Sam Redlark

“When I die, when I am fully grown...” image generated by Craiyon Everyday, for years, I would listen to Prison - a spoken word record by the poet Steven Jesse Bernstein. The album was released posthumously, in 1992, on the Sub Pop label, a few months after its creator's strange and untimely death. Prison is a hard album to ignore: An unrelenting barrage of disturbing imagery – the sweepings of a broken and insolvent world – brutal in its self-loathing and unyielding in its nihilism. Even the occasional glimmers of humour are weaponised by their author to enlarge a hodgepodge of self-inflicted wounds. There isn't an ounce of hope to be found anywhere across the 55-minute runtime. Put it on in the background, at sufficient volume, in polite company, and it will soon extinguish all conversation, until it commands the full attention of everyone in the room. “I am considered a very dark poet,” Bernstein once told a TV interviewer. During the period when I was obsessed with Priso...

image generated by Craiyon This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 4th September 2022 The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site. I am replying here instead because it is too good a writing exercise to give up: How quickly can you go from a prompt, a blank mind, and a blank page to a finished piece? And how good can you make it? This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use. ~ Should I let my cat outside? I am unqualified to answer this question and so have passed on your enquiry to a cat who occasionally visits our garden: “The ghosts of the birds I killed slumber deep in the sleek curl of my tail that I shaped to imitate a nest – the cradle of their beginnings and ends, now idly barring their entrance to the afterlife. While the afternoon drags it heels I pour from...