Poet, and pedestrian
Sheffield, England
Joined October 2013
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During Covid lockdowns my partner and I started taking our daily exercise along Sheffield’s Rivelin valley early in the morning – from 6am to 8.30am. On our walks, we paid attention to life around us – to small creatures, insects and birds.
longbarrowblog.wordpress.com…
If you’ve spent time reading about haiku, you’ve probably heard some confident advice:
Haiku must be 5-7-5.
Haiku has to be about nature.
Haiku can’t use metaphor.
Much of the advice beginners receive is either incomplete, outdated, or simply wrong.
17onji.substack.com/p/5-haik…
Matt retweeted
Still on the wildside wind certainly makes dramatic Sea's
#Seahouses
@NorthEastTweets
Matt retweeted
Obituary of Douglas Dunn by James Campbell: theguardian.com/books/2026/o…
Matt retweeted
"It's cost Americans $1 billion already in excess healthcare costs. So that's in the real world, in this political economy, that is what AI is doing to healthcare."
Ash Sarkar (@ayocaesar) is joined by Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) and Astra Taylor (@astradisastra), to discuss AI and its impact on the economy.
Watch the full episode of Downstream IRL on our YouTube channel.
For days we’d passed through Walkley Cemetery like a portal, but one morning the gates were locked.
There was a large hand-chalked sign which read:
‘TURN AROUND & GO HOME’
You could feel an energy in the emboldened chalk. You could taste it on the air.
longbarrowpress.com/2026/09/…
Raymond Williams’s Resources for Hope
To be radical requires a theory of how this world, for all its problems, contains and is fostering the beginning of another, very different world.
dissentmagazine.org/article/…
No One Today
of my own died. I
did not die. My
love did not. Is intact. I
checked.
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n08/…
~Jorie Graham
An extraordinary poem, from a brilliant collection: KILL/ING/SPR/EE (2026)
Matt retweeted
I only today came across the concept of ‘stigmergy’, an important element in AI’s capacities to change environments, systems and behaviour without being instructed to do so. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigme…
'Utilitarianism is more marked in those with reduced aversion to harming others, lower empathy, emotional blunting, a greater sense of the meaninglessness of life, and greater Machiavellianism.'
~Dr Iain McGilchrist
One of the strangest moments of lockdown: a hand-chalked sign at Walkley Cemetery.
"TURN AROUND AND GO HOME"
The next day the sign was in the mud.
A dog had relieved itself on the words.
From Have You Always Been Here?
longbarrowblog.wordpress.com…
Matt retweeted
It's very hard to reconcile the hateful, bigoted Larkin of the letters with the profound, generous Larkin of the poems. It's as though he poured all of what was best in himself into his work, and reserved all the worst for his private life. That's the right way around, I suppose. – at Cardiff, Wales
I get the chills every time I hear someone use the term 'human capital' in a discourse that involves outcomes for people's lives.
At Nether Cut Wheel
a pre-eminent mallard
ruffles his collar.
A plastic bottle
rotates slowly in the pond –
belches its bubble.
Have You Always Been Here?
longbarrowpress.com/2026/09/…
'All I know is that we are here, and that we are aware of the fact, and that it behooves us to be aware — to pay heed. For we are not objects. That is essential…'
~Ursula Le Guin
themarginalian.org/2026/06/0…
William Blake: A Golden String. A short film with Mark Vernon
'The world of the algorithm was being prepared in Blake's time.'
I love the energy of this!
youtube.com/watch?v=PNVvhX2H…