@TomCook24

poet critic person · typographer @FaberBooks and elsewhere · contributor @theTLS · you can pay me to typeset your books: [email protected]

the-tls.co.uk/authors/tom-cook/
Joined May 2012
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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/poetr…

Following the golden thread

A critic with ‘an almost devout passion for good poems’

the-tls.com
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Tom Cook retweeted
Tom Cook@TomCook242 Sep 2024
Happy Monday from the one and only Thom Gunn:
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theguardian.com/books/2026/o…

Douglas Dunn obituary

Poet and writer whose collection Elegies channelled grief into exquisite poetry and won the Whitbread book of the year

theguardian.com
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Larkin’s library colleague and fellow poet, Douglas Dunn has died. RIP.
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Ach, what a loss. I lived down the road from Terry Street when I was a student at Hull, and he was so fondly remembered there. ‘I wish him grass’
don paterson@donpatersonpoetOct 17
Very sorry to report that Douglas Dunn has passed away. He was the finest Scottish poet of the post-war period. Dougie was also someone we knew and loved as a dear friend, mentor and teacher, and he will be deeply missed.
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People who like CS Lewis more than me are unsophisticated, simple naïfs. People who like him less than me are tryhard pseuds. Only I like CS Lewis the correct amount.
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Tom Cook retweeted
Zito@_ZeetsOct 11
Went back to her Paris Review interview
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'Nashville Skyline' is the situation when Bob Dylan acts like it's perfectly normal that his new LP is a wildly horny 28-minute Country & Western album wherein he sings like a particularly hash-drunk Dean Martin, and we all agree that it's perfect. Throw my ticket out the window.
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Any bibliophile Larkinophile out there: this is your Christmas come early. newversereview.substack.com/…
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Yoghs and wynns are the true test of a font’s versatility. There you go: double nerd
MedievalistMatt
@medievalistmattSep 30
It's uncanny how accurate this is
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65 years ago today Robert Shelton’s review ran in the New York Times, kickstarting the series of events that led to Bob Dylan signing a Columbia recording contract less than a month later. We’ll never know how his career would have played out if this review hadn’t been written.
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historians writing about england in 1640-41 love interspersing their primary narratives with coy little asides about "an obscure backbencher from Cambridge named Oliver Cromwell"
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I'm back in @PoetryFound with a longread about what "a writer's life" looks like, based on 20+ books with "a writer's life" (or similar) as title or subtitle. This was initially an Oxford lecture in 2024; I'm delighted to see it published! Read for free: poetryfoundation.org/article…
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New book on the way! A decade-plus in the making. And it's coming into the world with the most absurdly glorious honour guard. Couldn't be happier. press.princeton.edu/books/ha…
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I think a lot of great poetry, especially great modern poetry, is the same. The prevailing wisdom is that the language/imagery of poetry should be completely original, but a lot of modern greats – Eliot, Bishop, Larkin – skirt breathtakingly close to cliché *and get away with it*
🎃 herbert von carrion 👻@ragandboneshopSep 18
i could go on about this fascinating kitsch-masterpiece fault line forever. the thing about tchaikovsky is that he knew his position fairly well: he said nastier things about the 1812 and marche slave than most critics will, knew he was the anti-brahms, not a structure guy, &c.
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Tall, curvaceous Buck Mulligan picked his way from the stairhead, his strawberry-blonde hair rippling as he strode briskly along.
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You can also add a copy of our anniversary book, Life in Every Word: The TLS Guide to Great Writing (edited by one Camille Ralphs), to your ticket. Or you can pre-order here from mid-October: harpercollins.co.uk/products…

Life in Every Word: The TLS Guide to Great Writing

A guide to great writing, by great writers – from Alan Hollinghurst to Mary Beard. What makes great writing? This masterclass in craft from the writers and editors at the Times Literary Supplement,...

harpercollins.co.uk
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The mighty @TheTLS turns 125 in January, and we're celebrating in style. Join us on Jan 30th at the @southbankcentre for a special event with @wmarybeard, Paul Muldoon, Gwendoline Riley and Ben Markovits. It'll be a literary night to remember. Tix here: southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-…
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Did Les Murray write the ultimate late-life-diagnosis poem? Click here to find out!
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Tom Cook retweeted
alex lei@alexL_E_ISep 9
good evidence of how stupid AI people are in how they think AI will kill us all by inventing SkyNet or something, when really it’s killing us by being an extraordinary and unprecedented resource drain/climate change accelerant that makes the brains of people who use it atrophy
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