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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

‘This selection from thirty years of his verse confirms Cutler’s inimitable and indispensable genius.’ #IvorCutler #SelectedPoems #HoorgiΗοuse #NationalPoetryDay

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

‘The poems concentrate his gift for gentle absurdism into glimpses of a quite contrary cosmos. His sharp eye for our hypocrisies, his unique ear for the comic phrase, and his cautious delight in the sheer strangeness of things, mark him as both fundamentally oppositional & entirely original.’

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

‘ #IvorCutler ‘s poems are distilled miniatures of the qualities we find in his stories and songs. Filled with highly uncertain narrators, eloquent, often moody creatures, and unsettling takes on domesticity, they brilliantly reproduce his distinctive cadences on the page.’ #NationalPoetryDay

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

More Ivory Cutlery for #NationalPoetryDay! Apparently the #SelectedPoems is out today - ie you can wander into a shop* and order a copy (the actual copies will follow shortly). Here’s the back cover. (Text of the blurb in thread.) *Preferably a bookshop. #IvorCutler

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gbclarkson.bsky.social @gbclarkson.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

You probably know that "'I am a yellow fly' and the tale of a greasy button", songs, stories and poems from Ivor Cutler, are on BBC Radio 4 Extra tomorrow, @billherbert.bsky.social? www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cgss2

bbc.co.uk

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Ivor Cutler - A Wet Handle, Episode 1

Ivor Cutler and friends present poems and songs, including 'I Am a Yellow Fly'.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Careful! If you say ‘beetle shoes’ three times… Well, actually, I don’t know what happens after that.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Here’s the link to #HoorgiHouse: hoorgihouse.link Info remains basic at the moment, but keep checking back - or just wait till I badger you to check back, whichever works best for you! #IvorCutler #SelectedPoems

hoorgihouse.link

Hoorgi House – Hoorgi House Records and Hoorgi House Publishing

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Ian Greaves @greavesian.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Out very soon...

Ivor Cutler: Selected Poems (Hoorgi House 2026)

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

What’s this? It appears to be some sort of volume. Yes. That was a rhetorical question. Is it obtainable? Yes, and soon! How soon? Possibly tomorrow. You can check with the publisher. _You_ can check with the publisher. Yes. Let’s do that. Fine. You first. No, after you. #IvorCutler #HoorgiHouse

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Indeed: oot soon! Sneakity keek of the cover below:

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

‘Poor Greta. Garbo’s undead.’ (From ‘Greta Garbo is Dead’ by Bawhoose)

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It seems the two images are not as unconnected as they might at first appear...

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

@sophieherx.bsky.social’s #Collage sonnets continue to deliver what we at #NewBootsAndPantisocracies like to call ‘the goods’: The/very Saints call for perfect illusion solidity, accuracy, clouds, waves, ruins frills and ribbons - the whole vista more real than the power of Reason. #ArtSonnetChain

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I like the way the linebreak reconfigures what began as an innocuous statement: ‘the hidden laws of family/money’: a true artist leans on an old violin, or Perhaps the hidden laws of family money while bandits glorify the sheen of wealth and luxury the nude and War @sophieherx.bsky.social

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

These sonnets by @SophieHerx.bsky.social exemplify #Collage’s ability/duty to redirect its source’s meanings, here re the role of art & the artist: We have beliefs we are not aware of no way is without its dangers. ugly snobbishness as smooth and cold as glass. the chilling atmosphere of museums.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

One of my favourite bits in the #ArtSonnetChain was when ed. #NancyCampbell’s final sonnet generated the category of a ‘side sonnet’. Coincidentally, her fellow ed. @sophieherx.bsky.social has been working on a side sonnet chain of her own: newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com/2026/09/06/a...

newbootsandpantisocracies.wordpress.com

Art Sonnet Chain Postscript: Sophie Herxheimer (a side chain, 2)

Sophie Herxheimer is co-editing the Art Sonnet Chain with Nancy Campbell. Her most recent publication is Ode to Joy, a collaboration with Sarah Gavron published by Pushkin Press. (The side chain is…

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I’ve got the absence of a small heap of these. Sometimes I just rewrite one as I ‘remember’ it to get out of the whole ‘Where the hell is it?’ rabbit hole. #GhostPoems

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A vague memory returns of the wooden pencil case with a slatted sliding lid… Clearly a marketing opportunity for goth stationery fetishists.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I think I was thinking of a clip I saw from #KenRussell’s Mahler in which Robert Powell is in a coffin with a little glass window so he can see what’s happening. But I imagine it’s nicer for stationery.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

It’s nice that the box has a little window so that the pen can see out.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The very real fraughtness of that position - cf ‘Down Below’ - is hinted at, if perhaps not its full ghastliness, as in the murderous mania which overtook #RichardDadd. I’ve been peering cautiously at his work again since seeing the Royal Academy show: it’s still uniquely & terrifyingly outside.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It’s an interesting article, especially when categorising Carrington as someone (or the type of someone - as though there could be another LC) ‘who has abandoned the rigid symbolic meaning of language in favour of the strange and surreal language of the unconscious.’ #LeonoraCarrington

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Will look it out, thanks - we’re far from the paper paper here, and so must roam its digital shadows with diligence, good luck, or kind guidance…

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It’s just the way Goethe left it.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

That’s exactly the amount of too exciting I’d want.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I should say Bill remains un-bored since I can’t remember when, but especially since encountering my favourite sentence in Greek: ‘το άλογο βαριέται’.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I’m reminded yet again of the lost hoarding story that I thought was in #PaulAuster’s True Tales of American Life but, if it is, I can’t find it. It was about the two brothers in New York who both died because their hoards collapsed upon them/went on fire but it somehow wasn’t ‘cautionary’.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I liked ‘a hoarder who found her calling’! Also: ‘The idea of the work, the accumulation of the materials, the putting them together, the sharing of a work are all part of a ritual.’ I’ve been meaning to share an article over on #NewBootsAndPantisocracies - I’ll add this to the mix… #BetyeSaar

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Does this mean that if George Icke worked for ICE (don’t do that, George!) and called in sick, the person receiving the call would swiftly note, ‘ICE Icke ill’? (This scenario would be enhanced if ICE had a bicycle unit and George Icke could be persuaded to join that before making the call.)

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Ah, another chance to deploy ‘invasivorism’ as a descriptive term! The previous usage cropped up while introducing this cartoon. (I hasten to add I wasn’t suggesting anyone should eat #Trumpo - that could be dangerous, even assuming anyone would want to #EatTheRich, as #Motörhead once warbled.)

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

You remind me of my long-held wish to open a falafel stall on Foula called ‘Foula Falafel’ with the slogan ‘Are YOU full o falafel? No? Come on doon tae Foula Falafel and we’ll fill ye full o Foula’s finest falafel!’

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Andy Jackson @azjackson.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The Scottish Poetry Library kindly selected a poem from my new collection Disco Biscuits to feature in today’s Scotsman newspaper as poem of the week! Thanks to them and to Rob Mackenzie at Blue Diode and Stephen Watt at Nutmeg magazine, where it first appeared. @ByLeavesWeLive

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

We’ve all felt like this after a night of heavy dri… a severe moth larvae infestation.

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I had a similar but insect-based sensation a month or two ago in Monifieth: Half seven: the fly retraces my ear’s brief curve - this time it wakes me. All night it’s dozed, orbited, landed, strolled. I let it out. #LifelongRenga #Tanka

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Dye ken Ramsay’s version? (Apologies for this online copy’s weird typeface.)

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

How pleasant to hear Dr Pinkwart is a poet’s apothecary. I expect he prepares lots of stinkwort as an anti-inflammatory. Plus linctures and tinctures - not laudanum as did for our poor S.T.C. - but cod liver oils with real cod in them and tisanes (as Poirot called tea).

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

And, just like that, our latest sonnet chain was complete! Begun by editor @sophieherx.bsky.social on Valentine’s Day and concluded by her fellow editor #NancyCampbell on whatever day yesterday was (the afterfeast of the Dormition?). #ArtSonnetChain #NewBootsAndPantisocracies (1/2)

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Advices (part 3) …Take out as much seaweed as possible and leave on the beach. Put the nurdles into the special nurdle bins provided. Wash, rinse, repeat ad nauseum… (Thanks again to Mark Husmann) #ContraNurdles

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Advices (part 2): If you don’t have your own brush & pan, there are several nurdle stations on North Tyneside beaches where you can borrow them. Put the nurdles plus sand & seaweed into a mesh bag (also provided) and either shake out the sand (if dry) or wash it out in the sea… #ContraNurdles

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

That link: nurdlehunt.org.uk Those advices (part 1): ‘Start collecting nurdles half an hour or so after high tide. Best method, depending on the local topography & other conditions, is to use a hand brush & pan on the firm wet sand, where they wash up in neat lines. Don’t dig for nurdles…’

nurdlehunt.org.uk

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

This post on my Tumblr site* contains a group poem by #VaneWomen & friends, and a link to the #NurdleHunt website also given in the Comments below, plus good advices by Supernurdleman, Mark Husmann: www.tumblr.com/billherbert2... *’What’s Tumblr, Bill?’ ‘I don’t rightly know, please stop asking!’

tumblr.com

Post by @billherbert23 · 1 image

💬 1 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · Contra Nurdles When the horrendous intrudes into our would-be peaceful routines, we ought to be (but rarely are) shaken enough to note that it is neither the horror nor the peace…

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Bill Herbert @billherbert.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

‘At 30,000 feet we are absconding from mortality by skirting the inferno, watching wildfires racing to the lakes near Perpignan as though to douse themselves since we cannot. We seem to recognize the sorrow of the elements. We must be mad.’ #SeanOBrien #NewBootsAndPantisocracies #EuropeIsBurning

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Andy Jackson @azjackson.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Great to have something rather special from Sean O’Brien on New Boots and Pantisocracies today…

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