Ok i admit it. Six harris tweeds maybe a little excessive. But the leaves have gone orange and are falling from the trees at a wild rate, surely now is the time to wear them. Still, i suspect Cara has a point. But i'm talking the kind of jacket that has a baby fox in one pocket and some Spanish erotic poetry in the other. Moonbeams, Cutlass and hordes of Peruvian Gold in the secret pocket.Missing a button, dastardly and suspect, a Bandit Queens perfume on the sleeve. C'mon at least have a quick look in your charity shop/thrift store. Nothing sexier. Well, at least for soon to be thirty nine year old Devonians anyway.
Jet lag was a four day trip to dreamland this time ( do you get liminal dreams?) - and then a super wooly weather weekend on Dartmoor with my little nephews Paddy and Finn - the old gods threw shedloads of weather straight into their shining little faces, but they took it all with good grace (eventually, at home, with a hot towel and steaming mug of warm chocolate). A little too young for the rites - of -passage thing i must admit, but we all saw glimpses of each others inner - wild Celt, which was rather delicious.
I barely had time to hit the books before i was off to Kent to teach myth to a hundred clinical psychologists. A rowdy bunch of brainy hooligans too - it was fun - ENORMOUS feckin fire in the woods (so large i started to wonder if they were going to produce Klu Klux Klan masks), and all sorts of good things happening. This weekend is the beginning of the UK year course up on Dartmoor - we have a good group forming -last places at 01364 653723.

THE CINDERBITERS: the olde pub, the battered text, the wild word, the red beer, the glowing fire, the rain on the window.

Work has begun in earnest on a new book. This is giving me great, great pleasure. The pain will be in about a year, when the editing and scalping of the antlered words begins. I may drop in chapters and ideas as i go. I'm being smart and asking for a bit more support this time round - in the shape of a group of lovers of language and fine old pubs and yes, Harris Tweeds. A rainy Tuesday evening group to gather by the Inn's fire and share whatever we happen to be working on at the time, or thinking about, or some mad sprawl of poetry we love. This group will be called THE CINDERBITERS. And by invite only. Boys and girls. When i have a little more mustard in the roll i will post up the manifesto. The good news is that you could form your own group - in Idaho, or Birmingham or Japan. all you need is ...yes, i'm afraid so,,,,,tweeds (has to be Harris and you must send photographic evidence), three invited visiting dead teachers from the last 10,000 yrs and a love of the hostelry.
In case you think this is all hyperbole, i must inform that my small groups long distance member is none other than Coleman Barks - over in Athens, Georgia - but is swearing to commute to the meetings. I kid you not - he bought a tweed in Point Reyes especially - i have the photo to prove. Please read up on C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkiens INKLINGS group at Oxford to get more information about the general idea. Throw Patti Smith, Aretha Franklin and Georgia O'Keefe in the picture too and it all gets much fresher.
Ok. I have written far more on that than i planned this evening - more soon.

new poems from Thomas R. Smith 'The Foot of the Rainbow' - his rockin new book. he lived with punk squatters in London once, and saw Jonny Rotton at the dukebox- (at the George Robey in Finsbury Park i think). Soon returned happily to the midwest.

some of that.... (on scotch and illness, thousands of miles from home)

in the tube,
feverish, my throat
sandpaper, i cuddled
the bottle as if it were an infant, hugged it
home to the abandoned
tobacconist's where i
nested on the third floor
alone. Early evening
snow glittered the lit
vegetable stands with
their earthen wares...

find the rest of this great poem! good night!