top of page
Welcome to The Jotter, my blog on books, writing, and culture.
Subscribe for free below, join 223 others, and receive the following:
-
A monthly newsletter sent to your inbox with videos and articles on books, writing, food, culture, and music
-
1x free entry into The Poet's Workshop Poetry Prize 2026
-
A free PDF guide on 'Preparing Your Poems for Publication'
-
Latest news and samples of my poetry, prose fiction and non-fiction
-
Exclusive, original work from guest writers
To support my writing, and for even more exclusive content, and extra entries to the poetry prize, buy The Jotter Premium Plan here.
Radar: The Fibre Factor on BBC Radio 4
Subscribe to my monthly newsletter here for all my latest writing. The Fibre Factor Raise your hand if you'd like an Old Etonian to tell you how to live your life? Nobody? Okay. Raise your hand if you'd like an Old Etonian to tell you how and why you need to eat more fibre in your diet? I didn't think so... However, as reluctant as you may be to take the instructions of those who've led a life of privilege and comfort, and wouldn't know the price of a pint of milk, as Nadine
Andrew Jamison
5 days ago3 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Topping Up My Sourdough Starter with Tennyson
Subscribe to Andrew's monthly newsletter here for all his latest writing. A recent sourdough loaf (one that actually came out well enough for a photo). ‘Tis better to have loaved and lost, then never to have loaved at all’ wrote Tennyson... almost. Well, okay, maybe he didn’t but let’s not let the truth get in the way of a catchy opening. The original line ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ comes from his 1850 elegy ‘In Memoriam A.H.H’. It’s
Andrew Jamison
Jan 295 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food—Baking Croissants at the New Year with Kool and the Gang
Subscribe to my monthly blog here for free to keep up with all of Andrew's latest writing. My croissants (definitely not made by AI, although you can probably tell that...) ‘La-min-ate good times, come on! ... It’s a lamination’ – did you know these were the original lyrics of the hit song by Kool and the Gang? ... No? That’s because they weren’t, but doesn’t it sound great? If you’re like me, once you’ve replaced ‘celebrate’ with ‘laminate’ you’ll never be able to listen
Andrew Jamison
Jan 247 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Boiling an Egg with My Grandfather (A Recipe)
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here for news of all of my latest writing. My Grandfather is dead. He died of lung cancer when I must have been about seven or eight. My memories of him are vague, much as I try to recall them. But one memory I had with him sticks vividly in my mind: having a boiled egg and soldiers with him at the little foldable formica table by the window which looked out onto a very standard, quite small garden, commensurate with all of the other semi-de
Andrew Jamison
Dec 30, 20254 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Taking Friedrich Nietzsche to Beefeater at Milton Interchange
Subscribe here for my weekly newsletter for all my latest writing. Friedrich Nietzsche at Beefeater, Milton Interchange (image created via ChatGPT) ‘ Intellectually productive and emotionally intense natures must have meat’ remarked Nietzsche. Despite the fact he said this, my gut feeling (and I might be wrong) is that he wouldn’t have loved Beefeater. Then again, Friedrich was partial to a bit of beef. For Nietzsche deciding to become a vegetarian – even though he did try
Andrew Jamison
Dec 27, 20256 min read
The Hungry Poet: My life in Food — Scrunching Oyster Shell in Bristol with Chekhov
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. 1903 illustration of a moment from Anton Chekhov's 'Oysters' by Alexander Aspith All at once I began biting something hard, there was a sound of a scrunching. “Ha, ha! He is eating the shells,” laughed the crowd. “Lit- tle silly, do you suppose you can eat that?” from ‘Oysters’ by Anton Chekhov You’d think that eating oysters would be a Proustian moment for most food writers. Maybe they were stan
Andrew Jamison
Dec 17, 20255 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — A Bag of Chips with Roland Barthes
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. Match told us that after the armistice in Indo-China 'General de Castries, for his first meal, asked for chips'. From ‘Steak and Chips’ by Roland Barthes in Mythologies There is something victorious about chips. Barthes in his essay Steak and Chips from his collection of essays Mythologies, goes on to suggest that in eating chips after his victory, the General de Catries was asserting his Frenchness
Andrew Jamison
Dec 17, 20254 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Pan-Frying Hake with Herman Melville
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all his latest writing. A painting of a Hake. "It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me," reflects Ishmael in Moby Dick. While Ishmael was referring to the sublime – in the Romantic sense – and terrifying enormity of Moby Dick, for me there is nothing quite like the soft, flaky whiteness of a perfectly pan-fried piece of fish – it is among the most brilliant versions of the colour white we can hope
Andrew Jamison
Dec 16, 20254 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Chefs and Poets
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here to learn all about his latest writing. What do you get when you cross a poet with a chef? I dread to think. A poety chef? A cheffy poet? How different are poets and chefs anyway? Earlier today I listened to Pierre Koffman: A Life Through Food (The Food Programme). This is the umpteenth episode of this BBC Radio series I’ve listened to and by now I’m starting to see quite clearly that perhaps poets and chefs are a very similar type
Andrew Jamison
Dec 16, 20253 min read
Introduction to The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food
Subscribe here to Andrew's weekly newsletter and stay up to date with his latest news and writing. In this video Andrew introduces this category of his blog and explains the appeal of food writing to him, as well as some of his inspirations.
Andrew Jamison
Dec 15, 20251 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — A Ham and Cheese Sandwich in a Dublin Pub with My Dad, the Day of the European Rugby Cup Final, 1999
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. A ham and cheese sandwich in a back street Dublin pub (courtesy of ChatGPT) This never was my town, I was not born or bred Nor schooled here and she will not Have me alive or dead But yet she holds my mind With her seedy elegance, With her gentle veils of rain... From ‘Dublin’ by Louis MacNeice The otherness of the Ulsterman in Dublin has been well documented by some of Ireland’s greatest writers, b
Andrew Jamison
Dec 15, 20256 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Sausages, Chips and Peas with Yeats and the Boys Every Thursday Night
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all the latest writing from his bog. W. B. Yeats with a plate of sausages, chips and peas (image courtesy of ChatGPT) Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. from 'The Stolen Child' by W. B. Yeats Every Thursday night we have sausages and chips. And by every Thursday night I mean every Thursday night. It started out as a b
Andrew Jamison
Dec 14, 20256 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — A Baked Ham with John Keats
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest news and writing. John Keats with a Baked Ham (AI generated image... in case you were in doubt) A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. from 'Endymion' by John Keats Was John Keats really thinking of a baked ham when he wrote Endymion? If we
Andrew Jamison
Dec 14, 20256 min read
Death of an Artisan: A Poem
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. The following poem charts part of the fictional life of an apprentice baker, Georges Bertrand. THE BAKERY GIG It was my teenage summer job, the last resort. I left it late and all my friends had nabbed the waiting jobs, the bar jobs, in short the jobs with tips and regular hours. Nobody wanted the bakery gig. Ridiculously early starts, long shifts, in a basement, leaving you too knackered to go out d
Andrew Jamison
Dec 14, 20259 min read
A Short History of the Potato: A Poem
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing, or upgrade to The Jotter Premium Plan here for access to all past and future writing. Boiled, it steams into the world on a plate on a Sunday at the head of the table with butter after church before a man a father of five in a shirt and tie and polished brogues and Old Spice with rough hands from dairy farming stock near the north coast with a glass of red and carrots and beef who has a separate dis
Andrew Jamison
Dec 14, 202512 min read
Radar: Rowley Leigh - A Life Through Food
Subscribe to Andrew's blog here for weekly updates on his writing. 'A Long and Messy Business' is the name of Rowley Leigh's latest cookery book, and it alludes to how describes his life as a chef. Attending Clifton College, he went on to study English at Cambridge before heading to London and working his way up from burger bars, through Le Gavroche, to opening his own restaurant 'Kensington Place' in 1987. While it may appear on the surface that Leigh lived something of a c
Andrew Jamison
Dec 13, 20252 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — In the Canteen Queue with Le Corbusier
Subscribe to Andrew's blog here for weekly updates on his latest writing. If the house is ‘a machine for living in’ , as Le Corbusier claimed, then the canteen must be a machine for eating in. Although, for some reason, I struggle to imagine Le Corbusier waiting in line for ‘sausage and mash Monday’, or ‘fish and chips Friday’, let alone navigating the intricacies of the salad bar. However, I’m sure he would have approved of how the canteen prizes function over ornamentation
Andrew Jamison
Dec 10, 20258 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Going for a Greggs with Seamus Heaney
Subscribe to Andrew's blog for weekly updates here or upgrade to The Jotter Premium Plan for access to all posts. ‘Your ordinariness was renewed there’ wrote Seamus Heaney in his love poem ‘Night Drive’ as he recounts driving through France and thinking of his wife. Heaney was someone whose poetry revelled in finding the extraordinary in the ordinary; he even coined the phrase ‘universal ordinariness’, referring to the common experiences we all go through in life, no matter
Andrew Jamison
Dec 9, 20254 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Beckett, a Banana, and a Couple of Soggy Chocolate Bourbons at the Sixth Hole
Subscribe to Andrew's blog here for weekly updates about his latest posts. James Joyce and Samuel Beckett never played pitch’n’putt as they do in this video . However, it’s well known that Beckett was more than proficient at hacking his way around 18 holes, and it’s alleged that he had a 7 handicap, and it wasn’t uncommon to find him at Carrickmines gold club near Dublin. Indeed, it’s rumoured that when he was losing his sight in old age he would play the first holes mental
Andrew Jamison
Dec 9, 20254 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — The Poetry of the Packed Lunch
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here and don't miss out on his latest writing. The sonnet is one of my favourite forms of poetry. Don Paterson, among our greatest living sonneteers, once wrote of this ancient fourteen line poetic form ‘it is a box for [our] dreams, and represents one of the most characteristic shapes human thought can take.’ Shakespeare was one of the most famous exponents of the form, writing 154 of them, all centred around the idea of love. In som
Andrew Jamison
Dec 3, 20254 min read
bottom of page