If you repeat the word ‘wind’ often enough it will start blowing. (Theo Jansen)
I took this photo three years ago when one of the Strandbeesten was on display at Lange Voorhout, one of the oldest streets in the Hague. You can see the linden trees (Tilia) which were planted in the early 16th century.
On his website, Theo Jansen explains how the Strandbeesten came to be. In short videos he describes the development of the neural system, leg system and waterfeeler system – essential for survival on the beach.
The main component is cheap yellow PVC tubing (around 2,000 to 3,000 metres per animal) with tie clips and empty PET bottles. An animal weighs around 180 kg. Jansen would prefer to use bamboo (more ecological) but this would not survive on the beach.
A diagram shows the evolution and family tree since the ‘Pregluton’ phase of 1989. In the winter Jansen works on developing the next generation which is tested on the beach the following summer. That species of Strandbeest is then declared extinct.
Source: This is The Hague 2026
People pay to be on Scheveningen beach (north of the pier) when Jansen tests the new animal, and the 2026 sessions filled quickly. Here are some videos instead:
Once, a long time ago, I was an academic psychologist. The Journal of Imaginary Research publishes short works of fiction in the academic genre of the Research Abstract. A poet friend and academic mentioned the journal to me last year.
I was chuffed the editors accepted my piece of imaginary research for issue 11 (2026) which has ‘Shrinkage’ as its theme. There are 58 fascinating abstracts from a range of disciplines. The issue is free to download here.
I also had great fun composing the biography. My alter ego is Dr Melody Rowe.
The impact of childhood belief on adult ability to shrink objects
Photo credit Shutterstock 119440741
Abstract
The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Its inhabitants are taking up more space (obesity). Tiny houses are becoming more popular. It might be beneficial if other objects could be shrunk too (Bottema, 2020).
Most Dutch adults have experienced seeing white horses during December: St Nikolaas uses a white horse for transport. His horse needs to reduce in size rapidly to descend chimneys and leave presents by the fireplace.
It was hypothesized that adults who lost their belief in St Nikolaas at an early age would either be unable to shrink their hobby horse, or take significantly longer to do so, compared with those who held on to their belief longer. Parameters for ‘early’ and ‘late’ loss were established across gender and age. Participants were allocated to groups accordingly. They were presented with a sequence of visual stimuli (images of white horses in different settings) and then instructed to shrink their hobby horse until it fitted within the confidence interval. In countries where Father Christmas and reindeer are significant seasonal characters, the principle of generalization predicts similar results.
Biography
Dr Melody Rowe is a very cross cultural psychologist with a PhD in the luminosity of liminal and ‘thin’ places. They are the Niobe Professor at the University of Tuonela where they continue to conduct ground-breaking research in the oral transmission of swan songs and the impact of trans-generational inheritance of boundary markers. They are Visiting Professor at the University of the Styx where they oversee post-doctoral research. They have published widely in their chosen field and are the author of the best-selling guide Love or leave a liminal place (Nemo T Press, 2016) which was translated into 14 languages.
I am delighted to introduce our June guest poet Ian Seed. We met on a writing course where Ian was the guest reader on the 9th of December 2019. I know the exact date because I bought a copy of his translation of The Thief of Talant by Pierre Reverdy and Ian wrote a dedication for me ‘sometimes it’s nice to be a stranger’.
You’ll find Ian’s biography below the four poems. These are from his recent collection Forgetfulness, ‘tragicomic navigation of different forms of loss’. It is beautifully produced by Shearsman Books. Caroline Bird writes: “Ian Seed allows us to ‘stay inside the asking’’, inside a dream half-dreamt, a loss mid-grieved. His elegies expand like half-lit corridors, leading to new selves – or old selves we have forgotten, their ‘cigarettes glowing in the oncoming evening’.”
The collection is in four sections. Section 1 opens with Scattering my Mother’s Ashes – a sequence of nine prose poems. This is followed by the title poem Forgetfulness. Section 2 includes the numbered sequence Jugglers and poems laid out in stanzas, like Unscripted. Section 3 has 20 prose poems of varying length. I found it very hard to choose, but here are Pastoral and Relations.
Forgetfulness
Walking up the mountain, I see my mother sitting on the café terrace of her new care home. She’s looking remarkably young – her hair’s been dyed its old dark colour and someone must have applied a lotion to make her skin all smooth again. Yet she still has that look in her eyes of not knowing where she is anymore. I doubt she will recognise me, but she greets me by name. I tell her I’m on my way to meet a friend at the top of the mountain – I can’t stop for long. She nods, though I’m not sure she’s understood. Deep down we both know she’s no longer alive, but neither of us can bring ourselves to say so.
Unscripted
A heavy snow. The film eyes of a stranger. This street is absent from the story of the city
which I cannot recognise, though my body’s memory can read its twists and turns, its lines
broken through movement. The shape of this snowflake resists the tyranny of completion. I
is the space of the abandoned intersection, the recorder motionless for the first time.
Pastoral after Max Jacob
The three soldiers in their red uniforms were sitting on the river bank, their long rifles laid to rest on the grass. ‘Soldiers are not handsome in themselves, except they can make themselves look as if they are,’ I declared from my perch on a fallen tree trunk nearby. ‘People may say that beard is ugly, but that’s only because it happens not to be in fashion at a particular time.’ I looked at one of the young soldiers – slim, dark hair, blue eyes, whose name I gathered from their conversation I’d listened to earlier was Tom – and went on: ‘But there are some soldiers who are extraordinarily handsome whatever they wear, whatever the fashion.’ I looked at the other two soldiers. ‘And you too can make yourselves handsome with just a few changes. As for me, I’m out of the game now.’
Relations
My grandfather, who had committed suicide, was in an old-fashioned train compartment with me, lying in my arms. I remembered the softness of his woollen suit from my teenage years. He was just as lost as he had been back then after my grandmother died. He was comforted by my holding him, but not sure who either of us was.
Biography
Ian Seed’s recent publications include Forgetfulness (Shearsman, 2026), My Outsize Hank Williams Cowboy Hat, with artwork by Lupo Sol (Sacred Parasite, 2025), The Dice Cup, from the French of Max Jacob (Wakefield, 2023), The River Which Sleep Has Told Me, from the Italian of Ivano Fermini (Fortnightly Review Odd Volumes, 2022), and New York Hotel (Shearsman, 2018), a TLS Book of the Year. To find out more, go to www.ianseed.co.uk
Today is the birthday of my friend Kathleen Kummer. After several falls, she is now very frail and housebound.
Kathleen and I met on a writing week with the poet Lawrence Sail at the beginning of the century. She had lived and worked in the Netherlands. We became friends. I visited her in Dorchester and in Devon where she moved, aged 79, to be nearer her two daughters.
Kathleen had a body of work when she moved to Devon, and sent a manuscript to Alwyn Marriage at Oversteps Books. They published her debut collection Living below sea level (2012).
I am deeply grateful to Kathleen for our friendship and our poetry connection. Today I’m posting her poem Birthday Party, showing her empathy and eye for telling detail.
Birthday Party
It’s his fortieth birthday. He’s sitting alone. He seems neither man, not child, nor anything in between. When he opens his presents, he’s all of these at once, and happy. (‘What shall I give him?’ ‘Anything’, they’d said.)
Somehow, he’d made it plain he wanted a fish on his cake. So on top, a flatfish. It looks like a fossil, all its bones impressed on the green marzipan. A frieze of stiff, blue icing ripples round the base.
A family group over there on the leather settee talks about children at college and moving house. He gazes through and beyond them, remote as those heads on Easter Island, but jumps up to blow out his candles.
He’s given a card which reads Happy 30th! (‘He won’t know, don’t worry.’) His hair is receding – he’s beginning to look like his father, who tomorrow will take him back to the Home where he has his bedroom and bathroom en suite. (‘Very smart!’).
Here is a sample poem by our April guest poet Kate Noakes. The poem is from her new collection Sublime Lungs, which will be published by Two Rivers Press on 21 April. This is her ninth full collection. More poems after Easter.
Kate will read at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival on 14 April. There is an online launch on 24 April. You can find the schedule of online and live launches on Kate’s website
Kate Noakes Breath of Fire
For Easter, try egg blowing
David Attenborough stood on an ostrich egg to demonstrate its strength once. ‘The toughest egg in the world,’ he said. He may even have jumped on it for emphasis.
Of course, no-one had drilled it and sapped its yolk with mega-breaths and an extra-thick straw, which is how it withstood his weight, unlike the three souvenirs we bought in Oudtshorn, their weakness apparent under failing coving.
They smithereened the carpet and needed hand picking, the hoover’s inhalations proved weak. We’d have been better off buying feather dusters from the hawker pitched outside the super-market. They’d have been easier to carry home.
Cliff Yates was our guest poet last November. You can read the poems here. As I was going through his New & Selected Poems (The Poetry Business, 2023) to select a set, I came across the poem below.
It’s even sweeter on Valentine’s Day…
from Another Last Word
EXPENSIVE CHOCOLATE
There are eight pieces. She has two and gives me one. ‘Confiscate this,’ she says, handing over the rest. ‘Hide it, or I’ll be tempted when you’re out.’ When I get back, the drawer’s open, there’s one piece left, and a note on a scrap of paper: NOT VERY WELL HIDDEN.
CLEARING UP
She’s cooking Sunday lunch and I’m clearing up. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ I said, ‘you spend time getting things out of cupboards and I spend time putting them back in.’ ‘Not enough time in my opinion.’
BIRTHDAY
‘You’re being nice,’ she says, ‘you’ll be running out of steam soon. You’ve been nice since 7 o’clock, that’s 3 hours, 10 minutes.’
DANCE
‘It’s great the way we dance around each other,’ I said, ‘when we’re getting the meal on.’ ‘We only do that because you get in the way.’
SATSUMA
‘I can’t be bothered with this satsuma.’ ‘Give it here,’ she says. ‘Can’t peel a satsuma, can’t peel an egg. We’ve been married how many years, and I’ve made no progress with you whatsoever.’
WRITING
‘I had to work on that one,’ I said, ‘because you didn’t actually say that. I am in fact writing these poems.’ ‘That’s what you think.’
ENTERTAINING
‘Some of these make me sound terrible,’ she says. ‘It’s because you find me so entertaining. It makes me worse when you start laughing.’
LUNCH
‘Apart from the salad and potatoes,’ I said, ‘what did we have for lunch?’ ‘If you can’t remember what we had for lunch I feel sorry for you.’
GETTING IT RIGHT
‘I’ll get it right one day.’ ‘I doubt it,’ she says. I laugh. ‘It’s not funny really, is it?’ ‘No,’ she says, ‘but at least you’re hopeful.’
PHILOSOPHY
‘You’re too hard on yourself,’ she says, ‘when I wake up I just want a cup of tea and then I want to be entertained by life.’
FISH
‘What we need is a special pan for fish and a fish spatula.’ ‘No,’ she says, ‘what we need is for you to eat fish.’
COLOURING PENCILS
She’s at the kitchen table, going at it with her new colouring pencils. ‘I had some when I was little,’ she says, ‘but I was never let loose. It was always What’s THAT supposed to be? or Where’s the SKY?’
Photo credit: Andrew Taylor
Biography
Cliff Yates was born in Birmingham and has been publishing poetry since the 1980s. His New & Selected Poems (Smith/Doorstop, 2023) brings together work from various collections including Henry’s Clock (Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize; Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition), Frank Freeman’s Dancing School (Arts Council England Writers Award) and Jam (ACE Grant for the Arts). He taught English at Maharishi School in Skelmersdale and wrote Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School during his time as Poetry Society poet-in-residence, following the success of his students in poetry competitions. He has led courses for, among others, the Arvon Foundation and the British Council. Read more on his site here
It’s a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Cliff Yates. I met him on an excellent online workshop he ran for the Poetry Business. They published his New & Selected Poems, which brings together poems from five earlier publications – over thirty years of ‘inimitable’ work. Poignancy, economy, humour, a touch of the surreal…
You can find Cliff’s biography and the link to his website below the poems.
Day Breaks as a Petrol Station
Day breaks deliberate as a petrol station newspapers and expensive flowers but you’re tired of vacuum-packed sandwiches and sordid headlines.
On the 15.07 out of Deansgate she’s reading The Holy Sinner. The dog opposite smiles through its muzzle. Coffee, or maybe something’s on fire we do appear to be speeding unless we’re stationary and the landscape’s rattling past. ‘It’s been a good day,’ she says, ‘it makes up for yesterday.’ ‘Why, what happened yesterday?’
Days without rain and suddenly it rains. Another country, your body’s not your own. You want to go for a walk. In this?
He threw a stick for the dog in Habberley Valley the tattoo flew from his arms landed in the bracken like leaves.
Dog
So many places closed: the off-licence, the butcher, the corner shop, even the telephone box screwed shut. Dog had come a long way, and now what?
The cherry blossom, he noted, looking up for once from the pavement, was particularly stunning this year, maybe it was the same every year
but noticing it, his heart was lifted and he decided not to be disappointed. The journey had been arduous, the future was uncertain, but there is more to life,
he reflected, cocking his leg against the letter box, than a bowl of fruit on a table.
The Lesson
The nun points out the ones to watch: the boy in the corner, the girl at the back. In this class it’s the boy in the middle who thinks he’s a cat.
Outside, workmen are felling trees. A bird’s nest tumbles in through the window, lands on a desk. Inside the nest, a baby bird. It’s okay it’s okay, the children say, Brian will know what to do.
The boy who thinks he’s a cat gathers the bird and, holding it at arm’s length in the cup of his hands, heads for the door, the nun behind him between the silent rows of children and the bird, as if on cue, lifts up its beak and sings.
Lighthouse
The lighthouse flickers at the end of the pier. We watch it in our red pyjamas. Actually, neither of us are wearing red pyjamas. You’re wearing my blue shirt.
The lighthouse flickers at the end of the pier. It’s the only thing we can be sure of. Everything’s uncertain since you set alight my record collection.
I’m trying to work out an appropriate reaction, rearranging things in my head to eliminate all memory of the record collection. The lighthouse flickers on and off.
Actually it doesn’t, you point out, it just appears to. You look amazing in my blue shirt. I haven’t words to describe how good you look in the light from the lighthouse. Now you’re here
now you’re not. Maybe I should burn something of yours, you suggest. Your voice leaves me in the dark. It doesn’t sound like you when I can’t see you.
Cliff Yates was born in Birmingham and has been publishing poetry since the 1980s. His New & Selected Poems (Smith/Doorstop, 2023) brings together work from various collections including Henry’s Clock (Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize; Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition), Frank Freeman’s Dancing School (Arts Council England Writers Award) and Jam (ACE Grant for the Arts). He taught English at Maharishi School in Skelmersdale and wrote Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School during his time as Poetry Society poet-in-residence, following the success of his students in poetry competitions. He has led courses for, among others, the Arvon Foundation and the British Council.
Last year I wrote about the ‘Ongelezen Boeken Club’ (Unread Books Club), a new venture where libraries promoted books on the ‘null list’ – books that have never been taken out.
This year, the ‘Nationale Ongelezen Boekendag’ (National Day of Unread Books) coincides with another new initiative: De Week van het Verboden Boek(The Week of Forbidden Books). Bookshops and libraries throughout the country are showcasing books that have been or are still censored.
On Wikipedia, you can find an article on book censorship, a list of banned books and the main list of books banned by governments. This starts with the Bible and Albania and ends with Yugoslavia.
If I counted correctly: 66 countries. ‘Almost every country places some restrictions on what may be published, although the emphasis and the degree of control differ from country to country and at different periods.’
Wikipedia lists 66 books that have been or are currently banned in India. A small number, relatively speaking. The earliest is a Gujarati translation of Mahatma Gandhi’s book Hind Swaraj. This was banned by the British Authorities in 1909. In August 2025, the Indian Home Department banned 25 books for ‘propagating false narrative and secessionism in Jammu and Kashmir.’
Here in The Netherlands, there is only one book officially banned: Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1924). In 2014, a bookshop owner in Amsterdam was found to stock and sell the book. There was no prosecution.
However, training for new staff in bookshops routinely includes how to deal with aggressive customers. Library staff find returned books with pages torn out. A Dutch survey last year found that (1 in 7) authors had to deal with aggression, threats, intimidation – much of it online.
Here is the cover of Lale Gul’s debut published in 2021, when she was 23. It’s an autobiographical account of growing up in a strict Islamic family. It became a bestseller and was translated, but Lale has since been in hiding.
If Tallinn is on your bucket list, you can visit the Banned Books Museum while you’re there!
I’m delighted to share poems by Matthew Paul from his new collection with Crooked Spire Press. The poems demonstrate Matthew’s ‘unflinching clarity’, and his ‘fierce attention to detail’. His biography follows the poems and there you can also find a link to his own website.
Spent Matches
Mum lets only Granddad light up in our house. The second Thursday of every other month, she fetches Grandma and him over from Sutton. The chalkhill-blue elegance of the Wedgwood ashtray rhymes with unfiltered smoke rings pixilating like Ceefax in the living-room air.
Teatime doesn’t wait for Dad: Hovis, Primula, Shippam’s fish paste, allotment tomatoes, cress; mini rolls, Penguins, cremated fruitcake; pots of Brooke Bond PG Tips; Beryl Ware replaced by Royal Worcester, on Hay Wain place mats. Chit-chat wilts like Dad’s California poppies.
Mum fills space with monologues. My brothers’ progress; mine. WRVS activities. Her botched hysterectomy. We watch Grandma’s must-see, Crossroads, then ours: ‘Top of the Flops, I call it,’ says Granddad. The outfits, songs, presenters and Legs & Co. baffle him into silence; except
when Julio Iglesias butchers ‘Begin the Beguine’. ‘Artie Shaw!’ he cries; and his and Grandma’s memories spool back to bulletins on the wireless, to Chamberlain’s jubilant declaration of peace. Barely through the door, Dad re-buttons his coat to take them home. Granddad beams, ‘Abyssinia!’
Photo credit: Liam Wilkinson
A Common Hand
I don’t have to prove whether I did it or not; if they can’t see it, what kind of damned experts are they? [. . .] I’m not a crook; I’m just doing what people have always done in the history of the world: ever since art was invented, people have made imitations of it. Eric Hebborn, ‘Portrait of a Master Forger’, Omnibus, BBC TV, 1991
Eric pestles oak gall, gum Arabic, pinches of iron Sulphate and rain into ink with ‘a gorgeous patina’, To pen his line on slyly foxed paper, in the styles Of Pisanello, Poussin and sundry other old masters, Reshaping preparatory sketches to make pentimenti, Faking collectors’ monograms as cherries on top.
At junior school, Eric, aged eight, discovered that Burnt Swan and Vesta matchsticks’ charcoal tips Burnished imagination’s marks, incurring, firstly, Welts from a leathering for possessing matches, Then a three-year stretch in an Essex reformatory For wilfully setting cloakrooms on fire. A flair for Painting sees him into art schools, lastly the RA, Where, though he wins every prize, contemporaries Remember Eric only as ‘a silent creature’; ‘a joke’.
They would say that, since he’s brought their craft Into disrepute. ‘Dealers are not interested in art, but Money,’ he says. ‘The real criminal, if there is one, Is he who makes the false description; guiltier by far Than had he manipulated the nib himself. Ignore The fusspots. Enjoy art, without worrying whether Attributions are correct.’ Museums have everything To lose from uncovering Eric’s handiwork; queasily, They check their acquisitions back to the Sixties And issue, de haut en bas, highly selective denials.
‘No one is studying art with honesty,’ claims Eric, Upon the publication of The Art Forger’s Handbook In Italian. Out in Trastevere three icy nights later, He stumbles, soaked in Chianti Classico Riserva, Down a cobbled passage, to his blunt force demise.
In Which I Spend a Fortnight of my West Berlin Summer in 1987 Doing a Few Hours’ Cleaning Per Day in Some Multinational’s HQ
My Iraqi supervisor Zaynab and I enjoy, for our lingua franca, helpless amusement. Every day, precisely at knocking-off time, we point at the clock, chorus ‘Sechs!’, then cackle like siblings.
Dieter, fellow cleaner, never gets our jokes. Just like me, he’s twenty and nearing the end of a gap year; mandatory, before enrolment at Humboldt. Mine’s elective, for my mental health. He and I view the city’s halves from the roof: the Wall zigzags like the Western Front.
Afterwards, we take the U-Bahn —he buys a ticket; I don’t— to the agency’s office, at Nollendorfplatz. He translates the clerk: I won’t get paid until next week. ‘Scheisse,’ I say. Dieter deadpans: ‘She said, “Ah, so the English boy can speak German after all”’
Biography
Matthew Paul hails from South London and lives in South Yorkshire. His second collection, The Last Corinthians, was published by Crooked Spire Press in June 2025. He is also the author of two haiku collections – The Regulars (2006) and The Lammas Lands (2015) – and co-writer/editor (with John Barlow) of Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku (2008), all published by Snapshot Press. His reviews regularly appear in The Friday Poem and elsewhere. He blogs here.
It’s an enormous pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Pam Thompson. Pam and I met 13 years ago on an extended writing course. You can find her biography below the poems. These are from Pam’s prize-winning pamphlet and show the range of her writing. The Paper Swans pamphlet competition was judged by John McCullough: ‘Sub/urban Legends gripped me because of the way it marries poignancy with a really bold imagination and stylistic flair’. The intriguing cover image is also by Pam.
Explorers, Antarctica, 1901
The leader sits on the sledge. He never does this. It’s against the rules of the expedition but now there are no rules.
Two huskies – the two remaining huskies, they ate the rest – sit either side like imperial lions.
The ship is stuck in frozen waves. The crew are starving or dead but this photo will be evidence that they reached their destination.
The photographer in the black hood. Stepping back. Pulling the cord. The flash.
Self Portrait as Fulang Chang
Freedom, chica, is all. I’ll wear the mandarin’s hat and silk waistcoat, eat all the honeyed grapes, to stay favoured, like a first-born.
I perch on her left shoulder, always on guard, never at ease. I bare my teeth and scream, at Diego and the village dogs.
I am the brush passer, ear for her secrets, but I am all chat, you know, teller of her tales though she isn’t one to keep schtum.
The bloody hearts we paint will drip onto the Blue House floor.
Fête Galante
Take the bus from outside the Water Margin Chinese restaurant—or from where it used to be in 1974—allow plenty of time. You’re at work in Lewis’s, folding up school shirts badly, cramming them back in their packaging; in a History of Art lecture looking at a slide of Fragonard’s ‘The Swing’. The bus will be full, people will be smoking on the top deck, so will you. This must be your stop. Is it everybody’s stop? You join the flow—you think of Tracy Emin’s tent with the names of all the people she ever slept with, or is it her messy bed you’re thinking of. All the beds you ever slept in. Lewis’s. All the shops you ever worked in. And the canteen in the factory where the men always patronised you. Here—you say to the tiny chef—you scrub the bloody burnt pans. All the patronising men you ever worked for—they all get off the bus. You watch them cross London Road. You haven’t moved very far. The Water Margin is the water’s margin and you wonder how this pond, this lake, this sea, arrived in the city. There are willows, and, over there, a fête galante, a woman on a swing, being pushed and pulled, higher and harder, by all the people she ever slept with.
Biography
Pam Thompson is a writer, educator and reviewer based in Leicester. She is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her works include The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time, (Smith|Doorstop, 2006). Her collection, Strange Fashion, was published by Pindrop Press in 2017. Pam was winner of the 2023 Paper Swans Pamphlet Competition and her winning pamphlet, Sub/urban Legends (Paper Swans Press) was published in March 2025.
Acacia Publications 