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“Voraciously experimental, precociously accomplished.” Poetry International

“Multifaceted, mega-fabricated, louche architecture.” Magma

Jon is a Derbyshire-born writer, editor and researcher who specialises in amalgams: hybrids, mixtures, collections and crossovers, of poem and game, fantasy and realism, curation and composition. He writes micro-texts that often take the form of character portraits, nature lyrics or puzzles, and combines them with the work of other writers and artists in genre-blurring anthology books.

Poetry London have called him a “poet of fantastic inversions”, but such inversions are just one way of rethinking the poem as an object of readerly play and investigation. His work has been published in The Sunday Times and performed on BBC Radio 4, as well as appearing in a number of British and international journals. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2012 and the Poetry London prize in 2014 and 2016.

He has also published academic papers in the field of game studies. A monograph, Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Videogames, was published in 2022.

For a fuller account of his approach to writing, with examples, check out the short essay 'On Toys'.

Get in touch: jonskeletone [at] gmail.com. Or subscribe to Stray Bulletin for irregular updates.

Sandsnarl
(The Emma Press, 2021), with illustrations by Emma Dai’an Wright

Buy from publisher

Village of dunes. Valley of slumber-dust.

Sandsnarl is a settlement steeped in sand – though where it came from and how long ago is a matter of tall tales and steely whispers. The sand itself makes accurate record-keeping impossible. It is drug, ore, plague and delicacy. The inhabitants of this region (or is it a fallen kingdom?) talk and think through its haze. Some alter their shape, as if shaved by it. Others seethe, resisting its rattle and buzz.

These poems eavesdrop, extract, sift. Together, they make up a brief impression of time and place, a Buñuelian musical without the music.

Reviews

“Reading these poems was an uplifting experience. Stone creates a flow of light and dark imagery, threaded through a game of ‘now you see it, now you don’t’, which includes (how could it not) hints of apocalypse, yet because of its energy and wit, conveys an overall a sense of optimism.” – Alex Josephy, The London Grip

Sandsnarl isn’t just poetry — it’s fantasy. Sand has taken over everything and obsessed everyone, like anything we hope will save us: drugs, riches, ideology, religion, art. Jon Stone uses rhyme, alliteration and other delights to make the reading experience itself intoxicating.” – Ramona Herdman, Sphinx

“These telling titles introduce an arresting cast of characters, all economically defined by role rather than name (...) The disorienting juxtapositions and intriguing amalgams (the ‘Sand Orphan’; the ‘Sandsinger’) are succinctly evocative.” – Lorna Dowell, Sphinx

Sandsnarl is a unique fantasy adventure told solely in the form of poems. It is clever. It is immersive. And I enjoyed every second I spent reading it.” – notashotasmyteapot


Extracts


More projects

Poems

On Toys

What is
Ludokinetic
Poetry?

Sandsnarl

Unravelanche

School
of Forgery

Dual Wield

The Hipflask
Series

Whispering
Leaves

Adversary

Headbooks

Scarecrows

Hybardrids

Tomboys

Birdbooks

Super Treasure
Arcade

Death Daydream
Season

Sidekick Books

Core Samples

Riotous

Superminis

The
Mechamorphoses

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