there’s a living to be made
in buck eejitry. She told me
not knowing your left from
your right is the beginning
of wisdom. C’mere, I’ll tell
you more; there is no more.
Sunday, 9 August 2026
Jimmy Cricket – d. August 3rd 2026
there’s a living to be made
in buck eejitry. She told me
not knowing your left from
your right is the beginning
of wisdom. C’mere, I’ll tell
you more; there is no more.
Vincent Pastore – d. August 1st 2026
or tell me you’re just Joe Schmoe,
takin’ care of business. We both know
what a rat smells like, how he acts
like he’s on the up-an’-up. Face facts;
even the wisest guys wind up dead.
Franco Baresi – d. 31st July 2026
l'hanno dipinto di rosso e nero.
Ecco lo spazio dove un tempo
stava la sua piccola sentinella
come un'ombra ostinata,
il suo braccio sollevata per far
scattare la trappola,
sbattere il cancello,
sprangare la porta.
red and black. Here is the space
where its little watchman once
stood like a stubborn shadow,
arm raised to spring the trap,
slam the gate, bolt the door.
Glen Hansard – d. July 29th 2026
in one hand, sheaf of lustrous
stories in the other, busking them
from Ballymun to Grafton Street to
Broadway, the rascal on the corner,
just across from the gates of Hell.
Ronnie Le Drew – d. July 27th 2026
the precise crook of a finger becomes
beckoning or refusal, flexing of palm
becomes imitation of life, the innocent
misdirection in which all have a hand.
Tom Chadbon - d.July 25th 2026
there are no roles left to cast,
that all the best lines are gone.
The director says Back to one;
your first line becomes your last,
and your life plays as a demo reel.
Bill Oddie – d. July 25th 2026
under my old trandem; a creature,
mostly hair, gnawing at a black
pudding, a mating call something
between wonder and melancholy,
and I’m sorry, I looked at it again.
Gunther von Hagens – d. July 24th 2026
of all the territories of the body,
whose hills and plains I know,
the interior is the province art
hesitates to claim. I am ready;
expose the places I fear to go.
William Orbit – d. July 23rd 2026
bliss and heartbreak, glistening beats,
guitar like the strumming of a rainbow,
strings like a final breath, torch songs
for machines to fall in love with humans.
Saturday, 8 August 2026
Kevin Keegan – d. July 20th 2026
one moment you’re the miner’s lad,
then, weasel in ermine, ball twined to
your toe, then a legend on another
nation’s telly, finally preaching a gospel
with only one chapter, that reads
we’re-gonna-score-one-more-than-you.
Edward Stourton – d. July 18th 2026
as fakes and stooges tell it like it isn’t?
The world spins, and nothing feels true,
and then a light goes on - Mic Live - and
here is intellect and wit, the quiet spark.
Garfield Sobers – d. July 17th 2026
Six for one that turns late.
Six for one that just clears the rope.
Six for one clean over the gasometer.
Six for the one hit all the way to Swansea.
Six for the grass that blooms where you passed.
Brenda Fricker – d. July 16th 2026
looking for someone who can
strain word and action through
the sieve of experience, real
as rain falling on a busy street.
Sam Neill – d. July 13th 2026
to know doctor and devil,
father, husband, monster,
and be everything of each,
to take us to places where
we won’t need eyes to see.
Antonio Rattín – d. July 11th 2026
emblema del club o nación, y la furia de un
hombre es la «cultura del aguante» de otro.
El juego exige una cosa: La pasión,
cómo lo juegas y cómo te juega a ti.
emblem of club or nation, and one man’s
fury is another man’s cultura del aguante.
The game demands one thing: La pasión,
how you play it, and how it plays you.
Dermot Murnaghan – d. July 11th 2026
for a news bulletin; not news
in itself, but news of the news,
neither politics nor murder
sweetened by commercials,
but the story of a real story.
Wally Funk – d. July 8th 2026
set out my own flight plan, cast
my own shadow over the earth,
slipped the surly bonds of men
and shown the face of a woman.
Anne Widdecombe – d. July 8th 2026
where the costume fits more tightly with
every season. Rhythm is the first thing
to fail; swing to the right, then further,
until you can no longer hear the music.
Thursday, 9 July 2026
Bonnie Tyler – d. July 8th 2026
someone else’s heartaches sung
like an old razor. Sometimes it burns
slowly, sometimes it’s an insatiable fire.
We know every word, despite ourselves
and every now and then, we sing too.
Ian Kennedy Martin – d. June 27th 2026
staked out by cops in Jags, sleazy briefs and
easy housewives, trouserless pimps, and a
dubious double act; not comedy, but still funny.
Wednesday, 1 July 2026
Victor Willis - d. June 30th 2026
where young men can be who they are,
where discos open but never close,
where traffic stops to watch you dance.
It’s just up the street; follow the noise,
hang out with all the girls, all the boys.
Tuesday, 30 June 2026
Penelope Keith – June 29th 2026
of the English; pitched somewhere
between hunt ball and sweet suburbia,
starch and tiaras and Fortnum hampers,
and oh, how we fell for it, and still do.
Michael Byrne – d. June 20th 2026
I will hang around the stage door
for the slender men in overcoats,
divested of the uniform of dreams -
mournful spy, owlish Nazi, rascal.
So many entrances, and then gone.
Teddie Beverley – d. June 17th 2026
who remembers you
from those glimpses of
green fields and song,
who fell so heavily for
such homespun glamour,
the same in rain and sun.
Roger Cook – d. June 13th 2026
at 6am. It dogged me from my car
into my portakabin, brandishing a
microphone like a stiletto, shouting
Why are you conning your readers?
Are you a crook? Are you a poet?
Roy Hattersley – d. June 13th 2026
that there is strength in doubt,
that no single way is ever pure,
that people are rarely deceived
by promises of gold, or a cure.
Speak softly; let the weak shout.
David Hockney – d. June 11th 2026
a simple canvas, clean lines
and summer clothes,
colours mixed from joy,
the best of my days
deep as a swimming pool
from which I never resurface.
Marjane Satrapi – d. June 4th 2026
when I was ten; eyes that
would widen at the sight
of death and revolution,
that would fill at the sight
of another person’s pain.
Let me read, and see again.
Anthony Head – d. June 1st 2026
grand passions over dull coffee,
the turn of a spoon like the turn
of a card. Act out this charade,
this advert for love; no bitterness,
everything sweet and sugary.
Sonny Rollins – d. May 25th 2026
but not today; the brownstones
are blue and cool kids improvise
solos from fragments of madness.
The Colossuem is full of noises,
but the Colossus has fallen.
Judith Chalmers – d. May 21st 2026
like an exotic distant aunt, Chanel
sunglasses and sarong, tan lines
and blow wave, leafing through
Condé Nast, wishing she was here.
Terry Hutt, ‘Union Jack Man’ – d. May 10th 2026
the Union-Jacked of all trades,
stags in crusader tattoos and
scoundrels in ermine who would
steal your place in the queue,
your clothes, even your flag.
Michael Keating – d. April 26th 2026
of a craven art, surviving
on cowardice and repartee,
too afraid to play the hero,
too smart to play the fool.
No lock you cannot pick,
no plot you cannot unlock.
Wednesday, 20 May 2026
Dennis Locorriere – d. May 16th 2026
for some country-disco vibes.
Was it you that answered?
I hung up, and called again;
all I heard was the operator
saying:
40 cents
more
for the next
three
minutes…
for the next
three
minutes…
Alan Rothwell – d. May 14th 2026
spliced from short films, memories
too fragile now to ever screen again.
A kindly man spools the final reel,
lighting the darkness of every frame.
Monday, 27 April 2026
Kathy Dooley – d. April 22nd 2026
reeling from the suffocation
of grinding Cabaret nights,
your lipstick-smudged teeth
and hen-night choreography,
your can’t believe we’re here
smile. Many were called, yes,
but few were ever so chosen.
Read about The Dooleys here
Saturday, 25 April 2026
Dean Tavoularis – d. April 22nd 2026
that only the movies can take us to,
designing, dressing and detailing
the darkness at the heart of America,
through time and tone and narrative.
Alan Osmond – d. April 20th 2026
and yet it poured its light into me,
offering an Elysium in bell-bottoms,
promising summer without autumn,
a place where all the rivers are lazy
and people, like horses, are crazy.
Desmond Morris - d. April 19th 2026
of the apes, up on its hind legs
yet stooping under the weight
of its own intellect. He writes
the story of a curious species,
knowing that the last page will
be written by someone else.
Andy Kershaw – d. April 16th 2026
born at the frontier of music and ethnography.
Bring me real music from an unreal world,
from Rochdale to Rwanda, these curiosities
of sound, the pleasures of the unlikely groove.
Thursday, 16 April 2026
Máire ('Moya') Brennan – d. April 13th 2026
it would sound like you.
It would settle like dew,
a shimmer of glissando,
the plainsong of a people
who still believe that
music is the cláirseach
that strums the soul.
Afrika Bambaataa – d. April 9th 2026
wondering how such unforgiving beats
could spring from one so unforgivable.
Yes, there is a corner of the dance floor
saved for you, but no-one dances there.
Asha Bhosle – d. April 8th 2026
of a song. A voice that is not hers
melts through celluloid like a wave
of heat; the Piaf of Mumbai, a ghost
that sings through her, beyond her.
Doug Allan – d. April 8th 2026
it will name its roll of friends,
those few who truly saw it
in its most fragile moments,
who turned their lens upon it
to show an imploring world
looking at us square in the eye.
Glen Baxter – d. March 29th 2026
which reads like this: Kafka, Python,
Zappa, Sisyphus, Trump, Milligan,
Baxter, though tomorrow these names
will be sung in Esperanto by a dingo.
Tuesday, 7 April 2026
Mary Rand – d. March 27th 2026
the run-up of youth, building
speed for our stadium days,
the explosion into the air of
our prime, then the descent,
the hope we might all leave
our impression in the sand.
Valerie Perrine – d. March 23rd 2026
in damage; wives wed to madness,
showgirls who smile to reveal just
how broken they are, who play a role
only to find the role is playing them.
Chuck Norris – d. March 19th 2026
they invented a new colour for him
for a belt beyond black; even when
he played a bad guy he was good;
all his movies were really about him.
Tom Georgeson – d. March 18th 2026
Among the angst and anger of a nation
in decline was the ubiquitous Scouser;
weary, resigned, speaking the life of a
worried man, waiting for a punch from
above to knock him into the next scene.
in decline was the ubiquitous Scouser;
weary, resigned, speaking the life of a
worried man, waiting for a punch from
above to knock him into the next scene.
Len Deighton – d. March 15th 2026
for an insubordinate spy;
somewhere cold and damp,
while a seedy war rages
in the shadows. A man in
NHS glasses drafts a final
report, for our eyes only.