Allister Timms Weblog

I was born somewhere around the end of the sixties in a hospital in Carmarthen, Wales. Merlin predicated the exact date of my arrival but my mum knew better. I went on to live in the seaside town of Burry Port. In some folklore it is said Amelia Earhart circled my house before she landed in the harbor.

Besides from parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and friends, I’ve lived a secluded life. I went to school in what was once a copper factory, one that excluded girls — although they were right next door. And another that was private. Each supplied me with an education. (Although I am peculiarly romantic enough to think of myself as an autodidact, which makes it difficult to be liked by the “properly educated.”)

I now live in Northport, Maine. But I have lived in the Midwest and Ireland. And hope to one day live in France.

I have a definite obsession for what Mailer calls the Spooky Art. For a person like me, I have to do it or I’d go crazy. So there must be something wrong with me. I can do fiction, poetry, essays, reviews, and flip crepes. When not writing, I loaf and invite my soul, praise idleness, shuffle the iPod, kayak Penobscot Bay, read as if the world depended on it, and love every second with my wife Nitasia and daughter Vienna.

A few of my favourite writers:
Dylan Thomas
Jeanette Winterson
Angela Carter
China Miéville
Mervyn Peake
Philip Pullman
Ted Hughes
Henry Miller
Tove Jansson
Italo Calvino
Oscar Wilde
Patrick Suskind
Bruno Schultz
Evelyn Waugh

Tolkien

Graham Joyce

Iain Banks
William Blake
Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Banville
Peter Ackroyd
Patrick McCabe
Don Paterson
Rilke
W.S. Merwin
D.H. Lawrence
Lawrence Durrell
Gerald Durrell
Lord Byron
Niall Griffiths
Ursula Le Guin
Herman Hesse
Alice Oswald
Poe
Dickens
David Mitchell
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Karl Huysmans
Roald Dahl
Woody Allen
Catherine M. Valente
Christopher Priest
Michael Moorcock
Gene Wolfe
Susanna Clarke
KJ Bishop
Yeats
Friedrich Hölderlin
James Merrill
Albert Camus
Comte de Lautreamont
Lian Hearn
Charles Wright
Seamus Heaney
Charles Simic
William Hjortsberg
Will Self
Russell Hoban
Frank Herbert
Sylvia Plath
Czeslaw Milosz
Hart Crane
Robinson Jeffers
John Cowper Powys
JH Prynne
Owen Sheers

Favourite Bands:

David Sylvian
Elbow
Radiohead
Editors
Joy Division
The Smiths
Orange Juice
Gang of Four
Bloc Party
Kate Bush
Massive Attack
Lamb
Divine Comedy
The Jam
The Pogues
Tom Waits
Echo and the Bunnymen
Japan
New Order
Nick Cave
Nick Drake
Rae & Christian
Leftfield
Faithless
Interpol
Roxy Music
Bauhaus
Big Audio Dynamite
The Clash
China Crisis
Blonde Redhead
Billy Bragg
Bowie
DJ Crush
Jurassic 5
Artie Shaw
Django Reinhardt
Everything But the Girl
Erik Satie
Jeff Buckley
T Rex
Nina Simone
Portishead
Prefab Sprout
Billie Holiday
Ella Fitzgerald
Rain Tree Crow
Roots Manuva
St. Germain
Beautiful South
Coldplay
The Cure
The Good, the Bad, and the Queen
Paul Weller
The Waterboys
The The
The Specials
The White Stripes
U2
Ultravox
Paris Combo
Tindersticks
Cocteau Twins
This Mortal Coil
Ride
Stone Roses
David Gray
Underworld
Chameleons UK
Comsat Angels
Underworld
Talk Talk
XTC
The Stranglers