The Power of Celebrity

About a month ago, Alice Roberts, the famous broadcaster, author and academic, shared my poem, ‘The Last Carry’, on Bluesky. It jumped from 650 to 850 likes in a day. Dozens of people followed me. Was any of this relevant or lasting? Was it just a momentary hit?

Well, I sold several copies of my books on the back of her act, as did HappenStance Press, my publisher. And then those new followers have since struck with me. Moreover, there's one key thing that they have in common: none of them are so-called poetry people. All of them are from beyond the bubble, and now they're all reading the other poems that I post on BlueSky, often engaging with them.

In other words, the power of celebrity is huge when it comes to enabling poetry to reach out beyond the bubble. By simply sharing a poem on social media, famous people are breaking down barriers, inviting their followers to read verse in their daily lives. Of course, we're not proposing pop stars here, but instead cultural figures whose followers might well enjoy written poems if they get over the prejudices that were probably inculcated by Eng Lit GCSE and the dreaded National Curriculum.

This phenomonen may offer us a fresh, additional strategy for promoting the genre. I'd suggest it shouldn't be underrated when institutions are considering how best to promote poetry to a wider audience and readership. If they're actually, seriously, interested in doing so, that is...

Last week's Rogue Strands event in London

Mat and I had a great audience of 35-40 for our Rogue Strands event in London last week. Poets met readers, readers met poets, pints were drunk, books were sold, people were brought together by a shared love of poetry.

It felt ace to have facilitated all that, and we'll be back with more in 2026!

Tim Love on Whatever You Do, Just Don't

Tim Love is a scrupulous reviewer, bringing an analytical, scientific eye to bear on the poetry he tackles. This is why I'm especially chuffed he should have reviewed Whatever You Do, Just Don't so positively on his Litrefs Reviews site (see link here).

A Live Poetry Mix Tape

Back in the day, we used to create mix tapes for our mates. Of course, they were really made up of the music we enjoyed listening to ourselves!

Well, when Mat and I are working out what poets to invite to read with us at Rogue Strands events, it feels like we're generating our own Live Poetry Mix Tapes. We're choosing poets whose poetry we love, who read brilliantly. And we're not doing so just for our audiences, but also for our own, utterly selfish listening pleasure.

This is why I'm so looking forward to our Rogue Strands reading at the Devereux in London next Wednesday, because it's a terrific chance for me (and you!!!) to catch some of the best poets around in the U.K. right now: Jonathan Davidson, Hannah Copley, Fiona Larkin and Philip Hancock (oh, and Mat and me) for your delectation. What's more, it's all free! See you there...?

The use of the passive voice in contemporary poetry

I never say never use a certain device/technique/grammatical structure in a poem, because I believe we need to have access to all the tools in the box. However, we should also be very aware of the ramifications and consquences of our syntactic choices. One such example is the use of the passive voice, which is the focus for today's post. As a reader and an editor, I encounter many poems where the passive voice is employed without the poet apparently being aware of its potential effects.

On the one hand, the passive voice can generate an ambiguity in terms of who or what might be carrying out the action, at least until the poet resolves this issue by defining it. If the poet selects an impersonal passive voice, they should be aware that they are creating implicit questions and doubts for the reader. If they aren't conscious of this fallout, communication may begin to fail.

And on the other hand, the cadence of a sentence or line is often interrupted by a passive voice. It's often surrounded by active verbs, and the necessary inversion of its word order inevitably makes the reader pause. This is fine so long as the poet wants to achieve that effect. Otherwise, it can ruin a poem's flow, especially when invoked as the final lines approach.

In summary, the passive voice too often plays an unintended role when contemporary poetry loses its musical drive and/or semantic clarity. However, when deployed on purpose with a specific aim in mind, it's an extremely useful tool. Something, perhaps, for all of us to ponder next time we sit down in front of a blank piece of paper...

Richard Meier's After the Miracle

My second full collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don't, was supposed to be HappenStance Press' last major publication, though Nell left the door ajar in case something special came up. Well, it did, in the shape of Richard Meier's new book, After the Miracle, out now and born from a huge sense of vital urgency.

In these poems, apparently simple words portray a maelstrom of life events. They provide a lesson in how to meet intense experience head-on, and turn it into art. 

I can't ethically review Richard's book, due to the fact we're now stablemates, but I very much recommend it to you. You can get hold of a copy via the HappenStance webshop (see here). It won't disappoint. 

Tariffs on poetry

I might have expected the wine trade to be affected by tariffs (and it certainly has been), but I didn't bargain for their impact on my poetry sales. Over the last few months, I've found a lot of new readers for my books in the U.S. via social media platfroms such as Bluesky, However, all that's now vanished overnight due to those darned tariffs!

Right now, there's no way to post a book from Europe to the U.S. with any decent guarantee that it will reach its destination safely and without extra charges. A big blow for the likes of me, but also for many small publishers who were already struggling enough before this extra stumbling block...