I just finished my penultimate exam, bought a bottle of spiced rum and a sixpack, and got caught in a thunderstorm as I cycled home. I am soaked to the skin, and I feel aliiive!

A fun fact that I probably shouldn’t talk too much about in my Practical Criticism exam today: You can sing all of Emily Dickinson’s poems to the tune of ‘Amazing Grace’. This is also the case with all poems written in traditional ballad metre.

Can’t revise. Have the entire oeuvre of Lil’ John stuck in my head.

Never have to read anything pre-1500 ever again if I don’t want to. Fuck yeeeeeah.

James Mcknight is a poet with a grounding of deep roots in prose fiction. Try as he might, he has not been able to pull them up. Narrative lies under the skin of his poetry, and lyrical rhythms drive his prose. Beyond this, his preoccupations include desire and the unfulfilled, bodily dysphoria, dissatisfaction, birds and landscapes. He studies English Literature at Robinson College, Cambridge.

First exam over. And I maybe enjoyed it a little bit too much..? Goddamned French literature. Goddamn Apollinaire and his awesomeness. (It’s just a shame that the rest of the exams will be woefully and unrelentingly horrible.)

HE SAID    Hear that? The murmuring of my body.
        Its rust sound is leaf-dry. A stem chain, thinning,
        it’s refuse is rest. It will not stay one.
        I have bones are night & brittle as night:
        will break at shrill song, though longing to be whole.
        Unscript, I unravel. World wrests me in parts.
        Is snow or ash makes skin on my tannin?
        Is rest or rift that makes pulse in my thinking?

In case you were in any kinda state of doubt about how terrible a person I am…Have I ever mentioned how much I hate children? Children of a certain age, that is. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just like real people only worse. I don’t find them attractive (go figure), intellectually stimulating; they can’t formulate their ideas properly, they don’t amuse me; I can’t drink with them, and I can’t drink them; they’re stubborn, are unlikely to share interests with me. They probably won’t like my cooking or my company. They’re like real people, only smaller, and they don’t so much as try to be anything more than they are. And you have to lie constantly while talking to them: about how interesting they are, or about the universal and impending imminence of death that follows us all around every day, ironically, of our lives. So yes. I don’t like children.

But this may all have something to do with the fact that there is one downstairs, howling and giggling by turns, while I desperate try and get some work done.

…And there are some exceptions to the rule.

Tuesday casts nets
across the bay,
catching excess
from its depth.

Chewed by the sea,
age is a changing
thing, by days
turns wood-burn
into pearl.

Silver fronts
of weather here,
open mouths like cats
for show me

rain-colour china
or other way trim:
sliver-barkt tundra
who’s known all-water:
restless lashes on
iron-toothed smile.

And the sky is
what your hair was.

Practice essays are dangerous. They make me feel really accomplished when I’m done with them, so I also feel like I can spend the rest of the day drinking scotch, dancing in my room with the lights off and curtains drawn, blaring The Sisters of Mercy extended mixes on repeat.