Bill Herbert
@billherbert
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Bill Herbert is mostly published by Bloodaxe Books. He was Dundee’s first Makar, or city laureate, and is an emeritus professor of Newcastle University.
Newcastle upon Tyne
Joined November 2010
I wrote this #Tanka in Crete in June, but as I’m back now and visiting my mother, it came to mind:. Now and then, as now,.waking, I dream I hear.my father’s voice downstairs. We wake as if from childhood,.before the knowledge of loss. #TheEphemeral #TheGreatIsland #SummerRenga.
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I mean the folk are on their motorbikes not their flocks which would be a phenomenon worthy of @aardman.
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Man on his moped.pauses to chat with a sheep.its chin on his knee. (Often folk herd their flock along lanes on their motorbikes, but in this instance we were driving past and the actual shepherd turned up a few seconds later.). #TheEphemeral #SummerRenga #Haiku #TheGreatIsland.
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RT @GBClarkson: Out of the blue -- to me! 😊 -- I have a new chapbook of 17 poems coming soon from @ShearsmanBooks, with some of the poems….
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I keep forgetting to post my daily #Haiku but they stack up happily nonetheless: here be some mammals amid the many insects. We rootle round in.the αποθήκη: the bat.exits into day. (The apothiki’s what we call the garden shed as it’s made of stone.). #TheEphemeral #SummerRenga.
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RT @Anneebai: MY Poem ‘LIving Room’ in @FurniturePoetry TODAY - Hurray!!! Thanks So Much @billherbert :
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RT @bellacaledonia: At the Canongate Wall by Kathleen Jamie reflects on the role of poetry, and women poets in the process towards devoluti….
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‘…there being no angle, no changed perspective, no room for an additional point of view.’. I really like how @Anneebai turns this living room into its exact opposite: following a death, it becomes a shrine of sorts to an absence, grief as stasis. #GhostFurnitureCatalogue (2/2).
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‘A nicotine stain ran up the chimney breast on a pattern of big blue and white flowers next to a narrow arched mirror with a bevelled edge, which hung directly opposite a similar mirror on the back wall above the sideboard. Each showed a replica of the other…’. @Anneebai (1/2).
A little later this week in posting - we hope you didn’t stay in all day waiting for delivery… . Anne Bailey returns with a prose poem focussing on the unchanging and yet not eternal living room:. #GhostFurnitureCatalogue.
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‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;.They inhale us using siphons just for kicks.’. #KingLear (IV:I; ll.37–38).
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Night radio, Crete:.bees’ buzz and last cicadas.give way to crickets. The scops owl boops and dogs bark:.these are my chimes, says midnight. #TheEphemeral #SummerRenga #Tanka #TheGreatIsland.
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To celebrate Chute Records Thirty Three and a Third anniversary we are delighted and excited to announce that both Spare Snare and The Grand Gestures shall both be playing for two nights .@VADundee, 7th and 8th July 2025. Tickets here:
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Nearly forgot to report my nightly view (for now):. A gap in the vine,.honeysuckle, and jasmine,.frames the gibbous Moon. #TheEphemeral #SummerRenga #Haiku.
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RT @Malikabooker: Prompt-A-Mannia (the one day online poetry writing retreat) is back on Sat 26th and Sun 27th July 10am - 4.30pm. https://….
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.@HelenMort’s sonnet subtly undermines the authority of all would-be steersmen:. Outside, water outstrips the watermark. The tigers line up with the quivering deer. and at the helm, a man who thinks he’s spared.stands in each parable and steers the ship. #EcoSonnetChain.
Our eleventh poem in the #EcoSonnetChain is by @HelenMort and deploys the motif of the Ark to powerful effect - the last few lines in particular take a moving, unpredictable turn:. #NewBootsAndPantisocracies.
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Ear piercing:.
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RT @FurniturePoetry: @billherbert ‘All the furniture has sprouted new green growth, many chairs have already got leaves, small, fragile lea….
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I have indeed been re-reading #LeonoraCarrington’s fiction, as I was bought The Complete Stories (I already had all the @ViragoBooks editions, but the giver forgot this). I think they re-bought me the novels last year, and so my library continues to assemble its ghostly double….
@billherbert Might this be where that leaf came from?. ‘Listen, the chairs in this room are very old… Last week I saw a little green bud on one of these old chairs, the kind that appears on trees in the spring. And now… how horrible… it has become a leaf…’. #LeonoraCarrington (1/2).
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This second paragraph wd tempt you* down the #FoundPoetry route:. ‘Bizarrely, there were also two grand pianos, one on top of the other, and inside the top piano they found a score for a piece “Vexations” with an instruction: “Repeat 840 times”.’. #Satie @clementswriting (2/2).
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