Perhaps I just wanted to say, hello, again; this is me, my name is Timothy written down, but ‘Tim’ out loud if you like, I don’t mind either way. I’m a musician, and a writer. I’m an alcoholic, and an addict. Formerly? Maybe once is always. But either way, I’m in recovery, so I carry myself differently these days. Heavy boots is a part of that, silly as it sounds — of clawing my identity back and finding how it’s changed and how it hasn’t. It’s nice to be able to remember, and really feel the truth of it, that I’m a taller-than-I-thought faggot who wears big boots and takes care to keep his hair cropped short. I’m so fucking happy to be back — or on the way back, at least, and that alone is such a big deal for me.
(From this post on January 27, 2024 — 27 days sober. I thought it made for a better ‘about’ page than anything I’d come up with before.)
Before the pandemic, I was a piano teacher, and worked with choirs, both as accompanist and conductor. My situation now, one breakdown and two doses of COVID later, is that I am long-term unwell and totally reliant on state benefits — it’s for that reason that this newsletter has a paid option. I don’t paywall anything, so a paid HORSES NOISE is no different from the normal one; it just functions as a repeating ‘donate’ button, for those who can afford it. It helps, it’s appreciated.
The posts on here I was happiest with, last year, were:
— fiction: Blood (a ghost story in five parts; c. 18500 words)
— poetry/criticism: List, recipe, spell, wizard’s farewell (a moment in Golding’s Ovid, and what Shakespeare did with it; 1250 words)
— autobiographical: A Party (a Brighton memory, not quite what it sounds like; 1750 words)
Most recent is the first part (3500 words) of Patmos, a new story about counting, escape from abuse, and a clean break on a canal boat in the middle of winter. Read it here.
If you like anything here, share it! Best wishes + take care. Tx
Updated on 29.1.2024
In the shops
Penguin Modern Poets 2: ‘Controlled Explosions’
Small-press / anthologies / journals
LUDD GANG 17 (OUT ELSE, 2023)
ill pips (OUT ELSE, 2022)
NOTHING WORKED (2021, Face Press)
PERIODICALS: Just People (Issue One) (death of workers while building skycrapers, 2022)
Letter for Sean / 3 after Rimbaud (2020, Earthbound Poetry Series)
A Very Short Introduction to Ghosts (2019, Earthbound Press)
In Skyscraper Dawn (2018, The Winter Olympics; 2nd edn. 2019 Earthbound Press)
not here: a queer anthology of loneliness (Pilot Press, 2017)
Water and Burning Effects On/Off (SHIT VALLEY, 2015)
Broken Slat From Starling (The Winter Olympics, 2015)
TRAILS (Deterritorial Support group, 2011)
Jocund Day (Mountain Press, 2011)
PESTREGIMENT (Grasp Press, 2009)
