 Rob McLennan offers a nice little review of my last collection it is like toys but also like video taped in a mall here - https://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2025/12/james-davies-it-is-like-toys-but-also.html
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I'll be reading on 27th November 2025, to celebrate Steve Emmerson's solo show at The Portico Library in Manchester. https://www.theportico.org.uk/event-calendar/how-to-read-a-nook-poetry
£3 plus fee. Book here. Join artist and writer Stephen Emmerson for an evening of curated poetry relating to his exhibition How to read a book. Stephen will be joined by: James Davies is a minimalist, conceptual and systems-based writer. His poetry collections include stack, Plants, Forty-Four Poems and a Volta, A Dog, Snow and it is like toys but also like video taped in a mall. He is also the author of two novels - The Wood Pigeons & When Two Are in Love or As I Came To Behind Frank's Transporter (written in collaboration with Philip Terry), as well as the short stories The Ten Superstrata of Stockport J. Middleton & Changing Piece. He edits the poetry press if p then q, between 2008-2018 was the co-organiser of the legendary The Other Room reading series in Manchester and in 2025 created The Manchester Experimental Poetry and Arts Festival. Jazmine Linklater is a poet and writer based in Manchester where she is a regional editor for the online art writing platform Corridor8. Her new poetry pamphlet Snagged on red thread is published by Monitor Books in October 2025. She is currently undertaking practice-based research in art writing and ekphrastic encounters at Sheffield University. Tom Jenks' latest books are Chimneys, a prose poem collection on above/ground press and The Philosopher, a short prose sequence on Sublunary Editions. He edits zimzalla, a small press specialising in literary objects, and makes text art.  I've reviewed Iris' marvellous book at Blackbox Manifold - HERE
Here's a snippet - Nothing Intensifies questions transmission on a couple of key levels. First, how to score poetry on the page that is primarily intended for performance that goes beyond the voice, to the embodied. A variety of performances on Colomb’s website include her reading poetry in uncommon situations: whilst eating ice cubes, whilst being hoisted, tied in ropes, and durational pieces such as Deadlock where a cable-wheel is rolled back and forth in a ginnel. On a second level the poems in the collection ask how we can transmit ‘nothing’ (well at least at times they do). More of this later. A little blog piece for my upcoming Sonnet Course at The Poetry School. It begins:
Let’s start with Desert Island Sonnets. What 7 sonnets do you treasure the most? So let’s start by cheating and having the whole of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. I enjoy the cycle and the epic that the sonnet can offer, and having all of them by the palm tree will if nothing else help with counting ‘the clock that tells the time’ (‘Sonnet 12’). Then we’ll need some animals in the pot, so I’ll be taking John Clare’s double sonnet, the sonic gem ‘The Marten’. I’ll want to continue by thinking about the sonnet as a visual form; existing anywhere and everywhere, so next is Mary Ellen Solt’s ‘Moonshot Sonnet’. Perhaps, after, something a little political with a capital P: I’m fifty-fifty between Wordsworth’s ‘On The Projected Kendal And Windermere Railway’ and Sassoon’s ‘Attack’. Umm? Last on the list are Ted Berrigan’s Sonnets (a collage sequence), the humour of Bernadette Mayer’s ‘You jerk you didn’t call me up’ and reduction and palimpsest in my own one-line Sonnet from Plants which goes: ‘Thirteen lines dumped. Fourteenth July Owe Six.’ Read more here - https://poetryschool.com/theblog/how-to-write-a-sonnet/  On 17th May I ran the first Manchester Experimental Poetry and Arts festival. It was a great day in Old Trafford, in the sunshine in, in the beautiful Centenary Gardens. The website gives a list of performers and photos. There was lots of amazing poetry as well as movement, sound and conceptual art. More here - https://manexpoetryfest.wordpress.com/
The finishing of the second box of 'Yellow Lines Drawn on Q4 Paper and Then Put in a Box This mega online festival, running 28th February-2nd March features myself along with poets including Briony Hughes, Camilla Nelson, Tim Atkins, Stephen Mooney and many others. See HERE for full details. And watch the video below for a lovely description of what the festival's all about from its creator Michal Piotrowski.  View HERE
 The great futch journal, publisher of hybrid prose, has published my story 'wellness retreat prose'. It's a deep dive into a yoga weekend in AR and mixed reality. Simon Taylor heads the writing with a fantastic image. You can read it here - https://www.futchpress.info/post/wellness-retreat-pro
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