iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

there’s a working class into catholic/grammar school-type conformity dyo his preferences (Larkin, Harrison, Hamlet…) IMO - better than most of his peers, but not leading edge for the period… However, Old School non-modernist literature, and defiant social democratic politics are an OK reset by me

000

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Or plein air and previous to that, Uncle Tobyism (knitting needles on the bowling green)

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

tabletop wargaming, formerly kriegsspiel?

220

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

I don’t carry a torch for Shriver - the darker the place she is condemned to, the better - but her Spectator column does ask some of the right questions. Which are better considered through the exemplary AI-collaborative indie writing practice of Joanna Walsh (e.g Autobiology, Mis-Communication).

120

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

I’ll draft a proper reference but from FT magazine 28 Feb to 1 March / ie last weekend / K

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Financial Times weekend mag / K

000

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

TOOTHPULL was longlisted for the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction prize tonight - thanks to everyone who’s encouraged and helped AAAARGH press and myself over the last few years! open.substack.com/pub/therepub...

open.substack.com

The Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize 2026 longlist

The wait is over! Till the shortlist wait

071

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

As mine, Mr Bean was translatable, even if the stereotypes it mobilised were what made it accessible outside the UK

000

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

yes, all over SE Asia from Mandalay to Ho Chi Minh Ville, Rowan Atkinson on market stalls, in cabs, on ferries, in cafes. It was odd… him and Man Utd.

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

a slide perhaps? a banana surf?

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

for some reason Alfred Jarry crossed my mind when I saw Morland’s cartoon in today’s Times

030

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

a really impressive account of Linton Kwesi Johnson’s development politically and as a poet, the watershed of 1981 and the importance of John la Rose and New Beacon - though it really should have made more of Race Today, Railton Road, CLR James and Darcus Howe… but it’s a keeper of a piece

030

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

a really impressive account of LKJ’s development politically and as a poet, and the watershed of 1981 and the importance of John la Rose and New Beacon - tho should have made more of Race Today, Railton Road, CLR James and Darcus Howe… but it’s an impressive keeper of a piece

000

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

A seriously impressive review in the LRB which hasn’t sent me to the title, but headfirst back into the 73 hours of David Lynch’s ten movies and three series of Twin Peaks. I know Godard didn’t like him but Godard wasn’t always on point. The soundtracks are almost as good as JLG’s.

040

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

hmm. An accurate description, maybe. But would ethnic coding of bylines be something you’d approve of?

100

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

My thoughts on the remarkable fiction of Paul Griffiths in the latest issue of Exacting Clam www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-18...

exactingclam.com

Paul Griffith's let me tell you and let me go on | Exacting Clam

031

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

No longer Manga and Murakami. Prospect surveys the boom in fiction translated from Japanese. I guess I should take a look at Murata

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Thinking, as always, I should read at least one I worked my way down the list. And then went back to the top. And then a second time also…

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Thinking I should read at least one I worked through the list. And then started again….

000

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

thanks Rónán! appreciated

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Many thanks! to Rónán Hession for his appreciation of TOOTHPULL in the Irish Times this weekend

050

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

I can’t help but read the latest Maggie Nelson as a flipside to Toothpull, my recent memoir of a troubled dentist. Pathemata, dis-Latined, is a Book of Suffering. Death is in the air. It’s a COVID era narrative. “Pain pretends urgency” she says, “one has to become cold-hearted to its entreaties.”

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

as i think (in fact hope) you aren’t likely to be readers of the remote right monthly The Critic, here’s a kiss and tell feature you might otherwise miss - an author’s step by step account of the collapse of Unbound

021

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

I’m impressed and also disappointed that the centre right/FT appears to understand the contested and intricate links between literary form, imagination and politics better than the left.

100

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Thank-you Will Davies for reviewing Toothpull of St Dunstan - the memoir of a Canterbury dentist tugging and plugging at the gate to the city for 700 years - in today’s Times Literary Supplement.

051

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

and before long the cold microbes will evolve AI swarms of nanobot jamming phlegm

000

Reposted by kevin davey

David Henningham 郭大衛 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 💖💛💙 @henninghampress.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

A 700 year old dentist. This is a fantastic book. Ambitious idea, dazzling at the sentence level, entertaining in-between. If there's a type of novel you love that you think people "don't publish anymore," it's probably this one. For readers of #AlanMoore and #modernism. Let's call it Mooredernism

174

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

OutCalvino-ing Calvino in ‘89! This and The Lay of Sir Tristram - and the musicological expertise of Griffiths’ work on the Second Viennese and Darmstadt schools - are the seedbed for the revoiced Ophelias of LET ME TELL YOU and LET ME GO ON, now combined by NYRB. Republish the backlist, someone.

042

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

he certainly is / I’m reading (and recommend) part 3 of Joseph Koerner’s latest, ART IN A STATE OF SIEGE, on how Kentridge has shored up hope, image-making and truth-telling in South Africa

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

“Literature is becoming culturally marginal”; “the subject is cowed, apologetic and shrinking”; its “prestige has declined precipitously.” This week’s New Statesman includes a lamentable Jeremiad by James Marriott, name-checking no writers after Trilling and Auden. Though he does have a point.

000

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Philip Hensher self-puffs his forthcoming history of the novel in this week’s Spectator, trashing Eimear McBride as he goes. Not a volume I’ll be pre-ordering.

130

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

oh f&”k! / just when one had already thought the worst

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

TOOTHPULL OF ST DUNSTAN - The startling memoir of a dentist who for 700 years pulled teeth in the approach to Canterbury, beside its city gate. Your copy is ready at Aaaargh Press www.aaaarghpress.com/product/toot...

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

The pre-packaged sale of Unbound cancels the crowdfunder publisher’s many debts, replacing them with damage control pledges that no-one can rely on; tweaks the brand to Boundless; and leaves the trust and respect of users where? (The Times)

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

It’s rare I nod my head when reading Shriver

210

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

Good company for spring, a brace of poets who never met, each war-wise and more (Pushkin Press). “You can paint with whatever you like, with pipes, with stamps, postcards or playing cards..” - “Ride forward humanity. Saddle the wild herd of sounds!”

040

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

it’s at the end of the road laid by the trilogy - a body, two, submerged in mud, Dante Inferno style - textwise it’s primal, give it a go!

kevin davey @kvind.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

A matching HOW IT IS with a new intro - say by Josipovici or Joanne Walsh - would be a nice follow through…