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Fiona Robertson

@fionaswriting.bsky.social
6.5K followers 2.7K following 11K posts

She/her, Disability Justice, feminist, equalities consultant, writer, performance poet. Zines, physics, poetry, politics, cats, accessibility, landscape, Scotland, complexity 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿❤️🦕 linktr.ee/FionaRobertson

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Reposted by Fiona Robertson
Shane Anderson 🏳️‍🌈 @shaneanderson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The Secret of the Poets by @fionaswriting.bsky.social feels apt here.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A short, unedited, unpolished response poem to Cornell. CN for allusions to rape.
Fiona Robertson

CN: allusion to rape, Cornell.

The Silent Snapchat: A Fable

I know the monsters. 
We all know the monsters.
As depressing as it always is, 
every time, 
every goddamn time, 
seven monsters are not surprising. 
Seven monsters 
for seven hours 
like the nursery rhymes we were taught 
so we'd know to avoid monsters. 
So we know monsters 
and we expect monsters 
and we learn how to sleep anyway 

What keeps me awake in the dark, 
listening in case the air turns wrong, 
is all the men the monster texts
to show off his monstrousness 
and none of them—
none of them—
not one goddamned good man
was ever taught to shout fire.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Things I've found in the last days of sorting mum's stuff: Cards she'd bought to send me when I needed cheering up. Photo's from the 30s and 40s. Some earlier. My father's old surveying tools in a box with perishing foam. His letters to her from his 18-month postings. 1/
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I think about the last line of this all the time. I've never yet found a metaphor to describe this feeling which I don't immediately discard because it isn't as perfect as this. It's annoying because I want to write about the sensation in other contexts but the best line has already been written.
"A Blessing" by James Wright.


Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I'm staying at the house, sorting through the last of mum's stuff. I can count my days left here in single digits. I don't think I'm going to see the stars from this garden again.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Christ I am remembering why I try to avoid getting covid. This is triggering all my PTSD from being really sick. It's a month on and my brain is still useless, I can barely walk anywhere and need days to recover when I do. I'm resting as much as I can, lying flat most days.
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Reposted by Fiona Robertson
Katie Ailes @katieailes.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I get goosebumps every times I hear this poem. A message so perfectly delivered that needs to be shared as widely as possible. @fionaswriting.bsky.social is such a powerful voice.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Let me tell you about the world 25 years ago this morning. In Scotland, I was 20. Newly disabled but still thinking my life would get back on track. My generation had grown to adulthood in one century and were forging forward in the next. 1/
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The UK media assault on disabled women is an attempt to roll back decades of progress. We've spent so many years teaching people mobility aids and adaptive supports are to be celebrated. graniteandsunlight.wordpress.com/2026/09/08/w...
graniteandsunlight.wordpress.com
Why Young Women Aren’t Ashamed Of Disability Anymore
Various journalists in the UK right now would like to know why young women feel so comfortable using mobility aids in public and calling themselves disabled. If they’d bothered to speak to us, we c…
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I am trying to write about the media assault on disabled women, but covid recovery is slow and I'm still scattered. Which, of course, is relevant. There are too many elements to it. I'm afraid you're going to get a piece of performance art ('a disabled brain reacts') rather than critical analysis.
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Reposted by Fiona Robertson
CatLady Lil @catladylil.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I submit also this banger. Wendell Berry wrote the antidote to the manosphere in 1994. He showed me that you can be angry and soft, strong and kind, rural and an activist. Rest in Peace, mad farmer
Poem by Wendell Berry, 1994

ANGLO-SAXON PROTESTANT HETEROSEXUAL MEN

Come, dear brothers 
let us cheerfully acknowledge 
that we are the last hope in the world 
for we have no excuses 
nobody to blame but ourselves. 
Who is going to sit at our feet 
and listen while we bewail 
our historical sufferings? Who
will ever believe that we also
have wept in the night 
with repressed longing to become 
our real selves? Who will 
stand forth and proclaim 
that we have virtues and talents 
peculiar to our category? Nobody, 
and that is good. For here we are 
at last with our real selves,
in the real world. Therefore, 
let us quiet our hearts, my brothers,
and settle down for a change 
to picking up after ourselves 
and a few centuries of honest work.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I can't believe they did the Scottish lift joke on Strange New Worlds!!!
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Many people, me included, have been sharing Wendell Berry's beautiful writing on hope, nature, peace and purpose. You should know he also wrote poems like this, because this is part of loving the world and the people in it. Questionnaire, 2010.
Questionnaire by Wendell Berry

1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
In 2020, as the world fell apart, I recorded a series of the poems which have kept me alive over the years. The first was The Peace Of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, who died yesterday. 1/ youtu.be/opVxUZCBN2w?...
youtu.be
Poetry To Sustain You: The Peace Of Wild Things - Wendell Berry
YouTube video by Poetry To Sustain You
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
A lot will be said about Dolly's musical legacy, love for home, refusal to let anyone make her feel less, her charity work, the covid vaccine, her razor wit. Learn this from her: success gives you the chance to make other people's lives easier. Use every gift you're given to do good in the world.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I've never known an entertainer so universally respected and beloved across genre lines. Even the hardest metalheads fucking love Dolly, even if they wouldn't have her music on rotation.
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A Mere Solicitor @ameresolicitor.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Jason Arday didn’t deserve this. The lie that this is about truth or academic standards is bullshit. The Cass report is based on the transphobic “research” which has since been found to be unethical and based in academic misconduct. That has barely been reported. It’s racism. He was targeted.
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Toby Earle 🇺🇦 @tobyontv.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Five have commissioned an ITN documentary examining Nigel Farage’s finances: Nigel Farage: Where Does the Money Come From? airs Saturday 22nd August, 9.30pm
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
I'm performing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival tomorrow at 3.30!!! Come see the only time that'll ever happen 😂 It's the @iamloudpro.bsky.social Grand Slam so you'll see amazing poets (and me). It's always a fiery, brilliant show. I'm representing Aberdeen so could use friendly faces!
a gold and black wrestling belt with 'loud Poets slam champion' emblazoned on it
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
As I've said since the beginning of this nightmare, transphobia is inextricable from ableism. They are the same mechanism producing the same results for the same reason. Any disabled people throwing their lot in with transphobes are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
screenshot of a times Facebook post advertising an article by Kathleen Stock (famous transphobe), titled 'Why are young women using walking sticks?' the blurb reads '"This week a video went viral of a young woman in a wheelchair at a train station, filming the laborious attempts of staff to get her chair up some stairs after the lift failed. Towards the end of the video, somewhat unexpectedly, she gets out of her chair and walks upstairs herself, saying she "had a bit of energy that day" so could do it. In another video, she films herself putting on roller skates before pushing off from her wheelchair and skating happily away, Lazarus-like.  Even severely debilitating physical conditions produce good days as well as bad. On some bad days, a person may need extra help. But when a disproportionate number of young women are insisting this applies, we need to find out what is going on.  Why do Gen Z females, apparently unlike every generation before them, have strangely unstable bodies that intermittently require support?""
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Be safe today everyone who's going to Glasgow to counter the fascists. In their speaker lineup they've got two outright neo-Nazis and a 13 year old child in the first four. They've got wild antisemites, people who think Hitler was right and that woman who flashed children in the Scottish Parliament.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
The new Prime Minister has set up 'No 10 North', which I'm not opposed to but also...
a map of the UK, including Shetland, with arrows showing its length, the halfway point, and where number ten North  is (Manchester), which is about a quarter of the way up.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I'd be screaming through the night too if I was forced to live next to Andrew Tate.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Apparently we have to have the 'translation, esp from long-dead languages, is an act of cultural creation, not a 1:1 cypher, and the eg. C18th German or 1960s UK versions of the Odyssey are no 'purer' or less informed by biases and culture of translators than recent interpretations' fight again.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I finally got a poem written last night that's been percolating since about two weeks after my SCAD (weird heart attack). I've had the first line and a couple of images for ages but it all clicked together at last in circle at 2am. Yay for weird poetry friends who create space.
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Reposted by Fiona Robertson
Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
After Zia Yusuf accuses critics of endangering Reform politicians with violent language, he is read a list of quotes where he called Reform's opponents "lunatics who deserve extinction", "sick arsonists" and "traitors" who will face a "reckoning". He says these are in "a totally different category"
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👻 🎃 🦇 Bela Lughosti's Dad 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇵🇸 @belalugosisdad.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
This isn't 1920s Serbia. Anarchists in the UK are not murdering politicians. Anarchists in the UK are making sub-par podcasts, working shitty jobs as social carers, running food banks out of broken fridges on the corner of their street and scamming the work printer for 400 punk gig flyers.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
When my pal posted this in the group chat my jaw dropped. This description is going to haunt me. What kind of person reads Catcher In The Rye and thinks 'what a clever young man having a nice day out'? I understand people not hating him as much as I do but actually loving him terrifies me.
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Gemma Clark 🧿🕯️ @gemmaclark.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Tommy Robinson friend of many rapists
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Mallory Moore @sexabolition.blog · 11/07/2026
Sunday, today, 11th July, Manchester South Hotel in Fallowfield is going to be targeted by far right harassers yet again. If you're going to be there standing in their way, bring water, sun screen and a friend from 1pm until the fascists go home.
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Dr. Jude Seal - 'Unfunded Hobbyist' @judeseal.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Removing funding from the skills we already have shortages of. This isn't going to fix problem, it's going to make it worse. Do I need to sound the UK HIGHER EDUCATION CRISIS KLAXON 📣 again - given its now more of less the default state?
static.klipy.com
Dumpster Fire
ALT: Dumpster Fire
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Knitting Cat @dameknittingcat.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
The BBC cancelling Winterwatch is such a shame, especially when we need to be connecting with nature more than ever. If we want people to protect our wildlife, we have to show them it! Add your name to ask the BBC to reconsider. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/do...
you.38degrees.org.uk
Tell the BBC: Save Winterwatch!
The UK is losing its wildlife, and shows like Winterwatch are vital for connecting us to nature. The BBC's decision to cancel it makes no sense. Let's ask them to rethink this! Add your name here:
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Malty but nice 🥃😻🐧 @artbookreview.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Elon Musk’s family foundation took Tommy Robinson to Russia, says Musk’s father
Errol Musk says far-right activist is ‘a fine young man’ and held meetings with Russian business figures
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
My current top app desire is a No AI setting. I want to be able to tick something that says don't give me any results which use AI, don't offer me AI tools, don't replace search with AI prompting.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
I'm 45 and when awful things are happening I still just really want my mum. Not being able to call her and ask her advice or hear her voice or go home for a hug makes the bad stuff so much worse. It was her birthday yesterday. I miss her.
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Brian M. Milton @munchkinstein.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Donating Platelets is great. You get to relax for an hour and a half while nurses bring you tea and biscuits. You also occasionally get bonus free t-shirts or chocolates and, because you go more often, you can quickly get the donation milestones things.
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Helen @helenm40.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
This has reminded me to donate. Apparently the heatwave resulted in more injuries and decimated their stocks of my blood type.
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Simon is on strike ✊🏻 @simonxix.com · 08/07/2026
I'm giving whole blood later today (good timing as Scotblood is showing slightly low on my A+ blood) and will ask about platelets.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
If you're in the UK, and particularly if you're in Scotland, and have donated blood before please could I ask you to consider donating platelets as a matter of urgency.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Tonight at the Lemon Tree! Come see incredible poetry (and support the scene so your friendly local poets (me) get more national opportunities 😉) Loud Poets are always worth the trip - they are so good at curating a range of styles and topics. Even people who think they don't like poetry enjoy it.
aberdeenperformingarts.com
Loud Poets | Aberdeen Performing Arts
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
I have too many opinions about too many things and every time I try to start talking about one, fifteen others jump in with points, so I just give up. I was also born to be annoyingly earnest instead of cool and snarky so I can't just post two-line takedowns and be happy. Brains suck.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Poetry people: I'm losing my mind. I remember a story, back in the 90s I'm pretty sure, about a woman who wrote a poem about dealing with officialdom when her husband died. The last two lines were something like 'He asks "are you the widow?" Could he not have asked "were you the wife?"' 1/
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Danny Chambers MP 🔶 @dannychambers.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
A quick reminder that no dog died from missing a walk, but many dogs have died as a result of being exercised in hot weather! I've treated many dogs with heat stroke and it is often fatal. There's loads more useful info on preventing and treating heatstroke at Veterinary Voices UK!
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
To everyone rejoicing in Tartan Army posts about Scots at the World Cup, here's why we love seeing our people being celebrated. This is the coverage Scots get in UK media. The Economist is 'respectable'. Whatever the paywalled article actually says, this is the header they chose.
Screenshot of the economist website. An article headlined 'the most hated countries at the FIFA world Cup' has a header image of a happy man in a Scotland shirt. Behind him on the terraces are people holding saltires.
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
There is a systemic cause in Henry Nowak's death, but it's not the one the far right want you to believe.
graniteandsunlight.wordpress.com
The Real Systemic Outrage In The Henry Nowak Case
I wanted to think about Henry Nowak and his case before commenting. The conclusion I’ve come to is that this is about the same thing as the Rotherham grooming gangs, and the same thing as the trans prisoners ‘debate’. Please read to the end before commenting. Henry died pleading for his life and the systemic cause was not ‘anti-white racism’, it is that…
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
I wanted to think about Henry Nowak and his case before commenting. The conclusion I’ve come to is that this is about the same thing as the Rotherham grooming gangs, and the same thing as the trans prisoners ‘debate’. Please read to the end before commenting. 1/17
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
It looks like it's time to dredge this one up again. This was written in response to a campaign asking for healthcare workers to be trained not to just assume abortion is the next step after a fetal test shows a disability. graniteandsunlight.wordpress.com/2019/03/23/a...
graniteandsunlight.wordpress.com
Abortion and Disability – Rights for All
The campaign being led by Don’t Screen Us Out is essential, even though the politics surrounding abortion rights and disability are a bit complicated. I’m going to go into a wee bit of …
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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Last week, local hotel-shouter Geoffrey Farquharson pled guilty to yelling Nazi slogan 1488 repeatedly (at me). He told the court he didn't know what it meant and he was ashamed now he did. His entire sm feed is Hitler fandom. He's not as famous as Platner, but Nazis typically pretend innocence.
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