Assorted news and links

Theres a new poem of mine up on Fevers of the Mind. Its called Failed Hypothesis,go here to read it.
I love these cold clear winter days. Heres a photo I took yesterday by the harbour:

If you’re writing anything in any capacity you should take some time to read this amazing essay by Kali Wallace. It’s something I’ve touched on before, the pressure to keep working, but articulated so beautifully and painfully

Write something else. Write it faster. And network more, because those failures are your fault. You don’t follow enough writers on Twitter. You don’t read enough agent newsletters. You don’t go to enough conventions. You don’t know the right people.

Oof.

Philip Levine reads Let Me Begin Again. Just a stunning poem.
On poetry, here’s readings from the recent T. S. Eliot prize. UK poetry is in a great space at the moment.

Posters

I love walking past the Arnolfini every day, because I see things like this.

Posters by Kameelah Janan Rasheed for In Between Time

Upfest

Houses have faded to grey. Colour slumbers.
We drag our feet down monochrome
streets, blinded by persistent monotony,
unable to see the edge of the pavement
or the bricks of the walls surrounding us.
Corners are indistinct. We see only lead,
tarmac and endless concrete, nothing more.

Guided by gentle hands, faces emerge out of walls,
fences, telephone boxes and empty billboards
developing slowly, like a photographic negative,
thriving like flowers in the cracks and ignored spaces,
bending and yearning and opening to the light.
They smile down on us, ghosts of those
who never were, newly appointed guardians
of the neighbourhood for the next year.

They bring sweet saturation and strange patterns,
cover the pavements in galaxies of paint flecks
grow bright petals over doorways and windows,
so we can see the buildings that surround us,
and for a few moments we can laugh and dance,
submerged in a new flood of technicolour.