Chris Emery

Chris Emery

@chrisemery.me

Poet. Five collections from Arc and Salt, most recently Wonder (2025). Manchester-born, Irish citizen, living in Cromer. I publish other people’s books at saltpublishing.com. Substack: chrisemery.me

667 followers2.5K following58 posts

Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

Forty-five years and ten days ago my dad died. I was going to write something about this on the day, though it's not a thing to celebrate. For years, it wasn't sad at all. But as you get older, I guess especially as you pass the age a parent reached in life, well, thing change. Absences are loud.

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Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

Still we treasure a secondhand life, the fragments handed on to us: a story of Christmas Island after the A bomb; the King of Norway sitting in your lap; the communist sympathies. Who knew? I say. Who knew? Sometimes I remember something tiny: a sausage sandwich each Saturday before Grandstand.

Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

The crosswords I still can't try and you, Dad, on the trimphone to Tony in the chilly hall, checking thirteen down. Are these my memories? I don't know. I check the photos in my family stream and stare into his face. In one, there is a shining charabanc; we're heading someplace hallowed and true.

Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

Forty-five years and ten days ago my dad died. I was going to write something about this on the day, though it's not a thing to celebrate. For years, it wasn't sad at all. But as you get older, I guess especially as you pass the age a parent reached in life, well, thing change. Absences are loud.

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Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

It's like discovering who you aren't, with everyone telling stories of how alike you are. Some sort of look, this hairline, that smile right there. You're the spit, they say. What you have is simulation, attribution. What you don't have is a father. And as I say, mostly this isn't sad.

Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

Years go by, and loves and tiny sorrows, kids of your own, all come to sojourn with you in the collage or swaying mobile life becomes. You gather it up, and you gather the dead up too. The dead with their absences: lights disappearing over a blue-black horizon. You head that way too, we all do.

Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

Forty-five years and ten days ago my dad died. I was going to write something about this on the day, though it's not a thing to celebrate. For years, it wasn't sad at all. But as you get older, I guess especially as you pass the age a parent reached in life, well, thing change. Absences are loud.

Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

Some people seek out lost parents after years of damage and drift, yet a death doesn't provide this. I was seventeen at the time Dad died, I don't remember much. I'm from the generation that did not take photos; no video. The past is silent for us. It has no voice. These photos, those you have …

Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

they tell the stories you give to them. The stories you can't believe for knowing you started them. Sometimes someone will pass on a memory for you, like handing over a candle or something. You crawl into that flickering light hoping for something but the light slowly fades. You lose your way.

Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

@xanbrooks.bsky.social Jen & I went to see Fatherland last night. We thought it was extraordinary – especially considering how culture survives disastrous geopolitical forces, how artists become political quarry, how nuance & intelligence can be sidelined & co. Also it was gorgeous on screen.

Chris Emery reposted

Sarah-Clare Conlon
@sarahclareconlon.bsky.social

¡3 WEEKS! Looking forward to bringing this one-off night to Café Blah on Saturday 14 November. Last Words is a specially curated line-up of experimental spoken word and broken sound. The tasty filling in the Death Party weekend sandwich – egg & cress, fish paste & cucumber, wafer-thin ham & mustard.

Chris Emery reposted

Don Paterson
@dharmabam.bsky.social

Very sorry to report that Douglas Dunn has passed away. He was the finest Scottish poet of the post-war period. Dougie was also someone we knew and loved as a dear friend, mentor and teacher, and he will be deeply missed.

Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

Happy birthday to my glorious employer.

Salt Books@saltpublishing.com

Celebrating 27 years of independent publishing. www.saltpublishing.com Beautiful books you won’t forget

Chris Emery reposted

gbclarkson.bsky.social
@gbclarkson.bsky.social

Saturday night review: a review by the critic Chris Edgoose of my three most recent pamphlets -- Singletary (@shearsmanbooks.bsky.social), The Vitalist Sees the Signs (brokensleepbooks.bsky.social), and, impressively, the just-released Palomines (Blue Diode Press) 😲🙏 woodbeepoet.com/2026/10/10/v...

woodbeepoet.comVoice Beyond Sense: on Geraldine ClarksonIn Denise Riley’s recent short collection of essays, A Chorus of Ears (Picador), she reflects on the way the persona of the poet frequently gets in the way of the reader and the poem. Her con…
Chris Emery
@chrisemery.me

There were three cellar rooms in my dream house, one contained a buried river, the farthest was filled with soil and unknown infant children were living in it in total darkness — one of whom crept out to go to school. The world was filled with poetry, characterised by anachronistic, twisting lines.