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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Steve Reich, triple quartet, at the Purcell Room down by the river this evening ❤️

John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Ooh look what just landed (I know, I am late coming to this!). Amazing pamphlet by the wonderful @leiabutler.bsky.social via @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social, and thanks @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social for the recommendation 🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

A wild night of Allen-Ginsberg-fest at the South Bank yesterday, with bits and pieces of The Raincoats and Sonic Youth and a singalong to William Blake to round things off...❤️

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

...discuss...🥰 (From 'The London Magazine', via Insta)

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

A very pleasant parcel-opening experience under soggy grey skies this morning - the Arcana Press anthology 'Smitten with the written' - which features my self-satirical poem 'Wordfish' (cue swordfish emoji, except there isn't one!) 🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

The stratospherically brilliant Paul Muldoon at the Irish Cultural Centre this evening - performing 'a history of Ireland in twelve poems' and what a tour de force it was ❤️

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Yay! A new and presently hot-selling anthology has landed! @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social and I'll do a list of authors in just a sec! 🥰👏👏👏

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Banksy, passing through at Waterloo Place ❤️

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

I would love to have been dancing down on those famous slopes but Big Thief were brilliant even up in the most unfashionable Circle...🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

One of those occasional and precious 'yay, the print copy of this has arrived, and there's my poem in it!' moments 🥰. ('Ferragosto', pp.5-6. - I shall post it on my Substack after a suitable interval)

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

I am quietly chuffed that my poem 'Ferragosto' is going to appear in this latest edition of the anthology series 'New Contexts' (this is a pic of the proof version from the publisher Ian Gouge) - due out at the end of this month...

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

www.fullhouseliterary.com/issue-1-2026 This was published this afternoon. I think it is the most exceptionally beautiful piece of online publishing! Big thanks to @leiabutler.bsky.social and @fullhouselitmag.bsky.social for all they do - and for including my piece 'Lares and Penates' therein...🙏❤️🙏

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

It's a corker of an issue, and a great poem Matt 👏👏 I have taken out a year's subscription on the back of this...🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

@survivors-poetry.bsky.social Zoom Party Tuesday 24 February - headliner poet will be Luciano Mezzetta, music from Grae J Wall, I have the honour of being MC/Zoom host …please email survivorspoetryevents@gmail.com to get yourself on the mailing list (and thereby the Zoom link for the event)

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Debut open mic for me at the wonderful Cosmic Pumpkin last night, downstairs at the Royal Society of Arts, with gentle host @mrgeepoet.bsky.social and a good sprinkling of @survivors-poetry.bsky.social peeps among those present 🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Me reading my poem 'Voyager' last night - my debut at the White Feather open mic at the Artillery Arms in Moorgate opposite Blake's cenotaph... A lovely evening brilliantly MC'd by Steve Tasane (third Tuesday evening of each month). Headliner yesterday was the VERY brilliant @mrgeepoet.bsky.social 🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Richard Wilson's '20:50' installation of recycled engine oil is showing at the Saatchi gallery, as devastating and bleakly beautiful as ever (we first saw it at County Hall in 2003). Something very strange and uncanny and disturbing happens to light itself, around this installation...😞

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

My copy of this new book has just landed 🥳. My chapter with Chris Scanlon is on page 101. @tanyamoore.bsky.social + Claudia Megele, many thanks for having us! Human beings in complex systems are complex human beings and need human leadership (and then some human followership can also be in the mix!)

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

My copy of this new anthology from @thebrokenspine.co.uk has just arrived. Available from a Bezos warehouse nowhere near you: not yet listed, so far as I can tell, by the publisher… I have a poem in here, called ‘Fingers’… many thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk for what you do, I appreciate you! 🙏

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Thank you for these, @victoriaspires.bsky.social - here are a couple of mine, with particular apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein, who would have furiously refuted this once-fashionable take on his great book (for him, the metaphysics was where it was at) - no doubt Hegel would also be wincing....🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

#LiftToTheSky @thebrokenspine.co.uk Today it must be @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social who lately joined the illustrious ranks of @zoomburst.substack.com 's 'Sixty Odd Poets (and counting!)' substack.com/home/post/p-... and blew us all away at the @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social open mic on Wednesday...👏

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

Oh dear a very quiet day for #WednesdayWIPs @thebrokenspine.co.uk I have been kicking around something outdoorsy with trees and that, and getting ready meantime for this evening's webinar from @northseapoets.bsky.social on 'Writing with Bishop' 🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I wholly forgot #LiftToTheSky last week! I meant to and now do raise up the learned and irrepressible @zoomburst.substack.com, capo of the long-running Sixty Odd Poets, who did a fab gig at the Colony Room, downstairs at Ziggy Green, Saturday before last. A joy to behold! 🙏❤️ @thebrokenspine.co.uk

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

#PoemsAbout #BreakTheMould @thebrokenspine.co.uk @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social @alanparrywriter.co.uk "I reckon I broke the mould": this older poem of mine, first published in @asylummagazine.bsky.social, is right on theme. Also here with brief commentary:🙏 johnadlampoems.substack.com/p/the-death-...

The death of Diogenes

Many a dogged mile I’ve marched, and for this?
None of you droogs strayed so far from the fold.
It’s death

and death only: piece of piss,
come to think of it, what with (truth be told!)
my dodgy knees, and nothing much left

in the tank. Something’s amiss,
if all that gets me barrelling down the road
is crystal meth

of a morning. Hellfire and hyperkinesis:
my kind of a roll! Now I’m a touch
too
old
for battery, theft –

or vagabondage. Still, vis à vis
the powers that be, I reckon I broke the mould:
never been one for shibboleths

or slogans, or shotgun shamings. Lately it’s the abyss
which beckons. I’ll lift up my cup at the threshold,
leave you bereft

in the blink of a fucking instant. You’ll not dis
or dismiss me again! I’m paroled:
one deft

move, I’m dusted and done, and you all can kiss
my raggedy arse goodbye. Nothing for it but
to
hold
my breath –

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

#WednesdayWIPs @thebrokenspine.co.uk Did an unusual thing y'day, scribbled something on the tube in memoriam Lou Reed, read it right away, in roughly v.2 form, at the Survivor Poetry open mic. Felt like it landed well, now fine tuning. Title was wrong: not 'Me and Lou', natch, but 'Lou and I'...🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Another great evening of open mic with Survivors Poetry at the Harrison in London Kings Cross ❤️❤️

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

For #PoemsAbout #ImperfectMe on #worldmentalhealthday, here's one of mine posted here earlier this year 🤜🤛 @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk

$Insecurity alert We can argue the toss over separations and losses, but this much is for sure – I am insecurely attached. Mostly I depend upon your warmth and acclaim to scaffold the edifice of my ramshackle sense of self. But hey – no pressure! It's not like you owe me any special consideration – no need, as such, to frack my mudrock offerings for depth or distinction. I'm not proud – I can do naked and abandoned in the void every bit as easily.$

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

#WednesdayWIPs @thebrokenspine.co.uk 'The Uncertainty of the Poet' by Giorgio de Chirico (part of the open collection at Tate Modern) Seemed apt for this space! 🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Oh my there is SO MUCH POETRY in this collection (at the Royal Festival Hall), and SO little time... 😆❤️

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

This just arrived today - I have three poems included - clustered together as a mini-section of the Journal under the heading "At Gordium: of Fog and Storm and Hubris". I am very excited! Massive thanks to Anthony Barnett and Ian Brinton for all that they do abar.net/snow.pdf

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

#WednesdayWIPs @thebrokenspine.co.uk That rollercoaster ride when you dig out a poem you thought might work for a call for contributions, find that it won't do at all, rewrite the thing in a flurry of seeing suddenly where it should have gone all along - then worry you've made it worse....anyone? 🤔🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

@rfsmith.bsky.social #promptcombo #characters Thank you for this lovely prompt. This is one of an occasional series of poems (revised; first posted for #PoemsAbout), touching on legends of figure of Diogenes - a character for our times... South London is also a character in my writing, I think...😊🙏

Cadenza

Marooned along Coldharbour Lane,
the shipwrecked street philosopher

sorties doggedly from the colonnade
that shelters his paperscrap Academy.

He raises his saxophone voice
to the dome of the Camberwell night -

summoning the perfervid blue
cadenzas of his storytelling

from the deep storm cellars
of his vagabond soul.

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

@thebrokenspine.co.uk A #LiftToTheSky for this wonder-filled & venerable anthology. Choice moments so far: "...the other hand fingered the pistol. My asshole / dropped out / and crawled all the way back to El Paso" (Paul Blackburn); "Everything is water / if you look long enough" (Robert Creeley) ❤️

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

#PoemsAbout #NeverAgain @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk At serious risk of over-exposing this poem from the Spring 2025 anthology, but partly based on 'The Zone of Interest' as it is, it stands for the sorrow that #neveragain is often just words, even when it comes to genocide 😔🙏

Epitaph

how did our gardens grow?

with alabastrine
layers of ash, and powdered bones

how did our high halls rise?

on stolen land, and cinereal
sediments of plundered dreamtimes

how will our passing be known?

a gray wind wailing – bindweed
trailing a tumble of stones

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

#WednesdayWIPs @thebrokenspine.co.uk Today is week two of the 'Writing with...' webinar from @northseapoets.bsky.social. Last week it was @dharmabam.bsky.social on Sylvia Plath. Thanks to him & Sylvia I seem now only to be able to write in 3-line stanzas of (7-)syllabic verse. Two of these so far!🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Survivors' Zoom Poetry Cafe again this evening - looking forward to another session of open mic creative energies surging....🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

I think before that the smoke must have got in my eyes, because I have realised there's an obvious revision that I completely missed - all those lines were pressed too close together, most unlike cigarette smoke - or dominoes - or cards! So here's v2 - still free-form, but no longer amorphous!!! 🥰

Smoke

(For Walter Dillam)

Everyone knew him as Jack.
He smoked sixty Pall Mall a day

on a good day, traded bootleg liquor
with the American airmen at Lakenheath –
nightly fleeced his cronies at dominoes.

He showed us how to shuffle cards,
taught us all the patter and subterfuge
of the mighty game of cribbage

fifteen-two, fifteen-four,
look all day, see no more

he would drive our mother half-crazy
whenever he visited. He called himself
the Old Crater, hinted obscurely

at war wounds. He would drift
towards his corner armchair –
low hanging, like a cyanic
stratocumulus – touting

some tall old tale, a twitch
to his lips, tiny diamonds of mirth
twinkling in the ashes of his eyes.

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

@victoriaspires.bsky.social #PromptCombo #ancestry Wonderful prompt, Victoria! Sorry I have lately not been much around these parts, mining some side-tunnels in my writing at the mo, but here's one of my ancestors, my mother's father - a free-form poem I posted in January for #PoemsAbout #smoke 🙏😊

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Look what landed here this morning, because, you know, I am always well ahead of the curve in my reading matter...🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

This morning may I #LifttotheSky the wonderful @rosannamcglone.bsky.social , whose fascinating book on the process of poetry and the journey of different writers, from first draft to published piece, arrived on my doormat Saturday...?👌🥰

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

#WednesdayWIPs @thebrokenspine.co.uk On the stove - an essay about anger; an essay about reflective practice groups; an essay about hospitality; a poem about friendship; a mound of correspondence; two training sessions to deliver in the next two days; a mound of reading; and then it gets serious...

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

🎶 "Frog went a-courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh..." 🎶 New #poetrytheme prompt from @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social 👏👏

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Online launch event Friday 26/9 for the @asylummagazine.bsky.social Autumn issue. I am looking forward to hearing contributors speak to their work, and to reading my poem, 'A psychiatric hospital is not a factory' (an obvious point, you'd think, but one sadly now only upheld from the margins) 😠🤜🤛🙏

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

The death of Diogenes, reimagined... "... never been one for shibboleths / or slogans, or shotgun shamings. Lately it’s the abyss / which beckons. I’ll lift up my cup at the threshold / leave you bereft / in the blink of a fucking instant...." johnadlampoems.substack.com/p/the-death-...

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

#PoemsAbout #Facades @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk This is something that I came up with earlier this year for #PromptCombo but I thought it might fit here this morning as well... 🙏❤️🙏

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

#WednesdayWIPs @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk Slow progress on this one, but a sort of sonnet is sort of coming together...we (for now) have an opening couplet: "Down Shelley's stair in single file we stumbled / one blue abbreviated autumn evening..." 😬

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

#WednesdayWIPs @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk 'progress' would be giving it large, but I was on the Golfo dei Poeti on Sunday (to hear Luciano Mezzetta read at Tellaro) and this photo and this opening couplet is what's in my head.... "On Shelley's stair Somehow I lost my footing..."

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John Adlam FRSA 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Hail #WednesdayWIPs & well met! I have been working on a poem set at the festival of Ferragosto which we marked on 15/8 here in Val di Taro. Eight 4-line stanzas but not yet ready to share even as WIP, so this is just a toe in the water. Nice idea though❤️ @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk

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