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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

First copy of "The Aureate Trophies of Profit & Loss" Huge thanks to Aaron Kent for the cover!! It's a cute book about money, greed, corporate life, capitalism, the end of civilization etc Publishes 31st December via @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social Preorder link 👇 tinyurl.com/62p35pbx

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

A poem on the rise of the far right in the U.K taken from my new collection "The Aureate Trophies of Profit & Loss- and other lyrics for a cold world) It drops on December 31st via broken sleep books ttps://tinyurl.com/2p4ymdf4

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

So I made the most OTT trailer to accompany my new book "The Aureate Trophies of Profit & Loss" This is my third collection that will drop on the 31st December via Broken Sleep Books Huge thanks to poets Will Alexander, Fran Lock and Rob Kieley for the words Pre-Orders 👇 tinyurl.com/4crn3hkc

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

An excerpt from my third collection of poems "The Aureate Trophies of Profit & Loss" It publishes on December 31st via Broken Sleep Books and if you fancied getting a copy on or just before the publication date, then you can preorder via the link below 👇 tinyurl.com/62p35pbx

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

My new collection of poetry "The Aureate Trophies of Profit & Loss" is out on December 31st. Here's what it's about and why I wrote it! 👇

open.substack.com

The Aureate Trophies of Profit & Loss (and other lyrics for a cold world)

And so I have another collection of poetry to offer you.

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Hello everyone. I haven't posted in a hot minute but i do have some news. Pre-Orders are now open for my third collection of poetry called "The Aureate Trophies of Profit & Loss (and other lyrics for a cold world)" It's out on the 31st December. Preorder link & sample poems here 👇

brokensleepbooks.com

Stuart McPherson - The Aureate Trophies of Profit & Loss | Broken Sleep Books

Stuart McPherson’s The Aureate Trophies of Profit & Loss is a furious, darkly surreal excavation of life under late capitalism, rendered in a language that seethes, mocks, and mourns. Across aphoristi...

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Have some new designs up in the store. Currently free UK shipping until midnight on Sunday. Grab a tee or a hoodie Or don't...it's all good. www.triedfailed.com

triedfailed.com

Tried Failed | The Tried Failed Online Store

t-shirts, hoodies & prints. For outsiders, always....

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Had a day off work Drew someone hitting themselves with a hammer You're welcome www.triedfailed.com

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

BOOK NEWS! Coming December 2025 THE AUREATE TROPHIES OF PROFIT & LOSS (and other lyrics for a cold world) Published via @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social this will be my third collection of poetry. Pre-orders will open up sometime in late October/ early November. #poetry #poetsonbluesky #poems

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

New sticker design for my pals in San Fran. A fun one to draw. I always like doing stuff for friends. Friendship over everything

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

Most absurd design I've ever drawn.... But it's fun, and it was fun to do, and that's really all that matters! www.triedfailed.com

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles" Walt Whitman Took this photo the other day and it seemed fitting to accompany it with a quote from W.W, and Leaves of Grass in particular

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

That sinking feeling when someone you work with sends you a line from one of your poems.....🤢

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Matthew M C Smith @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

‘Evening contemplation is a sad hammer’ On #sharingsaturday ‘Night Sonnet #1’ by Aaron Kent and Stuart McPherson @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social @godzillakent.bsky.social @stumcpherson.bsky.social Share your poetic inspirations using the top hashtag.

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Strange the things you see out of your window.

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Black Bough Poetry @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social - a guest reader at @louloumach.bsky.social’s online launch. @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social

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Black Bough Poetry @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

'The wind cupped us in its /hands, with taillights' On sharing Saturday, a poem by Stuart McPherson from his 'Silver Branch feature in 2022. @stumcpherson.bsky.social www.blackboughpoetry.com/stuart-mcpherson-november-2022

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Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

PREORDER (31.08.2025): Adam Barrett’s The First Thirty Years EP is a taut, propulsive collection that fuses poetic memoir with political indictment, navigating masculinity, class, and grief through the lens of North East England. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

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Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

PREORDER (31.08.2025): Will Alexander’s Texas Blind Salamander Feelings is a recovered early work whose language pulses with hallucinatory velocity and psychic intensity. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

A vibrant, abstract illustration resembling a symmetrical, plant-like organism rendered in crayon-textured orange, yellow, red, green, and blue occupies the centre of a tan background. The title and author’s name appear at the top in dark red serif text, with the publisher’s name at the bottom in a lighter red.

Introduction as present assessment

Texas Blind Salamander Feelings was my second book after Vertical Rainbow Climber the latter being my first foray into print. Its total content has remained obscured and thought lost for the greater part of forty years. During that period I was empowered by the lingual pulsation that inscribed the work of Bob Kaufman. Aime Cesaire, Octavio Paz, and the lingual/visual grammar of Roberto Matta. Writhing in the wake their collective psychic torrent I began to improvise my own lingual element that had been self-seasoned by my own subliminal tonic inspired by ingesting their essence. Not empowered by principles condoned by rote recall but absorption in the depths of my own imaginative arc as it burgeoned from my own lingual foundation. This document accessed from present distance seemed as one of inevitability. As I go over the original manuscript there were indeed oddities and mixtures that in present seeing having now lost any personal patriotism concerning any personal priority as regards the original scripting. Indeed, the language continues to possess interest for me and persists as susurration not unlike that of unfixed glass capable of forming into fresh shape and formation. In this sense I am reviving Lorca’s adage to allow the work time to mature in light of a more mature and lingually balanced maturation. My thanks to the little known Texas Blind Salamander who dwells from birth via blindness in the San Marcos Pool of the Edwards Aquifer native to San Marcos, Hays County Texas. Hearing its curious odyssey immediately propelled me along what I consider a blind automatic expression paralleling what I know of the interesting shapes that blind photographers visually inscribe. Here after protracted sublimation these works have arisen as a new unexpected formation.

$The spirit of the opening section as well as throughout the field of the volume more akin to the little known Peruvian abstractionist Fernando de Sysyslo alive with his mysterious colorful magnetic. They emanate via a vocabulary of inner whirlwinds, fractionless novae, never by some distilled pedantic. A field that emanates spontaneous blazing. Not as oblate emblems poised by sterile structural incessance but a structural somnambulism cognitively rendered by a neutral tapestry that condones its own alacrity by lessening. Not in these works the colorless neural register of Robert Motherwell that transpires symbolized by his great work ( )* that I continue to admire. But the praxis of colored works of de Syslyslo seems shadowed by coloured field that continuously roils the imaginal of fields of late Vlamincik not as some strict coherence, but via irregular provenance. The latter power has prevailed implied by the forces of this eyeless Salamander known to the general mind as the Texas Bl$

The Dust of Green Infinity Callipers

A voluptuous nightingale of rum
solar osmosis causing moon pressure
spleens of yellowed tar morph to darkened camphor
enjambment embracing me with the dust of green infinity
calipers
your being an arc of ghostly cunning
being scores & scores of manipulated edens
being demonic crosses ingrained in your complication via a darkened valley of diamonds not unlike an eel that swims through an arch of sound like a Cassowary magnet
burning like a golden sun under water
being a dietetic aurum
being cobalt samsaras tied to inky eyelid astonishment

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Black Bough Poetry @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

A review by stellar poet @stumcpherson.bsky.social of @louloumach.bsky.social’s ‘I Am Not Light’ - get Louise’s must-have poetry collection www.blackboughpoetry.com/copy-of-regi... #poetry #books #bookclub #poetic #poet #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #writers #writing

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

New design for all you bookheads.... www.triedfailed.com #poetsonbluesky

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Dr Patrick Wright @arainbowpoet.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Many thanks to Ian Pople for this review of Exit Strategy thehighwindowpress.com/category/rev...? @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social @godzillakent.bsky.social

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Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

PREORDER (31.07.2025, @richardnskinner.bsky.social): Richard Skinner’s Undercurrents is a hybrid essay collection that brings together literary criticism, memoir, cultural commentary, and music writing in a loose, associative structure. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

A book cover with a pale blue background. At the top, the title Undercurrents is written in dark blue serif font, with the author’s name, Richard Skinner, beneath it in a smaller, bright orange serif font. The central artwork is an abstract geometric composition in shades of blue, orange, pink, and white, evoking the shapes of musical instruments like a guitar, trombone, and tambourine, intertwined with circles and angular forms. At the bottom, the publisher’s name, Broken Sleep Books, appears in small pink serif text

The Narrative Triangle

In every text, there is a set of three relationships – that between the narrator and character, between character and the reader, and between the reader and the narrator. According to whichever one of those three relationships you wish to highlight, you will have to use your narrator in different ways and to different degrees.
So, if you want the closest possible relationship between character and your reader, you will have to use your narrator like a stenographer – someone present in the story-world whose sole job is to relay to the reader what the characters say and do. The narrator-as-stenographer has no voice of their own, they offer no opinions or value judgements on any of those words or actions, they are just silent recorders.

The early short stories by Hemingway that feature a character called Nick Adams are a good example of this kind of role for the narrator. In story after story, we see Nick Adams go hunting, or fishing, putting up a tent and taking it down the next morning. We are offered no commentary on any of this by the narrator – the stories are pure transcripts of word and action. If we want to know what Nick Adams is thinking or how he feels, we will have to infer it for ourselves purely from what Nick Adams says and does. In this type of narration, we have direct, first-hand access to what the characters say and do. There is no ‘interiority’. This is ‘showing’ at its purest – so stripped down and without any narratorial comment, Hemingway’s early stories could almost read like a film scripts. Dashiel Hammet’s stories and novels are another good example. Acting purely as a pane of glass, the narrator-as-stenographer is nowhere to be seen or heard. A good, more recent example of this style of narration is John William’s fine novel Stoner.
At some point, however, the narrator may pierce the body of a character and enter their hearts and minds, revealing to the reader what the character is feeling and thinking. This could be done only occasionally, and very briefly, via ‘free indirect style’, those moments when the narrator climbs inside the head of a character and allows us to hear what they are thinking. Take this extract from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway:

He dropped her hand. Their marriage was over, he thought, with agony, with relief. The rope was cut; he mounted; he was free, as it was decreed that he, Septimus, the lord of men, should be free, alone (since his wife had thrown away her wedding ring; since she had left him), he, Septimus, was alone, called forth in advance of the mass of men to hear the truth, to learn the meaning, which now at last, after all the toils of civilization – Greeks, Romans, Shakespeare, Darwin, and now himself – was to be given whole to…

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Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

PREORDER (30.06.2025): Sue Vickerman’s a suitcaseful of dog is a sharp, darkly funny, and unsentimentally lyrical collection that captures life’s absurdities and devastations with equal intensity. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

A book cover with a muted brown background. The title, a suitcaseful of dog, is displayed at the top in lowercase burnt orange serif font, with the author’s name, Sue Vickerman, in a smaller dark brown serif font beneath it. The central image is a vintage brown leather suitcase adorned with colourful travel stickers from various locations, including Venice, Paris, Moscow, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro. At the bottom, the publisher’s name, Broken Sleep Books, is printed in brown serif font.

My tree swing

After the storm our sycamore’s
left limb is still double-shackled as before
with offcuts of zinc-plated chain
nicked by my Opa from the steelworks
he jobbed at after they got here

but the tree is now uprooted
(Oma’s and Opa’s fate) and slung
across the torrent that yesterday
was a pavement, like an arm to escape on.
Gone, my childhood swing from way back when.

Fact is, the tree was never destined to last,
fated by a fungus attack two decades ago.
How Oma cried on finding it to be hollow,
like a dream gone. Now the whole thing’s gone,
tackled down, drowned, gone to where they’ve gone.

I spot something black, the seat of my swing,
inhumanly swollen, and more storms to come.

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Forgot what an absolute GOAT Camille Rankine is... #poetry #poetsonbluesky

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

Today's drawing / design... One for all the Warhammer / D&D heads....

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

Gotta love Poetry. Submit work. Forget about submission. Wait exactly 1 calendar year. Get rejected..... It's a weird bubble to exist in.

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Today's quick drawing / design Anyone get the reference? www.triedfailed.com

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DrNaturegirl @drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk · 05/05/2025

Today on #LiftToTheSky I’m boosting @stumcpherson.bsky.social who has 4 collections out with @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social Obligate Carnovore is intense well worth your time and pennies. Check out the other titles from this supportive, creative indie press. www.stumcpherson.com/home-2-2 #poetry

stumcpherson.com

Publications | Stuart McPherson

Selected publications by prize winning poet, Stuart McPherson

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

I'm at the airport and have a 23hr flight ahead of me. I guess this is the great thing about poetry- you can write it anywhere! That is unless Home Alone is a movie option. If it is then I'm just watching that.

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

"What Sadness Anywhere is Sadness" by Shane McCrae. #poetsonbluesky #poetry

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Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

PREORDER (31.05.2025): Elenia Graf’s Conscious Tongues is a visceral, formally inventive collection that undertakes an autopsic exploration of hunger and the body parts it inhabits. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

A book cover with a pale cream background. At the top, the title Conscious Tongues is printed in a dark green serif font, followed by the author’s name, Elenia Graf, in smaller serif text. The central image features a detailed black and white illustration of various human teeth, arranged in four horizontal rows, showcasing different angles and types. At the bottom, the publisher’s name, Broken Sleep Books, appears in muted grey serif font.

AUTOPSY

Who is the deceased?

i tried to think of myself as something other than hunger

Age:

i tried to think of myself as something other than just young enough
to be this hungry
i tried to think of myself as grateful
that i possess the anatomy required to eat

Sex:

i tried to think of myself as something beyond
my anatomy and remained in thought for a long time

Address:

before i performed an autopsy on myself i performed
an autopsy on the world
the world wasn’t dead yet i had to kill it before
i sliced it open
inside i found suet
fleshy bodies unquestioned
and all the questioning bodies warped and beautiful
so there i went, inside the stiff world
and stitched its bloody underbelly
up from the inside

Length:

this is not an autopsy of my anatomy
this is an autopsy of my hunger

it goes very far

Weight:

it is very heavy

Eyes:

it is always growling
the loudest
when i can’t see you

Hair:

it is always growing

Marks and Wounds:

the poet reports no visible bruises
or lacerations
you haven’t touched me in a while
and you never touch me hard enough

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

This record is 32 years old and I feel old as f**k. First heard it / saw it on a sub pop VHS in 1992. Finally own a copy all these years later. One of the first bands that introduced me to punk rock as a kid. Still a banger 🔥

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

He's grumpy and weird but I do love him

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Frank Stanford will always be, in my eyes, one of the greatest of all time... #poetsonbluesky #poetry

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

New design from yesterday. Who WOULDN'T want to get abducted by aliens right now....

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Stuart McPherson @stumcpherson.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Sometimes you gotta wear your own shirt designs www.triedfailed.com

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Broken Sleep Books @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Delighted that Rushika Wick's Horse is on the Jhalak Prize longlist, alongside other brilliant poets including @azad-ashim.bsky.social, @mailbykite.bsky.social, and Nisha Ramayya. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

A digital graphic displaying a selection of twelve book covers arranged in a grid pattern against a blue background with a subtle geometric pattern. The books featured are part of the 2025 Jhalak Prize poetry longlist. The covers vary in design, featuring a mix of bold typography, abstract illustrations, and photographic elements

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