iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

You can't spell KEATS without STEAK

Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

So there's no need to throw out the interdisciplinary baby with the bathwater - it can and should be part of a robust defence of the humanities that protects the traditional specialist disciplines as well.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

My only beef with Collini's article is the whiff of false dichotomy hanging over his comments on modern, 'transdisciplinary' scholarship in the humanities. I consider myself lucky to have found myself a berth in one such department at UCL, and enjoy finding new ways to do textual study.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Increasingly, I find myself wanting to ask the neoliberal wreckers, do you want *anyone* to study the hunanities? Just say if you don't. It's more honest. Because this death by a thousand cuts business is just stupid and torturous for all concerned.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

So much familiar and depressing to anyone who works in UK HE here, especially the humanities, though the full scale of the assault on hard sciences, including chemistry and physics disciplines, had escaped me. Shows the dangers of narrow two cultures thinking, now more than ever.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Ahoy, Londoners! I am giving a talk at Conway Hall on April 12. It's a Sunday afternoon affair where we will consider why poetry and politics make such difficult (but necessary) bedfellows. What could be more VIRTUOUS or IMPR0VING! Come through!! www.conwayhall.org.uk/whats-on/eve...

conwayhall.org.uk

How to Think Like a Poet - Conway Hall

From Homer, Sappho and Rumi, to Shakespeare and Sylvia Plath, how did poets make the world anew? What can we learn from the magic, wisdom and humour of their poetry? Poet and writer Dai George asks ho...

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Does anybody know of a proper list of academic publishers in the field of poetry criticism / poetics? I have a pretty good working knowledge but want to be systematic

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innes mck @innes.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

"international law must be followed" is european for "thoughts and prayers"

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Haha yes, another neat phenomenon. Almost as much self-analysis on the platform as there is in poetry 😅

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

A guilty pleasure (or sympathy) I'll admit to: reading the care-worn personal essays of dudes who never quite got their book away, or did but it never took off. Some bitter and entitled, but quite a few self-aware, balanced, imbued with tinctures of homespun wisdom. Monsieur Bovary, it could be moi

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Enjoying being on Substack - and probably clicking with it / finding my algorithm more there than here, if I'm honest - but man there are a lot of diatribes about the publishing industry, makes you wonder how we ever get anything done.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

This includes the recent splurge I had in the Fitzcarraldo sale, thereby breaking my own promise, and will include any further transgressions also. This makes me think there must be some emotionally healthier, less guilt-ridden way to hold myself to account.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Unsettling realisation that, at the current rate, I am not allowed to buy any more books in my lifetime if I'm to make good on a self-promise that I would read everything on my to-read shelf + good shit on my parents' shelves before buying new gear.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

I ate some cherries that were being saved for decorating cupcakes, and I can report that playfully citing William Carlos Williams does not help one's case.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Feeling miserable about the rise of Reform and the far-right, and realised it was a self-centred feeling, in part, about what *I* stand to lose if they had their way. Brits need to start talking about migration as if we have skin in the game. open.substack.com/pub/beyondme...

open.substack.com

The Real Citizens of Nowhere

A cri de coeur about racist Britain

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Be warned, I'm writing a long creative-critical verse essay called 'Homage to Brian Wilson'

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Darren Chetty @darrenchetty.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Talking with a colleague about this. Planning to develop this into a paper / essay. Any suggestions for further reading?

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

What's your least favourite publishing cliché / euphemism? Mine's probably 'luminous prose', a sure sign I will find the book precious and boring, with ironically little va va voom in the prose.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

From Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Toddler I do not know which to prefer, The tantrum with the yoghurt Or the tantrum with the choo choo, The toddler going apeshit Or just after.

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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Obviously things have got dramatically worse in the US recently, and I don't want to diminish that, but I've been at *so many* conferences in the UK on topics like empire, humanitarianism and development where multiple speakers from the Global South have been denied visas or held at the border

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Deathly dull content but I recently bought a block of mild cheddar for the 2yo, worrying abt the salt content of the usual Cornish crunchers we have in the house, and WHAT THE HELL IS THIS STUFF. Weird lactic playdough, never once laid hands on it till now.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

You make me dizzy, Peter Gizzi

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Anyway, for anyone invested in this, I had a letter published in this week's TLS, responding to something that I feel tipped over into unfair distortion, the start of which I've screengrabbed. www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-feat...

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

I know I sound very Waterstones Dad here but I NEED TO KNOW!

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

What's the best book to read about the expansion and (sub)urbanisation of London? Something that tells me how Finchley Road went from being fields to city in the 19th C. Growth of the railroads and the rise of Metroland - all that.

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Ian Duhig @ianduhig.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Happy Mothers Day!

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

I'm not the hardiest when it comes to *any* criticism tbf but I do hope to take legit points on board and understand the role that vanity and sensitivity play in these matters. With this one, I think the reviewer got off on the wrong foot with it. Sorry you had that experience, very cheap shot.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Thanks, yeah it's not venemous, just a little condescending in parts, using words like 'airy', 'zestful' and 'hearty', which feel unfair to the level of criticism in the book. But I would say that. And I know it's not good form to air these thoughts in public, so better nip it there!

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

I had a bad review in the TLS a few months back. Read it for the first time today and gotta admit it's knocked me. Ah well - important to acknowledge these things. Here it is, for those with access. www.the-tls.co.uk/literature/p...

the-tls.co.uk

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D. A. Powell @dapowell.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

In unreasonable times, art cannot be expected to appear in reasonable forms in reasonable speech acts in league with the official language when there is nothing official about language and there are no boundaries to what can be uttered officially official language itself a way of kidnapping meaning.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept.

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Hari Kunzru @harikunzru.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

The ‘can machines do creative writing’ thing is mostly a distraction from the use of the machines to go through text and images to cancel grants and put people on deportation lists

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

What are your favourite history books? History books with spark, flair, literary panache - history that eschews the 'three major factors in the rise of the Medici were xyz. To start with x...' style of writing that I find such a snooze and highly prevalent.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

This deeply fascistic power move scares the hell out of me. It isn't my country, there's a limit to what I can do, but it can't be allowed to stand. nymag.com/intelligence...

nymag.com

What We Know About the Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil

DHS agents detained Khalil, a green card-holding Palestinian activist who took part in the Gaza protests at Columbia University.

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D. A. Powell @dapowell.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Poem by Suzanne Buffam

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

To be honest, this makes just as much sense as the sorry excuse for a Pip & Posy outfit I sent the kid out wearing today.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Up with son having a flannel fight at 1am, having finally admitted defeat in the pursuit of sleepiness. How bout u?

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Here's a question I don't often see asked. Would it have been better for Trump to win in 2020? Keeping chaotic sleazy shit show MAGA spluttering in power for another four years, rather than letting this turbo-charged version regroup.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Anne Carson on Parkinson's, handwriting, boxing, Catullus... The fact that such liquid virtuosity comes out of the experience of impairment and mortality is one of those sublime ironic victories of art. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Anne Carson · Beware the man whose handwriting sways like a reed in the wind

This is an essay about hands and handwriting. I think of handwriting as a way to organise thought into shapes. I like...

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Drill baby drill, defence over aid, transactional ceasefire deals papering over fascist wars. Almost makes you miss the culture war, when at least left values were in the room as a grotesque straw man caricature.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Stopped listening to the Today Programme, partly due to family routines, partly tiring of the centrist groupthink, but I'm tuned in now and it's just glaring how little there is in current affairs that speaks to any part of my values. The rightward shift is massive.

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Guy next to me on the train is eating the meatiest greasiest-smelling Burger King meal deal - some kind of 'dirty fries' situation - while watching other people play a football video game on his phone, waaaaah

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

I'm in Cardiff tomorrow night. Do I know anyone here in Cardiff? A part of me is always in Cardiff, so it would be nice to be in Cardiff, in body and spirit, together. In conversation with top poet and human @tazrahman.bsky.social www.bookspacecardiff.co.uk/products/thi...

bookspacecardiff.co.uk

Think Like A Poet Event Ticket

In conversation with Cardiff poet Dai George about his book How To Think Like a Poet, hosted by Taz Rahman. When: Wednesday 19th February, 18:20 start (doors 18:00) Where: 26a Crwys Road, CF24 4NL ~~~...

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Dai George @daigeorge.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

This is happening on Monday - an online class at 7pm GMT. Would love to see you! I'm polishing up some slides as we speak, on ways of looking at a blackbird, playing tennis without a net, and other fun curiosities of the poetic mind.

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