter: North Sea Jazz Legendary Concerts
Neko Case: The Worse Things Get…The Tigers Have Spoken, Blacklisted
Buffalo Tom: Jump Rope
Ride; interplay
Warrington Runcorn
Moonlit Sailor: Colors in Stereo, A Footprint of Feelings, So Close to Life
Mark Eitzel: 60 Watt Silver Lining
Four Tet & William Tyler: 41 Longfield Street Late 80s
Joan Shelley: Real Warmth
Deep Throat Choir: be Ok, In Order To Know You, 3Am

Read
Sarah Corbett: A Perfect Mirror  
Hannah Copley: Speculum
Fiona Larkin: Vital Capacity
Rebecca Goss: Keeping Houston Time
Opening Line: Broken Sleep Anthology
Orbis 208  
North
Suzanna Fitzpatrick: Crippled
Split Screen: Poems inspired by TV and Film

Watched
The Handmaid’s Tale
Deadpool Vs Wolverine
Foundation  
Nottingham Forest VS West Ham
Liverpool Vs Arsenal
Aston Villa Vs. Crystal Palace
The Wire
Confessions of a Brain Surgeon
Handmade In Japan: Samurai Sword
I Fought The Law
Task
Coldwater

Ordered/Bought
Fiona Larkin X 2 
North  
Sarah Corbett: The Ishtar Gate
Tamar Yoseloff: Belief Systems
Laptop cover
Laptop Insurance
Ian Parks: The Sons of Darkness….
Siegfried Babar: the Twice Turned Earth
Frogmore Papers
Andrew Neilson: Summers Are Other

Lodge (49) some dates in your memory

24/08/2025 / Mat Riches / 2 Comments

No poem this time, so more of a proof of life and self-promotional post.

Firstly, my review of Robin Houghton‘s The Mayday Diaries was published this week via Ink Sweat & Tears. I thank them for letting me go over on the word count, and my thanks to Robin for asking me to review the book. Spooky connection, we’ve been watching The Handmaid’s Tale recently and so references to Mayday keep cropping up.

(Christ, that’s loose even for me).

How about some gigs to promote.

I’m very happy to announce a new Rogue Strands evening on 22nd of October at The Devereux. The evening will feature readings from Hannah Copley, Fiona Larkin, Jonathan Davidson, Philip Hancock, that Stewart bloke and me. Do come through; what an ace line up this promises to be.

Finally, for 2025 (So far), I’m back in Canterbury for the Canterbury Festival to read with Barry Fentiman Hall, Jessica Taggart Rose, Maggie Harris, Katy Evans-Bush, Rosie Johnston, Connor Sansby, and Poppy Cockburn. Thanks to Christopher Horton for organising, and hopefully we can convince him to read to.

I might have T-shirts printed for this mini tour. I’m ready to check for brown M&Ms.

In other news

I’ve recently finished watching Lodge 49 on the ITVXs. Sadly it was cancelled after two series. While it has nothing to do with poetry per se, I liked that one character was going to writing classes, and the odd reference to poetry popped up.

In a week where a couple of rejections have come in and I’ve also sent a few poems out, this scene from the show popped into my head. I recall taking these pictures having deliberately turned the subtitles on.

A poem for the week

As I say, no poem this time. I was going to ask Sarah Corbett for permission to post her poem ‘View of a Badger on the Heights Road’ from her collection, A Perfect Mirror, but I didn’t get round to asking. However, here’s part of the first stanza.

It looks like a clean death, curled as you are
on the verge, almost relaxed, paws folded
over each other, head turned to the side.
Not a trace of earth on you, killed on a night
walk, perhaps, on this treacherous moor road.

++++
I wanted to post this poem because a week or so ago Rachael and I were driving down to Dungeness and I saw a badger on the side of the road (M20, I think) that looked like someone had just pushed over a taxidermied badger. It looked stiff, but untouched.

I was doing some quality Sunday driving, but still didn’t properly register it, so I sort of forgot about the badger until later that night when I picked out my copy of A Perfect Mirror from my TBR* pile. Well, blass me, thass a rumun‘ (Ask a person from Norfolk) I thought when I saw the aforementioned poem on page 15.

Anyhoo, I can’t share the rest, but what a coincidence.

*I suspect I was more alive to seeing Sarah’s book having recently booked a ticket to see her read with Kathryn Gray and Tamar Yoseloff at Chener Books in September.

Title Giveaway

Gud’by to Jon
Wichita Linesman

Songs that seems appropriate

Julian Cope, Paranormal In The West Country Medley (contains a lyric about Sunday Driving seven days a week)

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 34k
Workouts: 0
Walks: 2
Yoga: 0
Days without alcohol: 0
Days without cigarettes: 1
Bouts of Insomnia: 1 (I think)

LIFE STATS
1 x batch of Tomato Chilli Jam
3 x jars of it
1 x trip to Gatwick to collect Flo at midnight on a Tuesday
4 x focus groups
1 x A Level results
1 x celebratory breakfast
1 x leaving do
1 x BBQ at friends
1 x trip to Poetry Library
1 x work away day

POET STATS
Notes for poems: Correspondence Maps, House of Cards
Worked on: Caravaggio & Candles, Skeleton Dance, Slinky, A House of Cards, Sandpit, Area 51
Finished/In the Drawer:
Submissions: Bad Lillies, Dust
Rejections: Acumen
Total Poems Out: 22
Acceptances: 0
Withdrawn:0
Longlisted: 0 
Books sold: 0
Readings: 1 x Attended
Friends Poems Looked At: 2

REVIEWS
Review finished:
Reviews started:
Reviews submitted:
Reviews to write: 0

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Acid Dad: ST
Half Man Half Biscuit: get Your Fucking Hedge Cut, The Voltarol years
 Goat: Fuzzed In Europe, Goat
My Morning Jacket: 2025 bootlegs, Z
C Duncan: Architect
Jesus Army Cult Podcast (P)
The Archers (P)
Arseblog: Various (P)
Sheila Jordan: Portrait Of Sheila
Poems we made along the way: Daniel Sluman, Anthony Anaxagorou (p)
Radiohead: A Moon Shaped Pool, Hail To the Thief Live
Man U Vs Arsenal 
Patty Waters: Sings
Steve Gunn: Music For Writers 
The New Eves: ST
The Lemonheads: Car Button Cloth, It’s a Shame About Ray, Come On Feel the Lemonheads
 The Cure: Songs of a Lost World
Mercury Rev: Deserter’s Songs
 Cass McCombs: A
Minnie Ripperton; Adventures In Paradise
Daughter Of Swords:Alex
Eddie Kendricks: All of Me
Dorothy Ashby: Afro-Harping
 Pia Fraus: After Summer
Mary Halvorson: Amaryllis
Drive-By Truckers: American Band
Daniel Avery: More Truth 
John Surman: Morning Glory
Issam Hajali: Mouasalat Ila Jacad Ard
Reverie Sound Revue: ST
Ride: Smile
Dropsonde Playlist
Darren Hayman: Amazing Things
Frank Skinner poetry podcast: Rebecca Goss
That’s The Way I Remember It; Sg Goodman (P) 
Emit Rhodes: The Emit Rhodes Recordings
 A House: On Our Big Fat Merry Go Round 
Arsenal Vs Leeds 
Adem: Love & Other Planets
 Aldous Harding: ST
Alice Rose: While The Moss Redeems The Stone
 El Ten Eleven: The Promises Are Being Videotaped 
Dean Wareham: That’s the Price of Loving Me 
Freddie Hubbard: Super Blue
 Sea Power: Open Season
 Death Cab For Cutie: Narrow Stairs

Read
Sarah Corbett: A Perfect Mirror
 Fiona Larkin: Ropes of Sand

Watched
The Handmaid’s Tale 
Materialists
 Liverpool Vs Bournemouth
Alien: Earth
 Cult of the Jesus Army
Foundation
TOTP 1977

Ordered/Bought
Stone Club Membership 
Jeans
North
M.R Peacocke: Selves
Dark Horse

A Chicken in the lighthouse

10/08/2025 / Mat Riches / 1 Comment

I was listening to Mimi Klavarti yesterday. I was cutting my hedge, she was talking on the excellent Poems We Made Along The Way podcast. She was talking about writing constraints,a nd how they can help to open up creativity rather than constrict it. Have a listen (and to the back catalogue – they’re all great). I’m not sure this is what she had in mind, but I’m going with a self-imposed time constraint. I hope to finish this in the time it takes me to roast a chicken for dinner.

Ok, the chicken is the oven. We have an hour and 20 mins…go.

First, a quick update. Flo and I went to Norfolk for our annual shindig in Worstead. I was asked to read a few poems from CtD one evening round a campfire. It was lovely to be asked. It reiterated how nerve-wracking it is to read to family and friends. Being a bit pissed and it being dark didn’t help. My reading also set three others off reading too, so here’s to next year’s official poetry circle at the Worstead Festival.

Rachael and I went back to Norfolk the following weekend for my Godfather’s 80th birthday do/to celebrate his 50th Wedding anniversary. Chris is mentioned in CtD.

Flo is off travelling. More on that anon.

There’s a loose lighthouse theme to this week…And you know how I like a vague/tenuous connection.

Earlier in the week the writer Luke Turner posted a link on BlueSky to a documentary about lighthouses on YouTube.

I’ve not watched it yet, but I want to soon as my Granddad on my mum’s side worked for Trinity House, so this feels like a nice family-ish connection. I replied to Luke to see if he knew about the book Lighthouse by Tony Parker

Sketch of a lighthouse at sea. LIGHTHOUSE written in black lettering at the top, with TONY PARKER underneath — My copy of Tony Parker’s Lighthouse

QUICK, TURN THE CHICKEN OVER!!

I think I was made aware of this book years ago by one of Joe Moran’s books. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it here before too.

Anyhoo, so far so so so…

Earlier in the week I’d been made aware of a series of readings by a new poetry collective called Femina Culpa. The three ladies behind it were reading round London and one such reading included a reading at Bethlem Museum of the Mind which is just down the road from me. My friend Ellie works at Bethlem, and I can’t not attend a poetry event that is that close to home.

All three readers read amazing tales and stories of women from the past and how they’ve suffered mental illness issues/made to suffer because of this. Check out Emma McKervey, Linda MCKenna and Milena Williamson.

When I left the reading (to go and get the chicken, etc) I had a quick peak round a gallery of artwork by previous residents at Bethlem. I noticed this.

And yes, it’s the same Tony Parker.

Today, R and I are just back from away trip to Dungeness where I took this photo. I’d forgotten there would be a lighthouse down there…Weird city, man…

A black and white lighthouse against a blue sky

Enough of this…Give us a poem, Mat…

A poem for you

I mentioned earlier that Flo is away. She’s in Seville with her boyfriend for a long weekend. They are, I believe, melting in the 40 degree heat there, but having a lovely time. Flo’s been to a few places we all went to as a family a few years ago, and it’s making me feel all wistful that’s she’s growing up and away and being independent.   She asked us for the name of a Pastel De Nata place we’d been too, and while i couldn’t remember it, I managed to track it down via a photo on my phone and the location. Ain’t technology grand?   We’ve also been able to see where she is via Live 360. This is at her request rather than any intrusive tracking thing on our part.

Anyhoo, all of this put me in mind of the poem below.

Device

That dream of a daughter’s early life,
its wake of sleepless, grey mornings
to this night where I track your outbound flight

from Heathrow to St Petersburg.
You’re leaving by degrees. It’s alright
these days for grown men to cry

at photographs, old toys, what’s left behind.
And, sometimes, when I can’t sleep I rise
and in the early morning light I walk

through the bedlam of your bedroom,
to see if I might find those days
in this device I charge to bring you close.

An App, you’d say, if I could fetch you back
to bear what love and opened space have made.
You packed in half an hour, left this trace

and time to hold you in my hand —
a phone, this line and a man, for all his life,
tied to where you fly, where you land.

++++++++Shared with permission of the poet. Taken from Where Grown Men Go By Michael Brown, Salt Publishing, 2019. The books seems to be out of print/not available via Salt, but a copy can be sourced here via a independent bookshop. Other options are, of course, available.

What a lovely poem. I met Michael for the first time last year when he kindly stepped into read a at Harry Man’s reading at Torriano. He read some excellent poems, and I bought the aforementioned book and another from him. We had some excellent boozes afterwards and he told me all about his work on the excellent John Glenday. I think that is all done now, and I’m still keen to read it.

(Spooky, I’ve just looked for a website for Michael and found this. Wrong person, but it includes the lines “He completed Meet Me At The Harbour whilst staying in his favourite place in the world, Charlestown, Cornwall, and in lighthouses owned by Trinity House”. You cannot make this shit up. Well, you can, but it would be thrown to of court).

Back to the poem, Mat..

Given this was written before 2019 or so, it’s interesting how prescient it is. I suspect tracking and the like has come on a long way since then. And there are questions to be asked about how much we should know about people’s movements, etc, but I love the tenderness of this, the way it covers a daughter’s life time from birth to the present (circa 18, I’m guessing) in 3 lines before throwing a parent’s dilemma in.

“You’re leaving by degrees” is an absolute gut punch for any parent that has watched their child grow up and away to do their own thing. The line break at line 2 of the second stanza adds extra weight before the last line of stanza.

“It’s alright / these days for grown men to cry // at photographs, old toys, what’s left behind.” adds an interesting discussion about masculinity and parenting styles that I’m getting into here, but let’s just say I whole-heartedly agree with the lines, and often find myself weeping a these things (and more).

While Michael talks of flight tracking via na App, I feel like it could now apply to the location tracking that we use (sparingly) as well as the flight tracker.

Is it a bit much to suggest that “leaving by degrees” is loosely followed by lengthening sentence structure, as if the apron strings are getting longer??? Probably way too much, so we won’t dwell on it.

We have to have a moment here for the final rhyme in the last stanza of “hand” and “land”, the way that adds to the punch where previously there had only really been internal rhymes and some half-rhymed end lines (alright, rise for example).

Where Grown Men Go is a beautiful collection, and I’d urge you to get it, and more of Michael’s work. I’m very grateful to Michael for permission to share this poem and to it being the perfect accompaniment to my current fears about Flo travelling.

And as this comes ahead of A-Level decision making next week for her, it’s even more pertinent…Oh god…Is it any wonder I drink?

It makes me think of the last lines of another poem in the collection. Taken from ‘Water Lillies”

I want you to stay
like this. In the time
that remains before the train —
I must hold, hold this.

Right, I’m off for a weep (and to check the chicken).

Ok, the post was written in time, but not “typeset”, so I’m calling it a draw between me and the chicken. NB The only reason we’re having a roast chicken is because Flo’s not here. She’s stated that we aren’t allowed roasts until October. As my mum used to say, “When I get my own home I’ll be able to do what I like…”. Please note Mum’s not dead, she just stopped saying it.

Title Giveaway

Glace Cherries
Chicken is a game we play
Baba Ganoush
Gaba Banoush

Songs that seems appropriate

Tenuous at best, but ace

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

HEALTH STATS
Runs: 20k
Workouts: 0
Walks: 1 (6.5k)
Yoga: 0
Days without alcohol: 0
Days without cigarettes: 1
Bouts of Insomnia: 1 (I think)

LIFE STATS
1 x meal to celebrate my friend’s post grad
1x trip to see Midsummer Nights Dream
1 x child in Malia
1 child in Seville (same child)
1 x drive to Stansted to collect said child
1 x meat thermometer accidentally set fire to
Inbox count currently:  105
2 x drive to Norfolk and back
5 x late nights
1 x new starter at work
1 x colleague leaving
1 x 80th Birthday party
1x trip to Dungeness
1 x fish and chips

POET STATS
Notes for poems:
Worked on: The day before the flight home, The new skeleton dance,Dead bird in the kitchen, Reaping, Motivation, Slinky, In the freezer, England, Maybe let the monkeys sit this one out, Caravaggio and candles
Finished/In the Drawer: England (now called Manners Cost Nothing, Dead Bird In The Kitchen
Submissions: Poetry Ireland Review, Finished Creatures
Rejections: 0
Total Poems Out: 22
Acceptances: 0
Withdrawn:0
Longlisted: 0 
Books sold: 0
Readings: 1 x Attended
Friends Poems Looked At: 2

REVIEWS
Review finished:
Reviews started:
Reviews submitted:
Reviews to write: 0

READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC

Music
r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
The Poppies: Lullaby of Love
Crescent: Resin Pockets
Ruby Gill: Some kind of Control
The Verb: Fiona Benson, Alison Binney etc (P_
Talkhouse: Aaron Dessen & Julien Baker, Philip Selway & Dave Rowntree (P)
The Archers (P)
My Morning Jacket: various live bootlegs, Circutial, Evil Urges, It Still Moves
Pearl Jam: Various Live bootlegs, No Code, Riot Act
The Pop Group: For How Much Longer Will We Tolerate Mass Murder
Natalie Bergman: My Home is Not in this World
The National: Rome
Bilie Marten: Dog Eared
The Weather Station: Humanhood
Matt Berninger: Get Sunk
Suede: Night Thoughts, ST
Sugarplum Fairies: Chinese Leftovers
The Staves: All Now, Dead & Born & Grown, Good Woman
Lightships: Electric Cables
Laura Marking: Patterns In Repeat
The Milkshakes: Fourteen Rhythm & Beat Greats
Field Music: Tones of Town
Cassandra Jenkins: My Light, My Destroyer
Hidden Treasures: An alternative to suicide (p)
The Ethics: the Best of…
Can: Future Days
The National: Rome, Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers
Deep Sea Dover: Billboard Heart
The Rain Parade: Emergency Third Rail Power Trip
The Reds, Pinks and Purples: The Past Is A Garden I Never Fed
Sun Ra: Jazz By Sun Ra
Echo & the Bunnymen: Crocodiles
Aphex Twin: Come To Daddy, Richard D. James Album
The Cure; ST, Disintegration
Captain Beefheart & Magic Band: Doc at the Radar Station
Diane Cluck: Common Wealth
Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell
Kenny Dorham: Quiet Kenny
Electrelane: the Power Out
Human Subject; Various eps (P)
In Detail: The Jesus Army Cult x 2 eps (P)
Eleanor Friedberger: Last Summer
The Durutti Column: Tempus Fugit, Sunlight To Blue, Time Was Gigantic, Vini Reilly
Barbara McNair: Here I Am
Faith No More: King For A Day…Fool For A Lifetime
Craig Finn: Almost Been
Cowboy Junkies: Ghosts
Black Sabbath: Paranoid
The Avett Brothers: True Sadness
Aphex Twin: Drukqs
American Analog Set: The Golden Band
Arseblog (p)
American Music Club: California
The Amboy Dukes: Journey To The Center
Ambulance Ltd: LP
S.G Goodman: Planting by the Signs, Teeth Mark, Old Time Feeling
Scarce: Deadsexy
The Innocence Mission: MidWinter Swimmers, Glow
The Wedding Present: 24 Songs, Watusi
Teenage Fanclub: Endlesss Arcade
This Is the Kit:Careful of Your Keepers
Tall Ships: Everything Touching, Impressions, Nothing But Chemistry
Poems we made along the way: Mimi Khalvarti (p)
Yeah Yeah Noh: Leicester Square
Al Olender: Easy Crier

Read
Kim Moore: All The Men I Never Married
PBLJ 11
Lorraine Mariner: Bye For Now
Sarah Westcott: Bloom
|Poetry Wales
Andy Jackson: Games Night
Jonathan Davidson: Early Train
John Stammers: Panoramic Lounge Bar

Watched
The Handmaid’s Tale 
Bookish (Shite!!) 
Lodge 49
Karen Pirie
Game of Thrones
Under The Bridge  Such Brave Girls

Ordered/Bought
A Meat Thermometer to replace the one I accidentally set fire to
 1 x plane ticket to get a sick child home from Malia
Armitage pamphlet
Toothbrush heads
Poetry Wales  
Lewis Buxton: Mate Arias
Richard Meier x 2

A song that seems appropriate

Title Giveaway

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

A song that seems appropriate

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

A poem please, Matthew

A song that seems appropriate

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

A poem please, Matthew

Title Giveaway

A song that seems appropriate

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

A poem please, Matthew

Title Giveaway

A song that seems appropriate

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

Title Giveaway

A song that seems appropriate

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

Shall we have a poem

Title Giveaway

A song that seems appropriate

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

Stop pissing about, Mat…Get to the poem

Some Parish notices

Title Giveaway

Songs that seems appropriate

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

In other news

A poem for the week

Title Giveaway

Songs that seems appropriate

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

A poem for you

Title Giveaway

Songs that seems appropriate

THE LAST **Coughs** WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS

THE LAST Coughs WEEKS IN STATS