Pleased to announce the launch of my poetry chapbook, with an introduction by me in the video above.

Further details and how to get can be found on the video page, but also directly here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-Dark-Imperious/dp/B0F6LJBYZH?crid=2BA9MK44CB0S1&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7_KYVIW_WGsPICDkVRd2iA.M7QmXUchP8xvM8a7646O_SusNVf_1P0HmCIEt49Mh18&dib_tag=se&keywords=i+being+the+dark+%2F+i+being+the+imperious+mike+ferguson&qid=1748104311&sprefix=i+being+the+dark+%2F+i+being+the+imperious+mike+ferguson%2Caps%2C83&sr=8-1

I am aware of the irony of my anti-capitalist chapbook only being on sale on Amazon! Not much I can do about that, but I will point out that ABP manages to remain a vibrant small press by ‘outsourcing’ through Amazon when so many independents are folding.

I get that further irony too.

More importantly, though not much of a counter-balance, any copies bought earn me a small percentage and I will take the eventual, overall amount, add the same figure to it and donate this to Multiple Sclerosis UK.

We’re not all in it for the money!

My thanks to Rupert and Nick for posting my visual poem on International Times today. You can see it here: https://internationaltimes.it/this-is-a-fake/

I played a miniscule role in a poetry collaboration with Rupert Loydell and John Levy, this posted today by the Symbology Institute in a wide-ranging journal (as you can see from the contents page above). For anyone interested in the discussion and the poems, I will post them in the following sequence.

As I’ve said, my part was incidental (though fun), but what I enjoyed most was the enthusiasm from the editor and the celebration of artistic journeys, this spirit expressed as

‘The work of Loydell and his friends is interesting for the wit of its competing allegories, (and) it is beautiful to see that they were interested in a topic or issue together, across an ocean, and had a conversation through poetry’

Pleased to have this ‘spectral’ collaboration with longtime friend and word/image collaborator Nick Dormand (artist & photographer).

With thanks to Melissa Lemay – see in full here:  https://collaborature.blogspot.com/2025/04/spectral-nd-mf.html

~

On this day in 1945, Richard Strauss completed his ‘Metamorphosen’

Pleased to have a selection of my prose poems posted at talking about strawberries all of the time. My thanks to Malcolm Curtis.

You can read them here: https://talkingaboutstrawberries.blogspot.com/2025/04/mike-ferguson.html

On this day in 1843, William Wordsworth was appointed British Poet Laureate by Queen Victoria. Wordsworth initially declined the honour, saying he was too old, but later accepted when the Prime Minister, Robert Peel, assured him that “you shall have nothing required of you”. Wordsworth therefore became the only poet laureate not to write official poetry.

The penultimate edition of Burning House Press (soon to be reintroduced) was in March 2020 with the theme Sex & Death in the Age of Aquarius and with guest editor Joan Pope who posted my poem Sex of Death and provided a wonderful collage for this: