Tom Cook

My most recent piece for @theTLS is a review of Helen Vendler’s final book of essays on poetry. A truly brilliant collection overall, though she was wrong about Ocean Vuong, who is – as we know – shit. GET IT HERE: the-tls.com/literature/poe…

@MorganThomas32 @AndyBurnhamGM By Jove, I think you’ve cracked it, Morgan! This should be on every front page!

I have my suspicions that your want for this seat hasn’t anything to do with wanting to represent the people of Makerfield. I suspect it’s more to do with your own ambitions to get into Downing Street. And we wonder why faith in politicians and the system is so low. We have politicians who, whilst in your case, perfectly reasonable and intelligent, using these people who do need much better repesnetion for nothing more than a vanity project. I’d say do the right thing, stay as GM mayor and let someone who wants to represent these people stand in place…

I can confirm that I will be requesting the permission of the NEC to stand in the Makerfield by-election. I grew up in this area and have lived here for 25 years. I care deeply about it and its people. I know they have been let down by national politics. Ten years ago, I decided to leave Westminster. Why? Because, after 16 years, I came to the conclusion that our national political system does not work for areas like ours. I learnt this fighting its failure to invest in the Wigan borough, for justice for the Hillsborough families and against its treatment of Greater Manchester during the pandemic. Over the last decade, I have been challenging this failure from the outside and building a new and better way of doing politics. We have built Greater Manchester into the fastest-growing city-region in the UK and put buses back under public control, introducing a £2 fare cap to help people with cost-of-living pressures. However, there is only so much that can be done from Greater Manchester. Much bigger change is needed at a national level if everyday life is to be made more affordable again. This is why I now seek people’s support to return to Parliament: to bring the change we have brought to Greater Manchester to the whole of the UK and make politics work properly for people. Millions are struggling and they need the Labour Government to succeed. It has already made changes to make life better for them in its first two years. After this week, we owe it to people to come back together as a Labour movement, giving the Prime Minister and the Government the space and stability they need as the by-election takes place. I want to recognise the difficult decision taken by Josh Simons and the sacrifice he and his family are making. I have worked closely with him as Mayor on issues like flooding and illegal waste dumping and have seen first-hand how effective he has been. He has put the communities of Makerfield first, made a real difference for them and should take great pride in that. Finally, I truly do not take a single vote for granted and will work hard to regain the trust of people in the Makerfield constituency, many of whom have long supported our party but lost faith in recent times. We will change Labour for the better and make it a party you can believe in again. ENDS

Paul McCartney on bumping into Bob Dylan at the airport

Longfellow continuing the grand old tradition of poems about Shakespeare that start off well then crash headfirst into a brick wall

she cooked lmao

I am seeing* Bob Dylan tonight! (*actually a sliver of Bob Dylan visible between a hoodie and an enormous piano.)

the scene in Hamnet where Paul Mescal does the To Be Or Not To Be speech is one of the most embarrassing scenes of 2025

C. S. Lewis really gets it sometimes

I just think it's neat that Shakespeare decided to cap off his career in the theatre by writing the only honest poems ever written

@hecubian_devil So glad to see this. I’m currently finishing up a review of it and feel like I’ve been going insane talking to people about it. The first act sets her up as such an astonishing character; then Hamnet dies and she becomes a line-repeater (‘London.’ ‘London?!’) and gawper

Still completely baffled by this sequence where Buckley decides to play Agnes—wife of a playwright—as an infant seeing a play for the first time, or perhaps someone raised by wolves being reintroduced to human society. It goes on for what feels like 20 minutes. It’s unbearable.

@paperbacked Oh fantastic – thank you very much!

@TomCook24 According to Philip Gardner, it's said by King David - which makes sense I guess, it's from Psalm 151. Here's Gardner's essay: dalspace.library.dal.ca/items/c8b3b1dd…

I’m rereading Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns (1971) this morning. They’re much parodied, but they really are stunning; proof, however inconvenient, that the prose poem exists. (Does anyone recognize the quote in the second stanza? Is it, knowing him, something from e.g. Ruskin?)

Full offense but if as an academic I ever used AI to do any research for me, summarize any readings, or write any of my work, I would be so incredibly humiliated and ashamed of myself.

(It could equally, of course, be the voice of a schoolmaster? I don’t bloody know)

(I have tried googling it, but Google is fucked now because of AI, and anyway all the search results lead back to… Geoffrey Hill’s 1971 collection of prose poems, Mercian Hymns)

As Shakespeare says, if you're going to do a thing you might as well pop right at it and get it over.

@inimitablepgw ‘Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.’

Slop Bob’s been busy since I last checked in. (He’s also died like three more times.)

Why is Neil Young always dressed like that