iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Where are the 20th anniversary screenings of Notes on a Scandal?

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

That's fab! I hope I can make it out and see it again. That show's bound to be a stunner

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The Poetry Society of America Awards are open, and I'll be reading entries for Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award: $1000 for 10 pages of poetry from a manuscript in progress. Deadline: Dec 15. For more info on this and the other awards, I'll share the link below!

An image promoting the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award which will be judged by Derrick Austin: a $1000 prize for 10 pages from a manuscript in progress. Deadline: Dec 15.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Watching The Philadelphia Story today, I thought about the similarly jarring ending of His Girl Friday. The sense that Russell and Hepburn's characters have compromised themselves. Grant has such a knack for playing a dreadful characters. Of course it always helps when it's Cary playing a cad.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I Walked with a Zombie Center Stage Black Narcissus His Girl Friday

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I love how that fabric pulls across his shoulder and echoes that dramatic sunrise.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I’ve been in a funk all week, so I wanted to share this Titian that’s newly on view at The Art Institute of Chicago, a ray of sunshine in an otherwise glum kinda day.

A picture of a painting in a gold frame by Titian called Risen Christ in which Christ, nude but for white fabric elaborately folded around his waist, winding around his wrist, and covering his left shoulder, stands triumphant against a dramatic blue-orange sunrise as he holds a staff that ends in a billowing banner: a Red Cross against a white background.

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1981 / 1986 News @40yearsago.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

[September 23rd, 1986] Isabelle Huppert at Stringfellow's nightclub in New York City

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

On his birthday, a poem for legendary fashion designer Patrick Kelly from This Elegance

At the Grave of Patrick Kelly by Derrick Austin

I want my clothes to make you smile. —Patrick Kelly

Bitten by bed bugs, clothes ruined,
I ache to scorch the catwalk in your dress of Corvette red kisses.
I'd never seen couture like yours,
colorful, buoyant, and sage. Don't be sullen in sweet air.
Strut, cry your buttons! Twirl, cry your bows!
A swishy boy, I'd spin
an antique globe my mother bought for me from the thrift store and where my finger landed was the place I could be happy. You, too,
gave me a world to imagine without dullness or ignorance.
Your epitaph is legible and clean.
Blazing star, a metrocard, chrysanthemum, a pot of mint— On this fifth day of the fifth month, I promise not to get lost again
when I return properly with a gift.

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Shara Lessley @sharalessley.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Five new essays in @westbranchmagazine.bsky.social on the work @cphillipspoet.bsky.social! 💜 Thanks to James Allen Hall, Cate Lycurgus, Derrick Austin, and David Woo for their smart criticism! westbranch.blogs.bucknell.edu/this-long-wi... #booksky #poetry

westbranch.blogs.bucknell.edu

This Long Winding Line: A Poetry Retrospective – West Branch

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Hub City Press @hubcitypress.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Happy pub day to SMALL TALK by Acie Clark, on shelves today! This debut collection was selected by @paradiselaust.bsky.social as the winner of our New Southern Voices Poetry Book Prize. Copies are available at hubcity.org/smalltalk with free shipping through next Tues (9/30)

hubcity.org

Small Talk | Poetry | Hub City Writers Project

New Southern Voices Poetry Book Prize winner Acie Clark’s debut collection asks us to lean into conversation.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Tenderness came out five years ago today 💜

Derrick Austin's second book of poems, Tenderness, rests on a red-orange floral fabric background.

Derrick Austin's second book of poems, Tenderness, rests on a medieval-style image of Christ wearing a red cloak and standing within background of gold leaf.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

A Maggie Cheung double feature, a fun Ghibli movie, and my first Godzilla 🍿

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

@westbranchmagazine.bsky.social's latest issue includes a folio of essays about Carl Phillips's debut collection In the Blood. I have an essay featured alongside contributions by @davidwoo.bsky.social, @jamesallenhall.bsky.social, and Cate Lycurgus. westbranch.blogs.bucknell.edu/this-long-wi...

westbranch.blogs.bucknell.edu

This Long Winding Line: A Poetry Retrospective – West Branch

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The Slowdown @slowdownshow.org · 18/09/2026

“Today’s poem is a celebration of creatures we tend to overlook or even disdain. It invites us to reconsider our perspective,” shares @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social in today’s encore episode. Read “I Find Myself Defending Pigeons” by Keith S. Wilson: bit.ly/4AhN3XG 📖: @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Hopefully! It’s been a year I think

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

There’s NER, Georgia Review, Paris Review, Plougshares…but I can’t find anything else

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

They’ve been closed to submissions for a while 😩

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Anyone know of journals open to long essays? A lil over 10k words. I’m at a loss as to where to send this piece about Manet, Blackness, poetry, and travel.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Cactus Pears A Page of Madness The Lovers Along the Coast

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Easily one of my favorite episodes of Cerebro, a podcast of which I have many favorite episodes

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A.V. Marraccini @saintsoftness.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

On Substack: A little Rilke translation for the evening, with the Magritte it somehow evokes for me. To all our autumns, wanderers! substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

Rilke: Fall Day

a short translation as the season turns

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Erik Inglis @allthebeset.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The best Veronica out there, made by a student who took my saints and relics class. Silkscreen, not made by human hands. I really like most of the books in my office, but few of them are this satisfying. Let’s hear it for college students.

A silkscreen image of Veronica from Archie comics, on a translucent cloth hanging on a wall.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Who do I know out in Nashville? I wanna do in a reading in town just so I can fly into the Dolly Parton International Airport.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

On the 25th anniversary of Vespertine, one of my favorite albums, here's my poem inspired by it.

Listening to Vespertine for Twenty Hours Straight by Derrick Austin

The seventh track starts with the sound of someone walking through snow,
not fresh snow, but slightly hardened snow. It grounds the album,
I tell them over the phone. They’re cutting tofu to batter and fry,
bowls and utensils clattering in the sink,
their voice, clear and steady.

Six more hours until I arrive, bleary and coarse—
I’m so broke they bought my Greyhound ticket.
Ramshackle farms dot the flat landscape.
I hate that you can’t hide in the Midwest:
fallow fields, no trees in the distance.

This depressive episode isn’t exactly an out of body experience:
it’s like there’s two of me in an unfurnished room,
one on the floor staring at the ceiling, the other standing and staring at the window,
and we don’t speak while the living in the living world continue
their errands and pursuits.

I’m gripping the photo of them studying in Rome,
the year we became friends.
In looping letters on the back,
they wrote three lines in Latin. I recognize
the word for spring.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Are you wearing the… The Piano Teacher shirt? Yeah, I am.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

My roommate made me the best birthday present.

A picture of me wearing a white collared shirt with a stitched image of Isabelle Huppert’s climactic final scene in The Piano Teacher

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Been revisiting Emily Dickinson this month, a poet who means the world to me.

I never felt at Home—Below— by Emily Dickinson

I never felt at Home - Below -
And in the Handsome skies
I shall not feel at Home - I know -
I dont like Paradise -

Because it's Sunday - all the time -
And Recess - never comes -
And Eden'll be so lonesome
Bright Wednesday Afternoons -

If God could make a visit -
Or ever took a Nap -
So not to see us - but they say
Himself - a Telescope

Perennial beholds us -
Myself would run away
From Him - and Holy Ghost - and all -
But there's the "Judgment Day"!

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dr. Khaliden Nas @alsopurp.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

New Sounds ❌ The catchup commences! On third chair is the one and only OneTrueKayla to unpack #XMen97 S2E4 Rise of Apocalypse Pt. II - Ash’s edit debut! - Take me to the king 🎶 - Boy this guy STINKS - SLAVERY. Available everywhere you get your podcasts

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

On his b'day, a silly sonnet I wrote about Chris Hemsworth. the last poem I wrote in my 20s, which was originally published in @theoffingmag.bsky.social

Daydreaming of Chris Hemsworth by Derrick Austin

I feel amorous. I set plates
I won't touch. The most boring, beautiful date
talks with his hands. A little door opens
between the buttons of his shirt.
Desire can be so banal.
Outside are recycle bins, flyers on businesses
describing how we mourn the Earth.
In my mind, Chris fires a rifle while hounds hunt
rabbits. Little red spots on the earth.
O huntsman with your beard and enormous arms,
after you turn me out, don't up and leave.
Rabbits will have been skinned.
I long for so much. Today, I'm most pleased
not getting what I want.

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

@boa-editions.bsky.social has a shiny new website, which means there's a new link to order This Elegance that I'll share below ✨ boaeditions.org/book/this-el...

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Chen Chen @chenchenwrites.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

The beauty of the world, Simone Weil wrote, is the mouth of a labyrinth. Find me there. —Derrick Austin, from "Self-Portraits"

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Derrick Austin @paradiselaust.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

The Gleaners and I Macho Dancer Some Like It Hot The Young Girls of Rochefort

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Simeon Berry @simeonberry.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

“Nights sweating through business casual in a goth club / helped liberate me from shame. Who cared / about a college seminar on spiritual autobiography? / Whether or not my parents believe in God, I was born.” —Derrick Austin ( @paradiselaust.bsky.social), “Self Portraits” @boa-editions.bsky.social

from Self Portraits. Four. Spiritual Autobiography. Of course I acted a fool after coming out. Years of hidden anger bunkered by my door well, a strange animal no one taught me to feed. One conservative regime emerged from another, once again deciding who is and is not. Nights sweating through business casual in a goth club helped liberate me from shame. Who cared about a college seminar on spiritual autobiography? Whether or not my parents believe in God, I was born. Etymology is overrated, the professor said, scoring my late paper, slashing down. I agreed with the beguines who wrote plainly, guided by figuration toward argument. It’s true the soul capers out of misty, amniotic waves. Derrick Austin

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Los Angeles Times @latimes.com · 27/07/2026

Pioneering L.A. assemblage artist Betye Saar, who ‘liberated’ Aunt Jemima, dies days before her 100th birthday www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/…

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