Peter Kenny
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5 ways this HMRC marketing tactic is not okay
1. This is not okay because despite it being a threat to tax dodgers, its imagery unambiguously accuses you. It’s aim as a piece of marketing is to deliberately make you feel paranoid. 2. This is not okay because it is intrusive. This tactic has been chosen to threaten you as you are about to embark on the…
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Travelling Through and a kind of homecoming
Last week I found myself hearing Rhona McAdam and Tamar Yoseloff reading their work in the basement of a new bookshop and cultural hub behind Waterloo Station called Travelling Through. The event was so well attended that people sat on stairs to hear. Rhona and Tamar were joined by Sue Rose, whose work I thought excellent on this…
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Weight Watchers – ‘My Butt’
I caught this US ad for Weight Watchers on the Best ads site. What I like about it is that it refers to ‘my butt’. I worked on a campaign for an appetite suppressant drug, where a larger woman was pictured was saying, ‘I decided to stop being fat’. The word fat proved controversial, with…
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Hear ‘A Return to Sarnia’ by Chiara Beebe
Very happy to hear from Chiara Beebe who sent me a live recording made in Guernsey last August of the Guernsey Sinfonietta’s premiere of her piece ‘Return to Sarnia’. The words of which were based on a poem I wrote about the island in my early twenties – more or less the same age Chiara was when…
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Creative gulfs: UK, France and the US
To say Charlie Hebdo’s provocative satire is not always understood outside France, is an understatement. See this take on the magazine by Arthur Chu. And its satire was not to many people’s taste in France too, judging by its usual circulation — but of course everything’s different now. This cultural incomprehension reminded me of a…
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An afterthought on the T.S. Eliot Prize readings
Snapping up a ticket offered to me by my more organised pal Robin Houghton, I was lucky enough to get to hear the work of the ten shortlisted poets for this year’s T.S. Eliot awards in the capacious Royal Festival Hall. Fab seats we had too, being in row D, only slightly marred by the screen-lit…
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London Grip reviews The Nightwork
A perceptive review of The Nightwork can be found here. The reviewer John Forth poses a question I find particularly interesting, by opening his review with this thought: I used to wonder whether some poets have a hot-line to the unconscious or are merely adept at making it seem that way. Now I save time and ask what’s…
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Kicking off the New Year at the Poetry Cafe
Robin covers what was a great night. Really good fun. Here’s a photo of us all too. L to R Robin, me, Rhona, Catherine and Siegfried.
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The HMRC campaign provokes more thoughtcrimes
So here is another HMRC campaign against tax evasion. First credit where credit’s due. This is less toxic than the previous campaign that infuriated me so much. The copy tone is less accusatory. They are closing the net on ‘tax dodgers’ rather than what was previously implied that they are closing the net on you personally. And of…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 