The Origin & Meaning of Skendong
Skendong is a name, not a persona. It sits directly in front of the poems rather than explaining them, which is deliberate—the writing should carry its own introduction. What it points to is a body of work built out of Manchester’s streets, canals, and corner shops as much as out of any tradition of English verse, treating imperfection in the line as a working method rather than a flaw to be edited out.
The name has stuck since 2012. Everything published under it since has followed the same instinct: take whatever is actually sitting in front of you—a wine bar menu, a news story about an AI escaping its safety sandbox, or a tragic headline out of Gaza—and let the form of the poem bend to fit the subject, rather than twisting the subject to fit a pretty form.
The Manchester Framework
That approach comes from a foundation in academic discipline, even if the final lines reject academic polish. Skendong holds a Master’s Degree from the Manchester Writing School, studying under Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, Dame Carol Ann Duffy, and Jeffrey Wainwright. That background shows up not in clean symmetry, but in structural range—the decision to hold a tight villanelle structure together for a poem about wildfire, or to let a comic sonnet fall apart on purpose for an AI roast, are technical choices rather than accidents.
Since those academic roots, the writing has stayed stubbornly close to home: the brickwork of Ancoats, New Islington, the Rochdale Canal, and the independent bars running alongside them. Manchester isn’t a passive backdrop in these verses—it is the fixed point of grit against which global digital anxieties and social transformations are actively measured.
The Archive
This space serves as the open digital archive of that trajectory—spanning over a decade of independent poetry and prose, published entirely ad-free, and continuing to expand.