Later, up on the high downs, I hope to hear skylarks. I always enjoy the pleasing shock in the contrast between the drab brown looks of these small birds and the piping, apparently overflowing joy of their calls, as they come popping out of long grass, like a choir of demented rubber balls, springing for the stars.
Welcome to the second in a series of posts on my poetry practice, as publication of my first collection – with Black Bough hoves ever closer into view. Notes on Form. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but my understanding of how a poem works, or how its construction works, in a technical sense, remains a…
I have my first poetry book coming out in spring 2023, with Black Bough Poetry. That’s a pretty big and thrilling thing. I get excited enough about individual poems being accepted by a magazine or website, but a book? Bloody hell. It’s especially surprising to me, as I stopped writing poetry in any serious way…
A brief appreciation of Jonathan Raban, upon his death.
Middlemarch – despite predictably squealing ‘Nooooooo, don’t do it’ as Dorothea Brooke settled on the notion that the ridiculously dusty Casaubon would make the perfect husband, and then, experiencing similar stomach-pit lurchings when Lydgate started making eyes at Rosamond Vincy, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
A short poetry post, to end my blogging year with. Two short imagist poems recently shared via @toptweettuesday on Twitter. Alongside a wintry Crystal Palace Park, replete with Penge Nessy. I had planned a reading year in review, but am frantically trying to finish Middlemarch, so that’ll become post one of 2023. In the meantime,…
Lofted above a scaggy, driftwood scattered beach,
lording over chunks of rock, a stilted steam-punk
iron torch, painted in off-white,
Norwhere Land Norwood, owns a sonic vagueness inside its name, where it’s neither wood, nor something else, an implied other option, a missing word, lost along the way. That said, it was once wood: The Northwood, not of the NORTH of England, but north of Croydon, before you reach the Thames. At some point, the old woods were given…
The ROCK | SALT Projecthttps://www.rocksaltproject.com The 21 poems that make up this collection (for the accompanying exhibition, painter Elspeth Knight created a series of mixed media companion artworks) trace the voices and experiences of characters who may have lived along the coast of South Fife over the past 200 years. Divided into three parts, covering…
I began to wonder, what makes a hill? Did all this tarmac count?
Fences, PRIVATE SIGNS, the houses? Were they part hill as well – landscape like the stone and grass? The buzzard overhead, was that part sky, part bird, part hill?
Three poems recently shared on Top Tweet Tuesday. A goldfinch appears to change everything, the rattles from a mischief of magpies, perhaps, turn ominous and upstream in a city crowd.
Who is, or was Mr Magenta? A bookish mystery set in South London.
A quick word about Imposter Syndrome.
Two rants in poetic form, inspired by Liz Truss, her party and their supporters…
In my mental landscape, Bristol is a city of hills, not towers. Although, one local tower – the Purdown Transmitter, or BT Tower loomed large in my imagination. Not least because it looked more like some kind of alien space station, than a building that belonged at the north eastern edge of 1980s Bristol.
Three short recent poems, concerning light, heat and the potential perils of open windows. All first seen on Twitter as posts for Blackbough Poetry’s @toptweettuesday.
Another trio of poems recently shared via Black Bough poetry’s TopTweetTuesday.
This time, playing with and exploring the search for that elusive ‘perfect’ pebble, using ‘banshee’ as a verb and the seemingly absurd notion of fighting butterflies (for an extra bit of fun, try singing the first line of ‘Love on the breeze’ to the tune of The Cure’s ‘Inbetween Days’.
“Those woods on the ridge,
through the window,
if watched from a certain angle,
will roll over the roads,
untamed the suburbs,
reclaim the shape
of old maps…”
Not exactly a blog post, not exactly a poem, but it may resonate with some.
Three recent poems: Nuthak, Unearthed and The Nature Present.
Richly Evocative 