On Viewless Wings
@onviewlesswings.bsky.social
Writing, reading, running.
Poetry PhD: vital instability in the 2nd generation Romantics.
Am actually writing.
Interested in the amplification of working class voices, northern voices, & kind & talented voices.
Writing, I swear.
Meliorist, still.
Poetry PhD: vital instability in the 2nd generation Romantics.
Am actually writing.
Interested in the amplification of working class voices, northern voices, & kind & talented voices.
Writing, I swear.
Meliorist, still.
Great film, this. Actually taught it as an A Level media text, now I think about it, once upon a time, in a brief diversion from teaching English.
Children of Men was set in 2027. Maybe it wasn't a 'dystopian action thriller' but the anticipation of today. Yes, I'm talking about immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees.. whoever we are.
@ppfideas.bsky.social a podcast about it would be great.
@ppfideas.bsky.social a podcast about it would be great.
December 7, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Great film, this. Actually taught it as an A Level media text, now I think about it, once upon a time, in a brief diversion from teaching English.
Reposted by On Viewless Wings
Sunday #eveningread
Emily Brontë wrote what I am feeling now.
Emily Brontë wrote what I am feeling now.
December 7, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Sunday #eveningread
Emily Brontë wrote what I am feeling now.
Emily Brontë wrote what I am feeling now.
Oh FFS
the world cup final is going to have a 30 minute halftime show????? will someone rid us of the meddlesome great satan???
December 7, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Oh FFS
Reposted by On Viewless Wings
A v. touching & inspiring read esp. for children who might be finding their childhood difficult. Anna makes a good point about how you can be an extrovert & an introvert. My essential nature is that of an introvert but I made myself an extrovert when it was needed www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
Anna Maxwell Martin looks back: ‘I was bullied a little bit, but it didn’t affect me because I was a happy weirdo’
The actor on being an introverted extrovert, performing as a pearly queen, and becoming a single mother when her husband died
www.theguardian.com
December 7, 2025 at 2:56 PM
A v. touching & inspiring read esp. for children who might be finding their childhood difficult. Anna makes a good point about how you can be an extrovert & an introvert. My essential nature is that of an introvert but I made myself an extrovert when it was needed www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
Reposted by On Viewless Wings
RIP Martin Parr
Some of my favourite photos
Some of my favourite photos
December 7, 2025 at 2:43 PM
RIP Martin Parr
Some of my favourite photos
Some of my favourite photos
Reposted by On Viewless Wings
Martin Parr, photographer acclaimed for observations of British life, dies aged 73. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
Martin Parr, photographer acclaimed for observations of British life, dies aged 73
Known for acute observations of class system, Parr’s images were often in vivid colour with more than a dash of humour
www.theguardian.com
December 7, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Martin Parr, photographer acclaimed for observations of British life, dies aged 73. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
One thing Marvel definitely did better than Star Wars is the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. It is a real joy and actually makes sense. The only downside is that it makes the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game much easier.
December 7, 2025 at 12:12 PM
One thing Marvel definitely did better than Star Wars is the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. It is a real joy and actually makes sense. The only downside is that it makes the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game much easier.
They don't speak for me.
December 7, 2025 at 10:27 AM
They don't speak for me.
Do I watch terrestrial TV any more? Hardly ever.
Do I get my TV listing information through print media? Nope.
Will I be buying the Christmas Radio Times and circling things to watch, because I used to do it with my mum? Yup.
Do I get my TV listing information through print media? Nope.
Will I be buying the Christmas Radio Times and circling things to watch, because I used to do it with my mum? Yup.
December 6, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Do I watch terrestrial TV any more? Hardly ever.
Do I get my TV listing information through print media? Nope.
Will I be buying the Christmas Radio Times and circling things to watch, because I used to do it with my mum? Yup.
Do I get my TV listing information through print media? Nope.
Will I be buying the Christmas Radio Times and circling things to watch, because I used to do it with my mum? Yup.
I really want the Nobel Committee to announce today the winner of the 2026 World Cup.
December 6, 2025 at 1:55 PM
I really want the Nobel Committee to announce today the winner of the 2026 World Cup.
A 10K run, my first run since being ill - probably my first in more than a month - and it felt like my first bit of daylight for weeks too, somehow. Something I definitely needed.
December 6, 2025 at 12:46 PM
A 10K run, my first run since being ill - probably my first in more than a month - and it felt like my first bit of daylight for weeks too, somehow. Something I definitely needed.
Teaching - & illness, & a son in hospital - but mainly teaching, has kicked my ass this week. Birthday week too, miserable from start to finish sadly. I wish I had time to put the things in place that would create time-efficiency. Vimes' boots theory can be applied temporally in that way.
December 5, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Teaching - & illness, & a son in hospital - but mainly teaching, has kicked my ass this week. Birthday week too, miserable from start to finish sadly. I wish I had time to put the things in place that would create time-efficiency. Vimes' boots theory can be applied temporally in that way.
Reposted by On Viewless Wings
Most of you will have seen this but seeing as everyone's on about festive tales, I wrote a Xmas ghost story a few years ago, first fiction i ever had in physical print. Means a hell of a lot to me for various reasons that'll be apparent if ya read it 🙏🖤
www.3ammagazine.com/3am/last-cal...
www.3ammagazine.com/3am/last-cal...
Last Call – 3:AM Magazine
So that’s it for another year. The months of Capitalist foreplay, the gluttonous slew of foodporn ads, the same golden turkeys being sliced over and over as if they haven’t already suffered enough, th...
www.3ammagazine.com
December 3, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Most of you will have seen this but seeing as everyone's on about festive tales, I wrote a Xmas ghost story a few years ago, first fiction i ever had in physical print. Means a hell of a lot to me for various reasons that'll be apparent if ya read it 🙏🖤
www.3ammagazine.com/3am/last-cal...
www.3ammagazine.com/3am/last-cal...
Reposted by On Viewless Wings
Used this while teaching Anglo Saxon England to Y7 yesterday.
I think it's one of the most beautiful passages in literature.
And so poetic to be able to read it to eleven and twelve year olds that get it's message about curiosity is just as true as it was a thousand years ago.
I think it's one of the most beautiful passages in literature.
And so poetic to be able to read it to eleven and twelve year olds that get it's message about curiosity is just as true as it was a thousand years ago.
December 2, 2025 at 6:18 AM
Used this while teaching Anglo Saxon England to Y7 yesterday.
I think it's one of the most beautiful passages in literature.
And so poetic to be able to read it to eleven and twelve year olds that get it's message about curiosity is just as true as it was a thousand years ago.
I think it's one of the most beautiful passages in literature.
And so poetic to be able to read it to eleven and twelve year olds that get it's message about curiosity is just as true as it was a thousand years ago.
Police escaping punishment, is it?
Tale as old as the bloody hills.
Once again, the dignity of the Hillsborough families in the face of the shit thrown at them by police, press, the various agencies of the State, and at times a fair few nobheads among the public, is staggering.
#JFT97
Tale as old as the bloody hills.
Once again, the dignity of the Hillsborough families in the face of the shit thrown at them by police, press, the various agencies of the State, and at times a fair few nobheads among the public, is staggering.
#JFT97
December 2, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Police escaping punishment, is it?
Tale as old as the bloody hills.
Once again, the dignity of the Hillsborough families in the face of the shit thrown at them by police, press, the various agencies of the State, and at times a fair few nobheads among the public, is staggering.
#JFT97
Tale as old as the bloody hills.
Once again, the dignity of the Hillsborough families in the face of the shit thrown at them by police, press, the various agencies of the State, and at times a fair few nobheads among the public, is staggering.
#JFT97
Reposted by On Viewless Wings
I hope someone draws this wonderful story about Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and the power of the arts to help us see things differently, to the attention of our Education Secretary. Do read it, it will lift your spirits.
December 2, 2025 at 10:59 AM
I hope someone draws this wonderful story about Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and the power of the arts to help us see things differently, to the attention of our Education Secretary. Do read it, it will lift your spirits.
When I turned up at Cambridge I had never seen a play, though had fallen in love with 'Hamlet' on the page. At some point I went to a shonky student production of 'Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead' - the first play I had ever seen. Blew my tiny fucking mind.
www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/n...
www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/n...
Tom Stoppard, playwright of dazzling wit and playful erudition, dies aged 88
A theatrical sensation since the 1960s, whose dramas included Arcadia, The Real Thing and Leopoldstadt, Stoppard also had huge success as a screenwriter
www.theguardian.com
November 29, 2025 at 5:27 PM
When I turned up at Cambridge I had never seen a play, though had fallen in love with 'Hamlet' on the page. At some point I went to a shonky student production of 'Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead' - the first play I had ever seen. Blew my tiny fucking mind.
www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/n...
www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/n...
Like the sound of this
"In folk horror the soil beneath our feet is seismically unstable. Our closest kin are unknowable and depraved, bound by unseen influences."
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...
Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror review – dark tales with a sting
This collection of macabre stories set across England explores class, hierarchy and the enduring nature of inequality
www.theguardian.com
November 29, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Like the sound of this
Reposted by On Viewless Wings
"But just because a reader found Heaney’s surface sense pretty clear didn’t mean that they’d even begun to engage with its meaning. And those who like their poems to be either transparently simple or transparently complex will never get Heaney, since he insisted on a poem being both."
essay on Heaney over at the northseapoets substack … open.substack.com/pub/northsea...
Heaney on the Underground
Don Paterson on Seamus Heaney's choice of words
open.substack.com
November 28, 2025 at 4:19 PM
"But just because a reader found Heaney’s surface sense pretty clear didn’t mean that they’d even begun to engage with its meaning. And those who like their poems to be either transparently simple or transparently complex will never get Heaney, since he insisted on a poem being both."
There's something to be said for reading fewer books, and savouring them. Rattling through to hit a goal number seems strange to me.
November 29, 2025 at 7:44 AM
There's something to be said for reading fewer books, and savouring them. Rattling through to hit a goal number seems strange to me.
Bloody hate the term 'wealth creator'.
November 27, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Bloody hate the term 'wealth creator'.
Reposted by On Viewless Wings
I'm old.
If you're not, listen to this.
Get a guitar or some drums, or a trumpet. Pick up a brush, a pencil, some clay or a welder.
Just make shit. It doesn't have to be good (eventually it will be) just make music, art or write or whatever.
It's literally never been more important.
If you're not, listen to this.
Get a guitar or some drums, or a trumpet. Pick up a brush, a pencil, some clay or a welder.
Just make shit. It doesn't have to be good (eventually it will be) just make music, art or write or whatever.
It's literally never been more important.
November 27, 2025 at 4:21 AM
I'm old.
If you're not, listen to this.
Get a guitar or some drums, or a trumpet. Pick up a brush, a pencil, some clay or a welder.
Just make shit. It doesn't have to be good (eventually it will be) just make music, art or write or whatever.
It's literally never been more important.
If you're not, listen to this.
Get a guitar or some drums, or a trumpet. Pick up a brush, a pencil, some clay or a welder.
Just make shit. It doesn't have to be good (eventually it will be) just make music, art or write or whatever.
It's literally never been more important.
You really get a sense of the cultural moment from the replies here.
Rewatched the original Star Wars (A New Hope) today.
Obviously 'I love Star Wars' is baked in, but if you've not watched it in a while you can easily forget that the back half of that movie is some of the most genuinely thrilling stuff on film, back to back.
1977 must not have known what hit it.
Obviously 'I love Star Wars' is baked in, but if you've not watched it in a while you can easily forget that the back half of that movie is some of the most genuinely thrilling stuff on film, back to back.
1977 must not have known what hit it.
November 27, 2025 at 7:21 PM
You really get a sense of the cultural moment from the replies here.
Love this
Young bookworm at the window of John Smith & Son bookshop, St Vincent Street, Glasgow, 1962, photo by Oscar Marzaroli.
November 26, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Love this