EXTRA LONG MATCHES, my chapbook about the longest tennis match is out now! A series of visual poems constrained to the 9 lines of the tennis court + the net. It is, ironically, my shortest book. Thanks so much Anthony & Clara @penteractpress . There’s a link to buy a copy for just £4 in my story. #vispo #tennis #tennisart #isner #mahut #longestmatch #visualpoetry #constrainedwriting
I’m proud to have an article on performing code poetry in the Poetry and Contemporary Visual Culture anthology, alongside so much fascinating work. Thank you @magdalena.korecka and Wiebke Vorrath for their hard work in putting this edition together!
I’m delighted to be launching ./code —poetry this Friday 31 March @brokensleepbooks . This book and website (code-poetry.com) is a collaboration with my friend Daniel Holden (@anorangeduck ): a collection of code poems, each written in the source code of a different programming language. Each poem is also a valid program that produces a visual representation of itself when compiled and run. This edition expands on the original 2016 self-published version, with new code poems, descriptions of each code poem and two essays. #codepoetry #digitalpoetry #vispo #visualpoetry #generativepoetry #experimentalpoetry #digitalart
I'm delighted to have two poems in Issue Thirteen of @aswirlzine . The poems are 'Ley Line: Finchley to Leyton' and 'Ley Line: Leytonstone to Purley'.
The English antiquarian Alfred Watkins came up with the pseudoscientific concept of ley lines as straight alignments between points in the landscape in his book The Old Straight Track, published in 1925.
After noticing a street name that had "ley" in it one day in Lambeth, I started wondering how many London street names contain "ley", and if I could map them.
I used the National Street Gazetteer to get an HTML document containing a list of all the streets in each of London's 32 boroughs. I used a Python library BeautifulSoup to extract all "ley" streets. I also calculated a ley index number for each street, which is the number of characters into the street name the substring "ley" begins (starting with 0 for the first character). This allowed me to organise street names according to the position of "ley" within them.
I copied the street data into a Google sheet. Meanwhile, I created a custom Google Map with all the place names that contain "ley" marked on it (for example Wembley, Bromley) and drew lines between them. These would be my ley lines. I imported the street data into the map, colour coding it according to each street's ley index number.
Finally, I read ley poems off this map by following a line between two given place names, noting down the streets that fell on or very near to this line. For example, in the Finchley to Leyton poem, Dudley Road falls on the line near where it starts at Finchley and Chisley Road falls on the line near where it ends at Leyton. As such, these are found poems organised by geography.
Thanks so much to Aswirl editor Robin Boothroyd for publishing these poems! I feel lucky to be published alongside some beautiful work by @pialectics , @lauradavis1709 and many others.
#psychogeography #london #concretepoetry
I was very happy to have a poem published in @abridgedmagazine 0 - 108: Adrenochrome. My poem “LrAlI” explores the myth of the Lorelei, a siren who lured sailors towards her rock on the Rhine. It owes a debt to “Die Lorelei” by Heinrich Heine and “La Loreley” by Apollinaire. This poem contains all the symbols of the periodic table in order, starting with H and He in Heinrich Heine. The Lorelei was also an Italian restaurant in Soho that featured a mural of the siren. The magazine features beautiful photographic artwork by Mark Tamer, and some excellent writing. The issue is also available to read online at abridged.zone. From the editorial of this issue: “Adrenochrome as fact cannot put out the fire of adrenochrome as fiction”.
I’m very happy to have a poem in Issue 53 of the Fib Review, a poetry magazine dedicated to poems in a form constrained by the Fibonnaci sequence. ‘21 Bateman Street’ is part of a series of poems I’m writing about the Lorelei restaurant in Soho and other similar classic cafes. Thank you @musepiepress !
Thanks so much to @unforgottensociety for making this beautiful Lorelei print! It’s lovey to have it framed. I’m working on a collection of poems about the Lorelei, an overlooked Soho institution that opened in the 60s and closed in 2013. It was truly a magical place, and it’s heart-warming to see other artists being inspired by it!
The first day of Wimbledon 2025 on Centre Court. I took my 300mm lens for the first time. Carlos Alcaraz vs Fabio Fognini. Katie Boulter vs Paula Badosa. Arthur Rinderknech vs Alexander Zverev. David Beckham and Gareth Southgate in the Royal Box. Alcaraz took the time to give a water bottle to a spectator who fell ill in the heat.
I took some long exposure photos of the Moon and Venus tonight, with light trails from passing planes. Thanks to @benchedars for the tip off! Two weeks ago, it was the full moon and Mars on a cloudy night.
I tried out my new telephoto lens for the first time today in Richmond Park. We were lucky enough to come across some deer straight away. Pen Ponds were partially frozen, and the deer would happily let birds land on them.
