iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

‘Say I have to choose between being just and being rich. There is no harm in being rich of course, unless, as it usually does, it conflicts with being just.’ — Herbert McCabe

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The wonder of European rail travel never gets old: this morning we had coffee on the balcony overlooking le palais des papes; lunch in Paris in Terminus Nord; and now back in Oxford for bedtime, the only duff bit of the journey having been the anglophone part.

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Graeme Richardson @ravoon.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

"Dirt Rich" is reviewed by Declan Ryan with his usual sharpness in the current Poetry Ireland Review - I'm so grateful to him, and to Colm Toibin @poetryireland.bsky.social

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Laura Ashe @lauraashe.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Setting up the new fridge

A half-filled fridge also has a brown cat in it, looking curiously around. Another cat has lost interest

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

‘Now might I drink hot blood And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on…’

A gorgeous dark brown Burmese cat asleep on a sheepskin rug.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Given all this inexplicable noise about the Odyssey, I thought I’d reshare my take on @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social’s (staggeringly good) version, with thanks again to Ange Mlinko for publishing it:

Then again the gods might walk
Untroubled across the earth
Trailing their backstage grammar: myth
Anagnorisis, mask —

And the journey begins before
Departures: leaving a hall of suitors
End-stopped, the prince godspeeds to Pylos
Cresting each salt pentameter.

A stranger holds court in the airport lounge,
Their tale of ships and trickery
Turning me like a page —

Or that first surge of gravity
When the plane tilts to an azure language
Over the middle sea.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

“Entire regions, especially those marked by structural fragility and limited geopolitical relevance, are currently subjected to a new mindset of extraction: that of health data, epidemiological profiles, genetic maps and demographic information.” [1/2]

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

“For an algorithm, an error is a flaw to be corrected; for a person, however, an error can be a catalyst for profound change.” — Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not...” [1/2]

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

“To translate a text is to be conducted into its mysteries in a way that no mere act of reading — however conscientious or frequent — makes possible.” — David Bentley Hart

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Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

badlilies.uk/submit

Bad Lilies
SUBMISSIONS FAQ
Our submissions window is open for the month of July.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I don’t feel fine…).

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Laura Ashe @lauraashe.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

"Deadloch" (Aussie crime detective black comedy drama) is absolute genius. Witty and angry and brilliant. "Yeah no the investigating officer is, well, his commitment to diversity goes as far as a bloke with contact lenses"

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

8yo twins have homework to write a story. We talked about great opening lines: Dickens; Gibson; Camus (I skipped Earthly Powers). I’m deeply sceptical of the way children are now taught to write, but there’s something deeply real in hearing someone’s story — and surely that’s all there is?

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David Hayden @seventydys.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

their slender means J.H. Prynne, ‘Against Hurt’

Against Hurt
Endowed with so much
suffering, they should be / and that they are so—the pain in the head
which applies to me and the clouds low over the horizon: soon it will be dark
We love the brief night, for its quick passing, the relative ease as we slide into comfort and
the trees grow and grow. I can hear
every smallest growth
the expanse is grinding with it, out on the flats beyond, down by the sodium street-lights, in the head: pain, the hurt to these who are all
companions. Serenity is their slender means.
There is not much time
left. I love them all, severally and in the largest honour that there is.
Now and with the least hurt, this is for you.

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Laura Ashe @lauraashe.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

J. H. Prynne, who died today, taught me how to read, and how to think. "Sooner or later you will find yourself concerned with matters of serious worth--"

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

“Choosing to kill the innocent as a means to your ends is always murder. Naturally, killing the innocent as an end in itself is murder too; but that is no more than a possible future development for us.” — Elizabeth Anscombe, Mr Truman’s Degree, 1956

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

One of the happiest places I’ve ever known for cooking. Little Haven, Pembrokeshire.

View of a high-tide bay in sunlight with pans and chopped herbs in the foreground.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Yeatsian screen malfunction on a bus in West Oxford…

Interior of a bus with the next stop showing on the screen as “Horseman Close”

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

It’s straining credulity to suggest that an entire team of detectives in Death in Paradise could miss a giant cat in the middle of the crime scene.

A scene from Death in Paradise with a Burmese cat looming in the foreground.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

27 St John St (sans blue plaque) where Elizabeth Anscombe lived while producing some of her most influential work (Intention, double effect) and simultaneously compiling/translating Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Mostly unchanged, though the landlord has now fixed the ceiling/heating.

A 19th-century terraced house in St John St, Oxford, where one of the most important English-language philosophers of the 20th century did some of her most important work. Blue plaque conspicuous by its absence.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

“North Oxford (being unfashionable and therefore cheaper) had become the home for many of the refugees who had arrived in the city before the war. Although some moved on once the fighting stopped, for many Park Town…was now a permanent home.” — Mac Cumhaill & Wiseman, _Metaphysical Animals_

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Just spent a fascinating half-hour teaching my 8yo twins about Philippa Foot and trolley problems. After some wrong turns (“are any of the people tied to the track your family?”, “is the woman walking her dog on the other line a bad person?”)… [1/2]

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Andrew Neilson @andrewjamesneilson.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

I have a book out in less than a month and so I am plugging it shamelessly. Here is the opening poem. Please consider joining our attendance to the office of the moment by pre-ordering a copy here! www.bluediode.co.uk/product-page...

Oaths
Life carries a sense of ceremony
yet only, perhaps, when we come to,
seldom staring upon Machu Picchu,
but on street corners, or standing in kitchens,
suddenly alert to our aftermaths,
and in these instants of absolute privacy
we raise one hand to go over the words…
until the kettle boils, that song fades out,
or cloud slides in as a sombre arras,
whereupon we push so much away
to smooth out the creases, then smile to ourselves,
thinking it’s not as if somebody died –
even, in truth, when somebody died –
and just like that we completely forget
our attendance to the office of the moment.
And yet. And yet.
Whatever it was we solemnly swore,
our hearts beat hard, behind closed doors.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

“We know that it is the right frontal lobe…which makes empathy, humour, irony possible, and helps us to communicate and express not just facts, but our selves. Here language becomes not a tool of manipulation but a way of reaching out to the ‘Other’.” — Iain McGilchrist

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Characteristically acute and engaging close reading from @andrewjamesneilson.bsky.social. Well worth a read.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

I genuinely enjoy cleaning squid. As with filleting fish, it’s part of the privilege of being able to prepare food from scratch and understand what you’re eating. But there’s no denying it can get a bit HP Lovecraft…

Three squid heads looking alien and tentacular.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Listening to OK Computer for the first time in years, and remembering a colleague claiming with a straight face that Radiohead were clearly an Oxford band because only locals would have known that the Karma (best restaurant in East Oxford for a 20+ year window) was next door to the police station…

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

’90s night on Osney Island: “..from a great height / From a great height…”

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Watching the almost-a-decade-old Death in Paradise episode where Kris Marshall gets replaced by Ardal O’Hanlon, and there’s a single shared scene in a car where it becomes clear that the changing-detective trope is just a different-genre version of Doctor Who.

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Graeme Richardson @ravoon.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Here's a thing I wrote for Carcanet about my forthcoming book: featuring toast, marmite, Tom Baker, and taphophobia

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

It’s also time to thank the editors/florists @kathryngray.bsky.social & @andrewjamesneilson.bsky.social for their tireless effort in continuing to produce one of the most vibrant outlets for seriously good English-language verse on either side of the Atlantic, from which we all benefit.

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Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

It's almost the end of the year, and so it's time to thank all of our contributors for 2025. CONSIDER THE LILIES! badlilies.uk/poets

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

In my happy place: early mass at Blackfriars; a slow run round the meadows; then the rest of the day to prep for tomorrow’s lunch (background carols not visible in the photo). I love Christmas Eve, perhaps the most liminal day of the year.

Stocks and sauces simmering on a hob. L-R: lobster & prawn bisque; wild bass stock; curry sauce.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

When the cats in an almost-exclusively pescatarian household discover the pan in which duck bones were roasted for stock…

Two cats in a reverie lapping at the scrapings of a roasting pan.

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David Wheatley @nemoloris.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Mishearing the words 'the big Heaney book', my wife formed the impression that the large tome I was studying was something called 'the bikini book'.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Am I the only one to think this sounds like an album track that never made it…?

Picture of the side of a box saying “Pea Husk: Clumping cat litter”

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

A night of anxiety dreams ended with my being swapped in at the last minute to give a speech defending the humanities to a crowd of heavily-armed legionaries, using a slide deck consisting of nothing but dollar signs. I mercifully woke up at the point I was being carted off by the secret police.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Went to see the new Knives Out last night, which is excellent locked-room fun. The plot centres on murders in the Catholic church, and it somehow pulled off the feat of having me and my 3am-atheist beloved both leave the cinema feeling our (mutually exclusive) metaphysics had been vindicated.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

“Surrounded by losers, misfits and boozers…”

A Burmese cat sitting on top of a high shelf

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

I’ve only just discovered Lucy Beckett via a recommendation, but I can’t get over how good A Postcard from the Volcano is. Humane, poignant, perfectly-judged, and with a classicist’s eye for the action’s happening offstage (in time as well as space) but that somehow making everything more immediate.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

My 8yo twins are reading Harry Potter (they’re alas a couple of years too young for Ursula le Guin) and book #2 revolves around an evil snake sneaking into a women’s toilet. No comment.

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