Mix of material
Pedro Pascal, an online poetry reading, some recommendations, sunrises, recent work, and would you like me to mentor you?
An offer first. I’m not mentoring anyone right now so if you’re looking for regular catch ups with someone who writes commercially and artistically and has made all the mistakes you can imagine, then here I am.
You have the answers inside you, I’d be happy to help bring them out.
Additionally, the most important thing a creative person can do is build a good creative network and I have lots of sweet contacts.
No charge obviously. Drop me a line. Be interesting and interested. Everyone wants to you to succeed, so don’t you dare be shy.
Pedro Pascal. When he’s not teasing you with his beautiful arms, he’s in London sharing, to his millions of followers, a line I wrote.
This is above the London Fire Brigade fire station on Old Street. It comes from a longer piece I wrote for them. Design by Studio Sutherl&.
I’ve really been appreciating …
on Substack. They write about the business of being an artist in a smart, invigorating and inspiring way.Speaking of which, I’m developing plans for my 2026 poetic activity. With some advice from the brilliant Alice Black, ex-Director of the Design Museum and founder of ArtULTRA, I’m planning a series of four literary lectures / magickal happenings based on four of my books – The Supreme Point, myu, Jack and Jill, and Changeling.
These will be similar to the Idyllegy happening from last year. Free tickets. Strange. Poetic. London-based.
This is a direct address to brand owners, potential patrons and Marketing Directors now … I’m looking for a commercial sponsor to be deeply involved in the audience and experience I’m creating. Email me if you’d like to receive a deck outlining more.
Some commissioned writing I’ve been very proud of recently is below for Global Witness. Founded in 1993 to expose the links between environmental destruction, conflict, corruption and human rights abuses, Global Witness does such important work. So it was an honour to be asked to create things for them.
Designed by Something More studio who have rebranded Global Witness, these posters appeared across a London tube campaign and elsewhere. Click to zoom and read.
These lines from the first poster describe the problem we’re up against.
And as you go about your life,
elsewhere,
in their quiet administrative banality,
in their growth growth growth,
in their valuing of shareholders’ returns over all else,
the shadowy mass of profiteers,
the dark gravity of could-not-care-lessers,
the vandalisers of Earth,
continue maximising,
giddy in their money.
I see all the writing I do – commissioned or non-commercial – as one large body of work, and I find those lines I’ve just quoted as being answered both by Global Witness’ extraordinary persistence and investigations, but also by another non-linear group I’m involved in – We Don’t Know What This Is.
Another recommendation first …
‘s book Chapel Perilous – The life and thought crimes of Robert Anton Wilson.Phenomenally researched and very intelligently written, if you’re a fan of Robert Anton Wilson you’ll love this. If you’re not a fan of RAW then you should be and you’ll love this anyway because it’s about living brilliantly.
I believe Gabriel Kennedy has self-published this book and if I have one message to give you before I return to my home planet … it’s buy more self-published books.
We don’t know what this is is a series of solstice and equinox sunrise gatherings on Hackney Marshes we’ve been putting on for a couple of years. It’s a growing entity. It began because David Johnston had a covid fever dream about watching the sunrise from a particular spot on the marshes. We spoke about it and decided what are fever dreams if they’re not explicit instructions to enact immediately.
The next one is on Saturday June 21st, beginning at 4:43am. Turn up and bring your thing.
For the first one I wrote the piece below. As I said earlier, the writing – and the sunrise gatherings in general – are another kind of response to the horrible people ruining everything everywhere.
We don’t know what this is
other than an open call,
a longing, a longing, a longing
to watch the sunrise with friends,
a yearning for light,
a dose of positivity,
the beginning of everything new,
a very human improvisation,
a new City Dionysia,
a Hackney is an energy,
a pomp a pomp a pomp,
an answer to the corporate death cultists
bleeding their shadows over our bliss,
a magical act,
your pulse and summer’s pulse held to each other, boom, boom, boom,
an intoxicating avant-garde gravity,
a manifesto written in mist,
a rushing of the rite of the formless,
quite a lazy pilgrimage,
a delightful vortex of uncertainty,
an imagining,
a faith,
a faith,
a faith in us.
A shout out to Esther rum who – as I mentioned in my last post – are supporting the development of my latest book, a Gnostic Noir called Whistleblowers Get Slimed.
Longtime readers of this Substack will know that I *firmly* believe poetry is much more valuable and interesting and a gas than the official literary-critical complex makes it out to be … so a rum brand as patrons for a long doom-jazz poem about UFOs and detectives is the new Medici for me, you know?
Esther founders Margaret Kerr-Jarrett and Emunah Winer recently celebrated the brand in London at Ask Us For Ideas, who have just launched their own Substack –
.
On June 25th, 7pm UK time, I’m going to do an online reading of my work. Well, I will if there’s enough interest. Tickets are free and from here.
I’ll read poetry and talk about writing. Feel free to send me requests of your favourite things I’ve written.
(Look, I know it’s probably the only thing you like of mine, but keep in mind there’s only so many times I can say ‘love is the running towards’, so do request other stuff.)
If there’s appetite for them, we’ll do questions and I’ll give away prizes.
Last time I did one of these was during early lockdown. That’s the picture below. Fucking hell, remember lockdown?
A reminder that my latest book, Black ribbon, is in its fourth printing. It’s a Symbolist collection. You can buy it from here. There’s a sample poem from it below.
Finally, in one of my commercial positions I’m a sort of roving Creative Director for a brand I won’t name just yet. I have an idea of trying to flow money to great Substack writers by supporting interesting pieces on here and paying the authors to include them in the brand’s in-store newspaper. Full credit and promo of the Substack included of course.
What do you think of the idea? Can you tell me about the best Substack pieces you’ve read recently? Not necessarily the mega-viral ones, more those smaller, stranger ones that deserve to be read offline as well.
Someone Driving after eleven at night, yearning longfields blackened both sides like this back road took the wings of a predatory drifter. Driving back from a remote restaurant through unsettled, hanging on country, with a Saint-Saëns concert – that took place in the city this evening – tuned in low. Dark interior barely filled. I am lonely and uncivilised despite the car and lingering taste of meat and the music. Anything might happen, anything appearing at the edge of the tetchy light tempting me along. Past a house it would be terrifying and strange to live in – though someone’s ok with it I suppose. Hard to believe this is it. The short-scene road sounds smooth – another someone worked out the perfect mix of stone material once. Driving lonely and uncivilised. Hard to believe this is it.
I’m much more grey and grizzled now, by the way, than that lockdown photo. That’s what six years of poetry will do to you. Don’t want to shock you if you tune into my reading.
Game. Interesting and interested! ;) x