iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

For many years I would go meat free from my birthday in May to September, but a couple years back decided to give up meat entirely. If you’re debating the switch, it’s far easier than you could imagine, and it feels good, physically and emotionally.

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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

From this review- “Think of all the diligent, decent black academics who have been lumbered with the embarrassment of having Arday as a figurehead” - no, think of *why* black academics are held collectively responsible in ways that white academics are not

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Cold War Steve @coldwarsteve.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

The Haywain 2026

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Ma’a Nonu, one of the greatest All Blacks of all time just faced off against his own nation at 44 years old returning the call with a solo Haka. (He’s also a vegetarian 🌱 )

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Suna @sunaafshan.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Submissions close this afternoon at 5!

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I know, let’s burn more oil and build more data centres. Sorry, been listening to British and American politicians too much.

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

From Linda Bierds collection The Ghost Trio, still one of my all time favourites.

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Ok 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 we get it, you’ll turn anything into a flagpole.

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Leo Hickman @leohickman.carbonbrief.org · 24/06/2026

++BREAKING++ Leading climate scientists in the UK have written to senior editors in broadcast media - and OFCOM and IPSO: "To express our concern about recent media coverage of extreme weather, climate change and net-zero and to urge you…to inform public audiences of the scientific links"

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 17/06/2026

…Teacher, scholar, he had worked a true task when all alive… —Iain Crichton Smith, “For Angus MacLeod” in New Collected Poems, @carcanet.bsky.social 2011 Iain Crichton Smith, himself a teacher, commemorates the life of a former Headmaster of Oban High School 17 June is #ThankATeacherDay 1/3

Iain Crichton Smith

For Angus MacLeod
Headmaster, and Editor of Gaelic Poems

Today they laid him in the earth's cold colour,
a man from Lewis with his seventy-five
years struck from his head. Teacher, scholar,
he had worked a true task when all alive,

building a school, elucidating texts.
The Gaelic shone quite clearly in his bones.
A casket filled with ashes had been mixed
with filtered sunlight and the small stones.

A useful life with pupils and with poems:
sufficient honours (his humour asked no more)
he takes his place in many minds and rooms.
Without their knowing it, his patient care

instructs far hands to turn a new lever,
a voice to speak in a mild-mannered tone.
The deeds we do reverberate forever.
Inveterate justice weighs the flesh and bone.

His best editions are some men and women
who scrutinise each action like a word.
The truest work is learning to be human
definitive texts the poorest can afford.

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Bad Lilies @badlilies.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

OUT NOW: Issue twenty-four: 'Hopes Unspool' badlilies.uk/issue-twenty-four

badlilies.uk

Issue twenty-four — Bad Lilies

Issue twenty-four of Bad Lilies

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 26/05/2026

This place was never yours, they’ll say, though years from now as she steps from factory floor to city street, the winter haar pouring in, muting the world, effacing everything, it’s here that she’ll be A poem by Tarn MacArthur (@tarnnation.bsky.social). www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Tarn MacArthur · Poem: ‘The Clearance of Aoineadh Mòr, 1824’

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

fragment John Burnside, 'Taxonomy', The Light Trap (2002), p. 6. the neighbour's in-by, sky SW darkening with rain

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 14/06/2026

James Hutton that true son of fire who said to Burns “Aye, man, the rocks melt wi the sun”… —Edwin Morgan thought so, & was inspired – by Burns & Hutton – to write “Theory of the Earth”: one of his SONNETS FROM SCOTLAND, first published in New Writing Scotland 2, 1984 #geology #poem #poetry 3/3

Theory of the Earth
Edwin Morgan

James Hutton that true son of fire who said
to Burns 'Aye, man, the rocks melt wi the sun'
was sure the age of reason's time was done:
what but imagination could have read
granite boulders back to their molten roots?
And how far back was back, and how far on
would basalt still be basalt, iron iron?
Would second seas re-drown the fossil brutes?
'We find no vestige of a beginning,
no prospect of an end.' They died almost
together, poet and geologist,
and lie in wait for hilltop buoys to ring,
or aw the seas gang dry and Scotland's coast
dissolve in crinkled sand and pungent mist.

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 21/05/2026

There will be no shelter here tonight, only the long road to the land of strangers. Every house will be stripped and every roof caved in, as each man, woman, and child is made to bear on their back the sum of a life. A poem by Tarn MacArthur (@tarnnation.bsky.social). www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Tarn MacArthur · Poem: ‘The Clearance of Aoineadh Mòr, 1824’

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 19/05/2026

This place was never yours, they’ll say, though years from now as she steps from factory floor to city street, the winter haar pouring in, muting the world, effacing everything, it’s here that she’ll be A poem by @tarnnation.bsky.social. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.uk

Tarn MacArthur · Poem: ‘The Clearance of Aoineadh Mòr, 1824’

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 16/05/2026

lrb.co.uk

Tarn MacArthur · Poem: ‘The Clearance of Aoineadh Mòr, 1824’

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Please go and have a read of a new poem I wrote after visiting and researching the township of Aoineadh Mòr in Lochaber. The narrative is based on a true story of a woman whose family were evicted during the Clearances and settled in Edinburgh.

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Daisy Fried @daisyfried.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

My review of Solie's latest: The Water in These Poems May Be Poisoned, but Beauty Persists www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/b...

nytimes.com

The Water in These Poems May Be Poisoned, but Beauty Persists

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Standing in passport line in Nice airport and a French woman goes, “I’m not a fan of the British for many things but they’d never behave like this in a queue.”

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Well done Scotland, zero reform constituency wins! Let’s hope they underperform in the lists now.

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David Wheatley @nemoloris.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

What a pleasure to find myself holding forth on Scottish poetry in the new issue of the New York Review of Books. Many thanks to Jana Prikryl and the Review for extending me the hospitality of their pages. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

nybooks.com

Against Nostalgia | David Wheatley

In their poems and essays, Kathleen Jamie and Peter Davidson transcend Scottish sentimentalism and find new points of entry into their shared past.

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

My PIC! Long road to this moment. Buzzing for her! www.faber.co.uk/journal/fabe...

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Omen? Saltire above Murrayfield!

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Nick Harkaway @nickharkaway.com · 03/03/2026

What. The. Fuck.

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Maya Contreras @mayatcontreras.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Thank you, Laura Ballarín Cereza, Member of the European Parliament. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

“In the meantime, the Met police said they would stop arresting people immediately for showing support for Palestine Action after the high court ruling but would gather evidence for potential future prosecution.” So so so scummy.

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Love all the chat from the likes of Campbell and Stewart, along the lines of “we’ll say one thing for Corbyn, he had the moral standards to recognize Mandelson was bad and get him out”. As if moral standards shouldn’t be the first point of politics?! 🤦 They tell on themselves so much it’s not funny.

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Irish Literary Times @irishlittimes.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Remembering Michael Longley, who sadly passed away a year ago today.

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Kathleen Jamie @kathleenjamie.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

Good to see the Observer featuring new poetry. Today it's my 'Mineral'.

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Great teasers from the new journal Free Bloody Birds’ forthcoming second issue, w/ a poem by Muldoon and essay on MacNeice from @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk maestro John Clegg. www.freebloodybirds.com/issue-two/

freebloodybirds.com

Issue Two — Free Bloody Birds

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Mick Imlah on the great Gordon Brown.

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Andrew Neilson @andrewjamesneilson.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

My debut book of poems is out this year in March, or thereabouts, from @DiodeBlue. Here's a sample.

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Tomorrow marks 12 years since my father’s sudden death. A lot of my work has been influenced by that loss, but this poem perhaps addresses the daily feeling of it most directly. Happy New Year!

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 24/12/2025

A spill of yew like Christ’s blood in the snow; and somewhere in the hedge, just yards away, a fleck of presence waiting to be born… —John Burnside, “Nativity” published in RUIN, BLOSSOM (Penguin, 2024) #poem #poetry #Christmas www.penguin.co.uk/books/456120...

Nativity
by John Burnside

A spill of yew
like Christ's blood
in the snow;
and somewhere in the hedge,
just yards away,
a fleck of presence
waiting to be born.

No angel at the gate.
No guiding star.
We make this world
from gravity and light
and we alone, God's grace
by other means:

a flock of redwings
flitting through the fog,
woodrush
and fescue,
wintergreen,
Rose of Sharon.

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 17/12/2025

According to J. Carmichael Watson, the #Gaelic poet Màiri nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (Mary MacLeod, c.1615–c.1707), was buried face-down at her own request: “She directed that she should be placed face downward in the grave – ‘beul nam breug a chur foidhpe’” (with her lying mouth down) #WyrdWednesday

Meadowsweet
Kathleen Jamie
Published in Jizzen (Picador, 1999)

Tradition suggests that certain of the Gaelic women poets
were buried face down.

So they buried her, and turned home,
a drab psalm
hanging about them like haar,

not knowing the liquid
trickling from her lips
would seek its way down,

and that caught in her slowly
unravelling plait of grey hair
were summer seeds:

meadowsweet, bastard balm,
tokens of honesty, already
beginning their crawl

toward light, so showing her,
when the time came,
how to dig herself out –

to surface and greet them,
mouth young, and full again
of dirt, and spit, and poetry.

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

All the organisation and decision making of last week seems to have disappeared quite quickly here. The the first 20 last week were quite poor as well, but trying to turn momentum away from home without some of your top players going to be a lot tougher.

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Can’t believe they’re flogging AI with “omg it taught me how to cook this amazing dish”… you mean like a recipe, like one of the oldest recorded forms of writing in human history?

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Tarn MacArthur @tarnnation.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

This is one of the best performances I’ve seen from an Edinburgh ten in years.

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