iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Fiona Robertson

Raven @ravenbranhard.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

here I am ankle-deep in endings leaves scatter yellow red and copper… there’s beauty in things letting go the branches above are already bare waiting and I stand beneath them feeling the season’s chill breath something pulls at my soul the same force that loosens the leaves #Poetry my 📷

A large old tree in an autumn park, its branches stretching across the sky, with fallen brown and golden leaves covering the ground around its trunk.

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

(for context: Aberdeen's weirdos have called on Tommy Robinson et al because a primary school said they (the school) would be referring to winter cards so the children can share whatever festival cards they want and don't feel restricted to just Christmas cards (obviously still allowed) 3/)

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

And we don't even need to go back that far - in MY living memory, it wasn't uncommon for people to work through Christmas in the shire. Hogmanay was our winter festival, when everything shut down for 5 days. Christmas as it's celebrated now is absolutely an incomer effect. 2/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Wait, I thought these 'Patriots' were all about protecting Scottish culture and traditions from incomers? Banning Christmas (actual banning, not just 'including other festivals') is as Scottish as clans and shortbread. They should be rejoicing! 1/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Jeffrey Archer died peacefully in his home at the age of 86, lauded and welcomed by literary and political society. Unlike Monica, who died at 50, leaving a teenage son after just managing to stitch a few pieces of her life back together.

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Here is the video of my poem, The Secret Of The Poets, which has gone mini-viral on insta. It's about the use of generative AI for emotional moments. I had three minutes on the biggest stage I'm ever likely to have, and this is what I did with it. I've also posted the text version (see below).

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Thanks to everyone who watched my performance of The Secret Of The Poets at the Edinburgh Book Festival at the @iamloudpro.bsky.social Grand Slam! I'm still reading through comments ❤️ Here's the text version, which you can also find on my poetry site. I'll post a video soon about why I wrote this ❤️

The Secret of the poets by Fiona Robertson

I wrote my wedding vows with ChatGPT.
I’m no good at words. It does it better than me.

I typed out some facts and asked AI
to write my mother's eulogy.
I know, I know, her final goodbye
summed up by machine.
But I'm not a poet. Words don't come easy to me, you see.

My friend’s kid died and I didn’t know what to say
so I asked Claude and straight away
I had something to text him
and he thumbs-upped the message so I think it was OK.

I asked it to write a Valentine.
My best man speech.
My marriage counselling homework.
My suicide note.

I’m not a poet.
I don’t know what to say.

Let me tell you the secret of the poets:
Nobody ever knows what to say.
There are no words to mend a shattered heart.
No verse can make someone fall in love.
No poem can ease the ache of loss.
No-one can speak the depth of gratitude
or trust
or pain.

Nobody ever knows what to say.
Not even us.

Generative AI will give you an answer
but it will be a lie,
because all these words have ever been
are stand-ins for
‘I cared enough to try’.

https://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 · 02/10/2026

More than happy! Thank you ❤️

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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

I might add more later. It's so weird to feel like these are things that must be important, that I want to have a museum of ordinary life as big as the British Museum, where people can bring their artefacts and stories because it has to matter, all this. And I know it matters already. But. 6/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The amazing side details around articles she kept. On the back of one is a wedding section where they recommend giving a small gift to female guests - a small pouch of sugared almonds is popular 'on the continent'. First-aid for housewives, a small book apparently published in Hove. 5/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

A kukri. The stack of Christmas cards from her last Christmas, many filled with her friends from all over the world talking about grandchildren, gardens, getting old, old times. More photos of my mum holding a lion cub. Ordnance survey maps of our area from the 80s. You can see the changes. 4/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

My grandparents' wedding photo from the 20s - he has sharp spats and she's wearing a stunning lace dress. The obituary for the ship my dad trained on (the Worcester) as she took her last voyage. Dad's best mate was a Conway man and they had regular (good-natured) arguments about which was best. 3/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Newspaper clippings about a lot of things (I wondered why my mum kept a page of the Taliban ten most wanted until I turned it over and saw an article about a local woman leading an aid convoy). My dad's school photos from a Catholic school in Luton in 1950, complete with monks. 2/

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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

Yeah, it seems to be building up again. I hope people are careful. They're barely testing anymore even when they have symptoms 😕

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What memories will I leave here and never have again? I am sitting at the table I used to hide under, watching the ghosts of all the people I've loved here flit around the room. I've found another box of photographs. Another rock. The leaves are falling. It's all still so green.

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I wish I could ask her about this collection of books I never saw before. I don't know how I'll survive without this anchor, without the soil which grew me and the trees so much taller than any in town, or the family of deer we've lived alongside for fifty years. Will they notice we've changed?

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Everywhere I look, memories overlap each other like videotape glitches. I've found videotapes I need to watch. Deciding between memories is unbearable and still I'm thankful to be doing it.

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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

And masks that they very specifically can't take off.

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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

I don’t know what would have been different. I can’t say I think it would all have been roses. But I think we’d have had a chance. 12/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

There have been a lot of pivot points in my lifetime - times when things could have been so different if another choice had been made, or a specific person hadn’t died. I don’t think many have been as all-encompassing as that one though. 11/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The world before 9/11 was not great. But it was getting better. People were working on and succeeding in making some parts of it less harsh and unforgiving. There was so much work to do but people were actually doing that work with the basic assumption it would make a material difference. 10/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

As much as I hate the reductionist ‘they hate our way of life’ phrase, if that was the target, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The large-scale pursuit of equality, human rights, liberation and climate management was finished. It just took a while for everyone to catch up. 9/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

But I still believe we had a chance then. That chance ended when the towers fell. We knew it, I think before the Americans did. We knew how the Bush-led US would react, and that Blair would follow along whether the people wanted to or not. 8/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Looking back from here, of course the world wasn’t what we thought it was. The UK hadn’t seen the end of Thatcherism, but its shift into corporate acceptability. We were already screwed by Blair’s love affair with Clintonism. 7/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

At 20, in 2001, we thought we’d grown up in a world which was moving towards equality and freedom for all. That afternoon, we took a feral cat who’d decided she lived with us to the vet. We got home, turned on the news, watched the second plane hit, and the world we grew up in end. 6/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

There was still grinding poverty and inequality but we were fixing things, slowly but surely. The new internet was helping, letting us talk to people all over the world and learn about their lives, share information and insight. 5/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

People had come together and fixed things so Y2K was not the disaster it could have been. The world had signed the Kyoto Protocols, and obviously were taking climate change as seriously as we had all those things. 4/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

We saw the Good Friday Agreement signed, ending a war none of thought could be ended. We’d found out about the hole in the Ozone Layer and dealt with CFCs. We had taken lead out of petrol. Smog in major cities had been cleaned up. 3/

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

By 2001, we’d seen the fall of Thatcherism. The first drugs to treat AIDS were making a huge difference. The Scottish Parliament had been reconvened for the first time in centuries and we were freeing ourselves from the Kirk. We watched the Berlin Wall fall, countries gain their independence. 2/

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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 · 04/09/2026

Not full eleven, but when Scotty tries to get the lift to engineering and it's broken he says 'this had better not be about my accent again' 😂

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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

But Berry was not anodyne. 'Questionnaire' is one of the most brutal poems I've read. It ends '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.' This loss hurts. 3/

reflections.yale.edu

Poem: “Questionnaire” | Reflections

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Fiona Robertson @fionaswriting.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Seventeen years ago, we included a reading from his 'Poetry And Marriage' at our wedding. The last line has been our guiding light - 'you do not know the road; you are committing your life to a way.' He has been one of the poets who has saved me again and again. 2/

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