With the exciting news about the possibility of microbial life on Saturn's moon Enceladus peeping through the curtain of wall-to-wall gloom, I thought it time to post a gloomy poem of mine from the great science-fiction poetry anthology Where Rockets Burn Through (Penned in the Margins).
Read MoreSunspots finale: Nottingham Lakeside Arts, January 26
'Are you planning for your nebula? The things you'll leave behind?' So, the Sunspots tour is done. Sunset was at Lakeside Arts on the campus of The University of Nottingham, my alma mater and the place partly responsible for the allusiveness of Sunspots.
Read MoreSunspots: Oxford Playhouse, January 11 2016 "...farewell star!"
What an emotional day. Sunspots took a luxurious month off for Christmas, so on Monday morning I'm trying to splash myself awake into touring-mode when from the bathroom, around 7 a.m., I hear the Today programme announce the death of David Bowie. It almost gives me whiplash.
Read MoreSunspots: York St. John University, November 25
Every time I go to York I swear to go more often. Such a beautiful city (particularly so in the winter months) and only two hours from King's Cross. In the last few years I've visited the University of York a couple of times with Psycho Poetica but this time we were bringing Sunspots to York St. John University.
Read MoreSunspots: Hull Humber Mouth Festival, November 6th
The last time I was in Hull, there were posters for GoodFellas all over town, I saw Roland Gift cycle past me, and I watched Evil Dead II on VHS with a friend who was doing his PhD at the university.
Read MoreSunspots: Bournemouth Arts by the Sea Festival, October 13th
From the north to the south and an intriguing new venue: Bournemouth's Natural Science Society. This beautiful Italianate Victorian building is crammed with cabinets full of shells, skulls, skeletons and all manner of natural wonders: the kind of things my Sun likes to take credit for: "I made the cats./I make the snow."
Read MoreSunspots: Manchester Martin Harris Centre for Music & Drama, October 9th
Room 101 was my hotel room in Manchester, nothing to do with the wonderful Martin Harris Centre with its back-screen projection, remote controlled lighting rig and helpful technical staff. And we were in the John Thaw Studio Theatre! I've loved John Thaw since the 70s when my parents would let me stay up late to watch The Sweeney on school nights. But the next day, I couldn't get Inspector Morse's voice out of my head: "There's been a performance of Sunspots, Lewis..."
Read MoreSunspots: Reading South Street Arts Centre, October 8th 2015
After London, Reading was another 'home fixture'. I lived here from 1989 to 1997, having side-stepped academia to work at Our Price Records for a couple of years. The second 'Summer of Love', which I'd spent in Brighton and which did its best to distract me from my MA, was soon clouded o'er by Britpop and the seeping mist of shoegazing.
Read MoreSunspots: Royal Festival Hall, October 2nd 2015
I'm going to write short blogs about each stop on my Sunspots tour. How did it go? How did I feel? What went wrong? What went well? All of this, none of this. That kind of thing.
Read MoreA Sunspot on International Women's Day
I take my responsibility
for these rocky, gassy, charges
seriously, as you can see
Some pictures from the space lab
he Mullard Space Science Lab is crammed with all manner of space paraphernalia and technical equipment, and nitrogen tanks, and bits of rocket, as you might expect.
Read MoreByron's 'Darkness' and the Summer of No Sun
[Given the Sun's reluctance to appear this year, I thought it was a good time to revive a piece I wrote for Birkbeck College's splendid Writer's Hub. This article first appeared there in June 2012.]
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