iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by John McCullough

Rosanna McGlone @rosannamcglone.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Look what's just arrived 😍 Thanks to @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social Can't wait to get started!

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Bloodaxe Books @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

'The collection swings delightfully from the surreal [...] to the more straightforward albeit beautiful lyric poems and then back again’ – Mícheál McCann, @irishtimes.com, on @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social's just-published fifth collection Crowd Voltage. www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

If you listen to poetry podcasts, there is a new in-depth interview with me by @gregorykearns.bsky.social out today on The Poems We Made Along The Way. I talk about queer joy, neurodivergence and the techniques I used to begin poems in Crowd Voltage. (Available on most podcast platforms.)

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Bowled over to see The Irish Times today has a brilliant review of my new @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social collection of poems, Crowd Voltage! I love its focus on empathy and connection.⚡️🤠⚡️

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Bloodaxe Books @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

John McCullough (@mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social) will be reading from his just-published fifth collection Crowd Voltage @mklitfest.bsky.social on 25 April, alongside Isabelle Baafi.

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Bloodaxe Books @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Last night's excellent online launch reading with Lily Blacksell, Rita Ann Higgins and John McCullough is now available to watch on YouTube: youtube.com/live/p_0hOeo... All three poets' new books are available to order now from the Bloodaxe website: www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/new_titl...

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Alison Brackenbury @abrackenbury.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

'Technically, the human walk is an interrupted fall.' I could fall into a morass of adjectives while trying to praise @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social 's new collection, 'Crowd Voltage' @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social . Instead, I will simply say that it is an uninterrupted walk into joy.

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

The current issues of Poetry Review and Poetry London contain poems from my new collection Crowd Voltage, out with @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social on 26th March. 🙂

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Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

“I’ve always thought the opposite, that most poetry isn’t hard enough, in the sense that it’s not interesting or engaging enough. It doesn’t hold the attention—you read it once or twice & you’ve used it up. The engagement I look for and too often miss is a kind of pleasure…the opposite of boredom.”

jjgallaher.blogspot.com

On Difficulty in Poetry - Reginald Shepherd

On Difficulty in Poetry Reginald Shepherd The Writer's Chronicle May/Summer 2008 “What are these songs straining at sense— you the consequen...

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

It exists! The first copies of Crowd Voltage, my new poetry collection with Bloodaxe out on March 26. ⚡️🙂⚡️

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On Viewless Wings @onviewlesswings.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

This poem by @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social is one of those that pops into your consciousness from time to time and stays with you for hours.

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Graeme Richardson @ravoon.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

A love poem for Valentine's Day from my new book, "Dirt Rich"

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Karen Goodwin @mssgoodwin.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Thanks @poetrysociety.org.uk for the new issue of Poetry Review. Featuring a fabulous new poem by @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Coming soon! From the Bloodaxe New Books 2026 catalogue. With thanks to Joelle Taylor for the endorsement. ⚡️🙂⚡️

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Can’t believe I wrote this six years ago. Still true. x

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

This week @Waterstones are offering 25% discount on preorders for @BloodaxeBooks titles out in early 2026, including mine. Offer closes 17 October. Just go to waterstones.com, put 9781780377810 into the search box, click PREORDER and add code OCTOBER25 for the discount.

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

My online Advanced Poetry Workshops course returns in October. Each week I talk on the effects of techniques and we read contemporary pieces. We workshop students' poetry and there are exercises to help produce fresh, surprising poems. www.creativewritingprogramme.org.uk/advanced-poe...

creativewritingprogramme.org.uk

Advanced Poetry Workshops — The CWP

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Been working on my next collection Crowd Voltage since 2021, aiming to find fresh ways to write about working-class and queer experiences that would draw on my energetic approach to imagery and phrase-making. Here are some of the writers I’ve gone back to most often…

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Excited to say my fifth collection of poems, Crowd Voltage, will be published by @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social in March 2026. It's a high-energy book about class, crowds and community. This specially designed cover is by the brilliant queer artist, Villain.

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Litbowl @litbowl.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Poem for the new month. From Wendy Xu's book, You Are Not Dead. #poem #books #writing

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Kim Addonizio. This is the opening of a poem in her fantastic recent collection, Exit Opera (Norton, 2024). I’ve been a fan for a long time and for me this book and the last see her at the top of her game. So wildly imaginative and thoughtful, intimate and funny all at once.

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Twenty years since my 2005 author photo. 🙂 Part of my boy band phase. Album includes the hit singles ‘Dreaming Barman’, ‘Ding! Dong! My PhD is Dead!’, ‘Puberty Won’t Leave’ and ‘Nobody, Nobody [Wants My First Book Yet]’.

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Rosanna McGlone @rosannamcglone.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

@mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social I've Carried a Door on my Back for Ten Years is the perfect foundation for tonight's class on redrafting #TheProcessofPoetry #Cantwaittoshare

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Caroline Litman @alicemydaughter.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

A copy of #HerNameisAlice is winging its way to several politicians and members of the House of Lords who have been offered, and have accepted a copy.

Promotional material with a teal background, showing the book cover of “Her name is Alice” by Caroline Litman. The cover is a picture of Alice in a grey coat, beige trousers and brown shoes carrying a neon pink handbag. It shows a quote about the book by the poet John McCullough, “Shines an unyielding light on the devastating impact of transphobia”.

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Kaj [they/them] @speedofhuman.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

The latest poem in our little sidewalk poetry box is @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social’s Flamingo from 📖 Reckless Paper Birds 🦩

A wooden framed box with plexiglass cover has the poem Flamingo by John McCullough printed with the image of two flamingos standing near an antique radio. The text of the poem is:

“We prefer shallow water,
gathering in hundreds at night clubs
by the shore. The powder cakes
we bring say EAT ME and we do,
gobbling up beakfuls till our heads turn
upside-down. We don't know
how Sia and Audrey Helburn joined us,
pirouetting across the floor. And who
invited the clouds? We don't mind.
Our origin is in fire. We are invincible,
even if we're imaginary figures
in some Red King's dream, even if
we may be losing it, may in fact just be me
standing on one perilous leg breside
the speaker, waiting for the rain to stop.”

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Anne Bailey @anne-bailey.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Just seen this poem by John McCullough in Broken Sleep’s ‘Opening Line’. It has stopped my heart - it’s like it was written just for me!

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Springtime sadness from Tomas Tranströmer, translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton in Collected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2006).

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Diane di Prima. From: Revolutionary Letters (City Lights, 1971).

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Robert Bly. From: Collected Poems (Norton, 2018).

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Hey hey it's Frank O'Hara's birthday! 'Now I am quietly waiting for / the catastrophe of my personality / to seem beautiful again, / and interesting, and modern.' - 'Mayakovsky'. Me too - any second now. :) (Image: Frank with his cat, Muffins, photographed by Richard O. Moore.)

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Poem about my first boyfriend that appeared in Poetry Wales in 2023.

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

James Crews. From: Telling My Father (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2017).

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Emily Fragos. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 21, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Anne Carson. From: ‘The Life of Towns’ in Plainwater (Vintage, 1995).

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Molly Brodak (1980-2020). Her one full-length collection is A Little Middle of the Night (University of Iowa Press, 2010).

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D. A. Powell @dapowell.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

I found a bunch of new D.A. Powell poems over at www.rejectedlit.com/issue-10/da-... They're not half bad

rejectedlit.com

D.A. Powell — Rejected Lit Magazine

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Atrium @atriumpoetry.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Both Atrium editors - @clairewalkerpoetry.bsky.social & @hollyannepoet.bsky.social - are reading this FREE event tomorrow for #internationalwomensday It's not often you get both of us reading at the same event these says ao do come and say hello. Lovely to be part of this great line up.

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

"The greatest challenge, for me, is to try and express difficult thoughts in plain language. I prize clarity and simplicity. I like to present complicated or mysterious ideas in the simplest way possible ... Complexity, I think, often obscures fuzzy thinking." - Elizabeth Bishop

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

“People find poetry difficult because they’re looking for hidden ideas in it but the real purpose of a poem is emotional resonance. If poetry wasn’t fundamentally emotion then it wouldn’t need to be written in rhythm and with imagery.” - Robert Gray in The Age, 25 August 2002

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

My next online gig is this Monday 10th March for Café Writers when I’m their featured poet but, most importantly, joined by the winners of their competition for which I was the judge, including Esther Morgan, Laura McKee & Lesley Sharpe. Live on Zoom, details in the link - mailchi.mp/a52fe36e796b...

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Rose Knapp 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @roseknapp.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Surrealist Women: An International Anthology Meret Oppenheim & Penelope Rosemont #poetry #surrealism #avantgarde

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

“How close can you get this language to be like music & communicate feeling at the base level in the same way a composition with no words communicates meaning? … Language is always burdened by thought. I’m just trying to get it so it can be like feeling.” - Terrance Hayes, 2013

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Teaching a class this morning on one of my favourite modern collections, Terrance Hayes’ American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin, 2018).

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John McCullough @mrjohnmccullough.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Jane Hirshfield. This poem is from The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2024).

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