Street Sailing – my debut poetry book is now out.

My debut poetry book ‘Street Sailing’ is now out in the wild. Cover art by Ben Pearce. Published by Black Bough Poetry.

I’ve written the book. Now where are all my readers? – A post on poetry promotion

Most people, I’d imagine, who write poetry want someone else to read it. When it comes to individual poems the process is fairly straightforward, if at times frustrating. You research a suitable publication, or editor, then send them stuff. After this, the waiting. Waiting. Waiting, followed eventually by dancing, or raging, depending on the outcome. …

“I’m really not quite sure about that…”: how (not) to make a poetry collection

Part Four in my blog post series about my poetry practice: Assembling a collection

Having admitted in previous posts in this series that I don’t always know exactly what I’m doing when setting out to write a poem, I must now confess I find the art of putting a collection together even more mysterious…

Going up a hill to come back down: in search of poetic inspiration

For a long time I didn’t write anything at all. That’s not to say I didn’t think about writing – I always went around noticing things – such as, fascinating, but fleeting casts of light, couples in the street, not obviously arguing but with faces that suggested, not all was well. A Bristol, or a London hill, its character, buildings, history. The atmosphere of a pub. A bird in a tree, an overgrown graveyard. An unassuming lane…

Poetic form, a confession

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…

Er, so I have a book of poems coming out…

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…

2022: Another year in reading (as in books, not the town near Slough)

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.

The week before midwinter & Space Station Dahlia

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,…

Norwhere Land

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…

A question of a hill

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?

Goldfinched, Hiram Maxim’s Grave & In the shelter of the shallows – three recent poems

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.

Make it till you make it

A quick word about Imposter Syndrome.

The trouble with those posters & Blue Fruit

Two rants in poetic form, inspired by Liz Truss, her party and their supporters…

Mosquito dreams, Midsummer ghost, Inked in

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.

Pebbles on the shore, Awake and Love on the breeze?

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’.

Urban rewilding & Everyday object

“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…”

Nukhak, Unearthed, The Nature Present

Three recent poems: Nuthak, Unearthed and The Nature Present.

Landmarking, Only crow and Galactic wood

Three short poems, recently shared on twitter through @toptweettuesday – Black Bough Poetry’s imagist focused poetry platform. Two birds, two sky-holes and a tiny galaxy of flies and light.

The world’s first psychic, intuitive, walking guide…

What if your average numbered walking guide, turned out to do much more – going beyond the basic geography to be predictive, intuitive, even psychic? If that happened, it might go something like this…