Matt Clegg
@eyesfront.bsky.social
Poet, pedestrian, pedagogue. Nature connection. Place writing. Tsu jan. Muga. Atarashi. Digital ascetic. Appstinence. Books include: Lost Between Stations, West North East, The Navigators, & Cazique - all from Longbarrow Press: https://longbarrowpress.c
'All I know is that we are here, and that we are aware of the fact, and that it behooves us to be aware — to pay heed. For we are not objects. That is essential…' ~Ursula Le Guin www.themarginalian.org/2026/06/06/l...
Ursula K. Le Guin on the Meaning of Life
We are the survivors of immense and minute events — violent cosmic collisions and subtle genetic mutations, the deaths of innumerable suns and the births of innumerable cells, the splitting o…
themarginalian.org
William Blake: A Golden String. A short film with Mark Vernon 'The world of the algorithm was being prepared in Blake's time.' I love the energy of this! www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNVv...
William Blake: A Golden String. A short film with Mark Vernon
YouTube video by Mark Vernon
youtube.com
This suffering world - a long-uprooted tree must relinquish its bark. The bank is heavy - I’m looking up into roots holding like a scrum. longbarrowpress.com/2026/09/18/h...
Some real classics on this.
Daniel Grey@djrgrey.bsky.social · 24h ago2026 marks the 30th birthday of @jofvictculture.bsky.social!! 🎂 Reflecting this milestone & working with previous editors, we 5 Co-Editors have put together a Virtual Special Issue of the 30 articles felt to best represent the journal's lifetime📄 🌟https://academic.oup.com/jvc/pages/30-for-30th
Two weeks of jury service has changed my perspective on and relationship to the city. The working city. On Tuesday I departed from the lunchtime route that I had laid down the week before. I'd forgotten that Wheats Lane opens onto Paradise Square. We led a poetry walk through this ginnel in 2009.
These poets offer deep interiority, existential questioning, spiritual focus. In an automated age driven by speed, efficiency & data-ism, Donne challenges us with turbulent self-scrutiny; Herbert offers a quiet grammar of grace, attention, and human scale.
The lightbulb shattered across the pavement has been trodden to stardust. Now the gates are locked, molehills on the playground grass aren’t kicked or trampled. longbarrowpress.com/2026/09/18/h...
These poets offer deep interiority, existential questioning, spiritual focus. In an automated age driven by speed, efficiency & data-ism, Donne challenges us with turbulent self-scrutiny; Herbert offers a quiet grammar of grace, attention, and human scale.
Though remembered as tech-hating cranks, history reveals 'Luddites' were skilled artisans who actually opposed the exploitation of labour rather than machinery itself. They understood that tech is not an autonomous, unstoppable force of nature, but a series of human choices. Sometimes bad ones!
There's some great lines in @eyesfront.bsky.social's poetic journal of lockdown walks. This one that really got me: A lone wren darts between the branches — one celebratory neuron, working through every variation of thought, scared away by its own reverberation. longbarrowpress.com/2026/09/18/h...
The risk of gen AI is not that machines will make individual bad art, but that markets organised around speed, scale & frictionless consumption weaken human ecosystems that makes both serious artists & audiences possible. What happens to makers? Appreciators? Institutions?
Medals of sun-glare highlight the cladding of the distant high-rise. longbarrowpress.com/2026/09/18/h...
As we always say, the World will be a better place once there's more #HeronArt upon the walls. (ps. Thanks for the fish, artist, a Heron can get hungry up there)
Jodie Creaky-Bones Griffin@jodiegriffin.bsky.social · 4d agoA gorgeous new mural in the city park! They're still working on the rest of it, and can't wait to see it when it's all done! #photography #mural #bakerpark
Some people touch your life without ever quite entering it. You pass them on a path. Exchange news of the herons. Learn their stride from a distance. Then one morning they don’t reappear. Have You Always Been Here? longbarrowpress.com/2026/09/18/h...
Sharing this poem again tonight in light of the terrible news that Douglas Dunn has died. A huge loss for U.K. poetry...
Matthew Stewart@roguestrands.bsky.social · last mo.Terry Street might have been Douglas Dunn's first full collection, but it's still my favourite, alongside Elegies. This poem is a terrific example of Dunn's skill, an empathetic and insightful snapshot of working-class life...
The loney - Water, ferns, furze (whin/gorse), rock, hills Dromara Hills near Legananny Dolmen. #CountyDown #ContaeAnDúin #SpéirGhorm
Patrick Brannigan@patrickjmb.bsky.social · 3d agoWhere the loney becomes a stream. Water, ferns, rock, hills Dromara Hills near Legananny Dolmen. #CountyDown #ContaeAnDúin #SpéirGhorm
Wringing each other – two sky-blue hospital gloves peeled off in the road. Early-morning mist: no view of the casino and no hills beyond. A dip into chill – a fallen leaf has twisted to a clinch of frost. longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2026/08/28/p...
Tzu-Jan in Post-Nature: A Process | Matthew Clegg
History has lured me here – a lining of moss on a crumbling log. During Covid lockdowns my partner [i] and I started taking our daily exercise along Sheffield’s Rivelin valley early in the morning …
longbarrowblog.wordpress.com
There was a peculiar variation of community during lockdown: people you recognised but didn’t know, keeping their distance yet sharing the same outlets - woods, paths, early mornings. Have You Always Been Here? grew out of that. longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2026/08/28/p...
Tzu-Jan in Post-Nature: A Process | Matthew Clegg
History has lured me here – a lining of moss on a crumbling log. During Covid lockdowns my partner [i] and I started taking our daily exercise along Sheffield’s Rivelin valley early in the morning …
longbarrowblog.wordpress.com
You can find us at two book fairs next month: Northern Publishers’ Fair, Manchester Central Library Sat 14 November Sheffield Winter Book Fair, The Mowbray, Neepsend, Sheffield Sat 28 November Admission to both fairs is free. Further details: longbarrowpress.com/events/
(I) the last stoat of Rousay was he lonely? (II) this conspiracy theory versus that theory about a conspiracy (III) evolution was never meant to be salmon eating chicken or chicken eating salmon (IV) her swooping kestrel his drifting hawk (V) that’s a big buzzard or a small eagle
a sign of the season –condensation on the pane a sign of poverty –ice on the inside 19.X.26
Tetley Malthouse, Mill Street, Leeds, winter 1973, photo by Peter Mitchell.
Bulleting finches jostle inside the ribcage of cherry blossom. A bird on the weir – dabbing its tail in the lip, annotating fall. longbarrowpress.com/2026/09/18/h...
Have You Always Been Here?
From river to pond, the heron steps and pauses over a mined world. Longbarrow Press is delighted to announce the publication of Have You Always Been Here?, a series of pamphlets by Matthew Clegg. “…
longbarrowpress.com
When you get mail from @longbarrowpress.bsky.social 💃😍💃 Look at the beauty & details of these three pamphlets that comprise Matthew Clegg's Have You Always Been Here!!! #poetry #bookSky 📚💙 & 💙💙💙
For three + years, teachers, writers, artists, humanities professors and so many others have been arguing exactly this--that this technology only produces an endless ouroboros of bland, sad, grey slop. But we were told that we were/are luddites, reactionary, old-fashioned, angry, etc etc.
Rachel Coldicutt@rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 5d agoI am sorry, which company is this? www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Every walk contains its ghosts. Someone repeatedly encountered during lockdown became part of our remembered landscape, then disappeared. “Blessings on her… her devotion to herons, and to morning light.” Have You Always Been Here? @longbarrowpress.bsky.social longbarrowpress.com/2026/09/18/h...
Have You Always Been Here?
From river to pond, the heron steps and pauses over a mined world. Longbarrow Press is delighted to announce the publication of Have You Always Been Here?, a series of pamphlets by Matthew Clegg. “…
longbarrowpress.com
