December 19, 2021
A new book spine poem with a medical theme, to see the year out:
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Hidden Symptoms
Hidden symptoms
Under the skin:
A disaffection,
A ghost in the throat –
Patient or pretender
Waiting for the healer.
Can you tolerate
This parasite?
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books, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: Ashleigh Young, Bong Joon Ho, book spine poem, bookmash, books, Charles V. Ford, Deirdre Madden, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Eamonn Sweeney, found poetry, James Kelman, Marc D. Feldman, Michel Faber, photography, poetry, Toni Reinhold, visual poetry, wordplay |
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Posted by Stan Carey
August 9, 2021
For the day that’s in it, a new book spine poem. Bit gloomy, this one.
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Touching the Precipice
Zero, zero, zero wild flowers,
The insect societies
Collapse on your doorstep –
Mind and nature
Touching the precipice.
*

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books, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: Ashley Montagu, book spine poem, bookmash, books, Edward O. Wilson, found poetry, Gregory Bateson, Heather Greer, Jared Diamond, literature, Marjorie Blamey, photography, poetry, Richard Fitter, Roberto Saviano, Toby Ord, visual poetry, wordplay |
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Posted by Stan Carey
January 28, 2021
In a recent conversation, I heard the word awkness in reference to a socially awkward situation. I hadn’t heard it before, but its meaning was obvious in context. After all, its cousin awks ‘awkward’ has been around a while; I’ve even used it myself.
When I looked into awkness, I had a surprise. It sounds, as I said on Twitter, like a millennial coinage – and it is, more or less. But not originally: the OED dates awkness to the late 16th century, defining it thesaurusily as ‘wrongness, irrationality, perversity, untowardness, awkwardness, ineptitude’.
The first citation is from a 1587 religious book by Philippe de Mornay (tr. Philip Sidney & Arthur Golding): ‘The skilfull can work much upon little, and by his cunning ouercome the awknesse of his stuffe.’ The citations continue till 1674, with the word also spelled awknesse, awknes, and aukness.
And then: obsolescence.
Well, not exactly.
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etymology, language, language history, lexicography, linguistics, morphology, slang, wordplay, words | Tagged: awk, awkness, awks, clippings, dictionaries, etymology, inkhorn terms, language, language history, lexicography, linguistics, morphology, neologisms, OED, slang, wordplay, words |
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Posted by Stan Carey
May 11, 2020
An early highlight of my reading year has been Lydia Davis’s Collected Stories. Many of her stories put a slight and strange and startling twist on consensus reality (or a fresh insight that amounts to the same), sometimes combined with a self-conscious linguistic flourish:
I am reading a sentence by a certain poet as I eat my carrot. Then, although I know I have read it, although I know my eyes have passed along it and I have heard the words in my ears, I am sure I haven’t really read it. I may mean understood it. But I may mean consumed it: I haven’t consumed it because I was already eating the carrot. The carrot was a line, too.
This synaesthesia-adjacent report is one of fifteen self-contained entries in a story titled ‘Examples of Confusion’.
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books, literature, wordplay, writers, writing | Tagged: American literature, books, language, linguistics humour, literature, Lydia Davis, reading, short stories, stories, wordplay, writers, writing, writing tips |
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Posted by Stan Carey
April 1, 2020
If you’re lucky enough to have books and time at hand, here’s something fun you can do in lockdown: book spine poetry.
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All the Pieces Matter
I choose to live
a life in parts –
insects’ flight
from dream to dream,
through the woods
beyond the sea.
I only say this
because I love you:
All the pieces
matter.
*

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books, literature, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: Alannah Robins, Bob Gibbons, book spine poem, bookmash, books, Bryan Cranston, Deborah Tannen, Emily Carroll, found poetry, Jonathan Abrams, literature, Oona Frawley, Paul Lynch, photography, poetry, Sabine Dardenne, visual poetry, wordplay |
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Posted by Stan Carey
August 15, 2019
Here’s a new book spine poem (aka bookmash). For the uninitiated: This is a game where you make a visual poem from the spines of books on your shelf.
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Secret Place
Wild flowers, the wild places,
The birds of the innocent wood –
The secret place on the black hill,
Half a life still life,
The living mountain
Changing my mind.
*

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Posted by Stan Carey
March 20, 2019
I almost forgot how much fun it is to make book spine poems. My last one was about a year ago (and led to an interview at the OED), so it’s about time I did another. This one tells a miniature story.
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When the Lights Go Down
Stranger on a train, heading inland,
Civilwarland in bad decline.
Autumn-dark voyage,
The light of evening,
The signal and the noise.
One shot without conscience
when the lights go down:
Death in a white tie, a brilliant void.
Reader, I murdered him.
*

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books, literature, poetry, wordplay | Tagged: Alan Furst, Ali Smith, book spine poem, bookmash, books, Edna O'Brien, found poetry, Jack Fennell, Jen Green, Jenny Diski, Lee Child, literature, Nate Silver, Ngaio Marsh, Nicola Barker, Pauline Kael, poetry, Robert Hare, visual poetry, wordplay |
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Posted by Stan Carey