Face sculptures

I've seen many public artworks that are big heads. I've seen several that are faces (or masks, or even deathmasks I suppose). My favourites are like this one that I saw last weekend in Burghley gardens, with holes instead of eyes.

Here's what goes on behind the mask. Depending on the light conditions you can see another face.

This is in the middle of Krakow. It's called "Eros bound" - the face has bandages around it. Two people can put their faces in the eyeholes and be photographed.

CB1 Poetry, May 2026

The headline act was Lindsay Fursland, a local poet and regular CB1 attendee who won second place in the Bridport Poetry Prize 2025. Why hasn't he had a book/pamphlet published? I think his best pieces tend to be witty and longer than a page, which isn't popular. And maybe the variety of his work makes him difficult to brand/market.

Among the open-mics were first-timers, performance poets, and people like Anne Berkeley and Jane Monson who've had a few books published. I read an old piece which I heavily revised prior to reading it out (and revised again at the venue). I think the modifications have made it a better on-the-page piece.

Verse Festival Poetry Forum, Stamford - self-publishing

2nd May - Poet Ross Ayres, poet Philip Dunkerley, and novelist and short-story writer Helen Claire Gould, plus panel chair columnist and broadcaster Pete (Cardinal) Cox discussed some of the many self-publishing options available. The meeting was in the Art Room, which had an interesting set of drawers - I was tempted to look at the unclaimed pieces.

Philip Dunkerley said that nearly all the poems in his books had been published elsewhere, peer-reviewed. His 80-page books work out at £3.17 each from lulu, PoD. Economies of scale kick in with postage - 50 books cost £15.99 to deliver. Sometimes he sells the books to raise money for charities, getting over £1000/book.

All the writers said that it's difficult to proof-read one's own work. Ross Ayres said that he uses chatgpt to help with his proof-reading.

AI wasn't recommended for creating cover illustrations - the results are never quite right, and little changes require long dialogs.

There was some talk about marketing. The majority of the panel weren't too concerned about selling copies - they produced books so that they had something to give to friends, or take to their readings.

Cambridge Writing Centre: Short Story Micro-Festival

On 30 April I attended a workshop run by Chris Beckett ("The Turing Test") then listened to a panel discussion with Naomi Wood ("This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things"), Karen Stevens ("Brilliant Blue") and Nicholas Royle (BBSS editor, etc), chaired by Alison MacLeod.

• Naomi Wood said she'd spent 15 years writing novels and failing to write successful short stories before studying examples of the form, which she thought closer to the poem than the novel.
• Nicholas Royle thought that his pieces often began with an idea rather than a character. With the short story he could be experimental without taking too much of a risk.
• Karen Stevens' recent collection has linked stories. She thought intimacy was a characteristic of the form.

I wouldn't disagree with any of these comments. I think the statement about the poetry/story connection needs modernising though. Poetry has "moved on" since there was a UK poetry mainstream where the comparison made more sense. In the US, the situation's murkier still. In what sense is (say) Jorie Graham's poetry more like stories than (say) David Means' novels are?

I think CS Lewis in 1961 was onto something when he wrote "poetry is now more quintessentially poetical than ever before; 'purer' in the negative sense. It not only does (like all good poetry) what prose can't do: it deliberately refrains from doing anything that prose can do" ("An Experiment in Criticism").

Free verse, 2026

I liked the Poetry Society's Free Verse event on April 25th, where dozens of small press publishers had stalls. One of the talks was "AI in Poetry and Translation".

I bought "A Z-hearted guide to heartache" by Charley Barnes (V.press, 2018), "checkout" by Kathy Gee (V.press, 2019), "This Lexia & other languages" by Helen Kay (V.press, 2020), and was given "Patterns in the dust" (Foyles Young Poets of the year anthology, 2025), "Always another twist" by Sarah Leavesley (Mantle Lane Press, 2018), and "Kaleidoscope" by Sarah Leavesley (Mantle Lane Press, 2017).

I popped into the LRB bookshop too, buying "One sun only" by Camille Bordas - short stories (Serpent's tail, 2026).

Pizzas of the world

Spain. Somebody has tried to cross out the Hawaii pizza

South of Dublin

Cambridge

Swanage and history, 2026

Hardy called Swanage Knollsea. In this photo there's a concrete pillbox, crab and lobster pots, and a folly from London. The ships that took Portland stone to London were ballasted with odds and ends for the return journey - bollards, etc.

This "Great Globe", on the edge of Swanage dates from the 1870s. It's about 3m in diameter and was made in Greenwich.

Dancing Ledge is a terrace of rock that's covered at high tide. A cuboid hole was cut into it to make a swimming pool. My mother's school used it to teach the children how to swim. I never saw my mother swim.

When this shop was Woolworths there was a ballroom on the first floor. My parents met there. My cousin owns the shop now. Their storeroom is upstairs.

These Dinosaur prints are in a field far from anywhere.