• Curve of a Line

    You examine a curve you have made. It isn’t regular but it possesses a certain consistency, to your eye at any rate, even if it lacks geometrical purity (the clarity of the Zen circle is not your curve either). Your handwriting is done on a criss-cross notebook, but your line wanders off, and the same…

  • Bristlepoet No 3

    Bristlepoet No 3

  • Swimming by numbers

    At the edge of bitterness, il gusto, mia lingua, il caffè macchiato and I see the words, pietro colorato I might drown in italiano. This is swimming by numbers and numeracy leaks away suggesting there is a problem higher up, above the water line pietro colorato the colours are smudged by rising damp meaning serious…

  • Seven Thoughts

    One generating power the turbines tumble into action images flicker and watch each other comparing notes   Two words reduced to to background rumble but not one word in plain sight nothing distinguished solo you sail hoping for nothing   Three poetry: a constitution for human life animals and carnivores we show our teeth  …

  • The fear of imagining

    The fear of imagining that life has a purpose must be the fear that I won’t have the capacity to create the new anew renew the species: of course if the creative impulse is blocked, frustrated, repressed … then all one can do is destroy. Thus patriarchal man in his rage of need (a deep…

  • And how do we manage paradox?

    And how do we manage paradox? The shimmering mirages of our minds? Where the world is both fragmentary and dazzling? This is such is it not? I mean it’s like this; this is how it is Can you see what I’m pointing at? Indicating the target But in my myopic dazzle Can I trust that…

  • think-and-write person

    think-and-write person

    Being a think-and-write person: “…the hard things when you’re not thinking or writing and as far as you know you are dead or might as well be, with no word for yourself, just that suction-shush like a heart pump or straw in a milk shake…” [CK Williams, Writers Writing Dying, Pp59] It’s for keeping an…

  • Is backward the new forward?

    And what does forward mean? No, don’t look at me like that, That exasperated expression on your face; I mean it seriously: Forward is now back.   Is this Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence?   1970 is as far as got before the braying donkey of the right Rediscovered those populist slogans  To feed the resentments toxically…

  • On the Road Again

    On the Road Again

    Carrying on, in times like these I turn to poetry. CK Williams is working best right now, The Collected Poems (up to 2003).I’ve also just bought Writers, Writing, Dying (2013). I like his poems that are often slowly unfolding stories, long sentences, with spaces to pause and breath, both personal and political, moral and cosmopolitan. Is this…

  • All diagnoses will be given full consideration

    Brexit . . . Trump . . . is the darkness gathering? Is it Tolkein time? The gathering of the forces of tyranny? The denial of democracy as a system of enlightened governance? A realignment of world power? A Putin/Trump axis? Should I pack my belongings on the poor donkey’s back and head for the…

  • Care worn

    I woke early this morning – maybe 5 o’clock – to a sense of being worn out and remember the phrase care worn – worn out by caring – the slow work of love, of caring for others, that gradual erosion of the outer layers until only some sort of essence remains: a skeleton of…

  • So…here…to write…

    So…here…to write…and being surrounded by books, overwhelmed by books, let’s be frank, by words, overwhelmed by words, tumbling madly, there is no way of processing, better keep the books locked in the cellar where they can do least harm. Is that true? Is it possible? Won’t they leak into the damp walls, crumbling bricks, stone,…

Categories (2024) are:

  • ATELIER Work – about-creative-work (in all mediums: text-drawing-sounds-image etc)
  • CLIMATE Action – indications-and-contra-indications
  • DAWDLING – walking-pausing-to-wonder-wandering
  • IN Conversation – companionship-and-connections
  • LA Communita –participatory-collaborative-artivism
  • OTHER than Human – animate-and-inanimate-terrestrial-kin
  • PARANOID Readings – violence-and-fundamental-perversions
  • POLITICAL Readings – mobilisations-affect-polarisations
  • REPARATIVE Readings – inspiring-healing-restorative
  • SHADOW Readings – speculative-and-not-yet-visible-thinking
  • STYLE Readings – scales-and-familiarities
  • TONITE at the Coliseum – live-experiences-performance
  • YOGI (‘Not This-Not That’) – meditation-bhakti-consciousness


Different WORDSTALL Categories in the past supported the mainly experimental personal writing in posts. The previous list of Category headings was: Anti-gravity Surgery / Atelier / Catastrophe Games / Echo Effects / Exodus / Fundamental Perversions / Hitting the Potholes / Holy Fool-Hero / In Conversation / Old Men Traveling / On the Street / Out in the Wilderness / Over and Beyond / Tonite at the Coliseum. Some of these still persist or recur as Tag key-words.

The even earlier Category headings for the walkingtalkingwriting blog (2006-2012) have been forgotten, but can be explored if desired via the long tail of monthly posts for those years here.