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…
Review: Obligate Carnivore by Stuart McPherson
Broken Sleep Books, 2022. £8.99. A little like the compulsion to press a bruise, McPherson’s collection brings an irresistible tenderness together with pain. As the title suggests, beasts stalk the pages. These are not, though, charismatic, or cute, but often symbolic creatures – rough, wounded and bewildered. Here are memories of house spiders entwined in…
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,…
Review: rock | salt poems by Larissa Reid
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…
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.
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…”
Mindful
Not exactly a blog post, not exactly a poem, but it may resonate with some.
Nukhak, Unearthed, The Nature Present
Three recent poems: Nuthak, Unearthed and The Nature Present.
Advice to the poet from a five-hour drunk
In which I attempt to mine the gap between what’s thought and what’s spoken, in a cider fuelled conversation about poetry.
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…
The lost cenotes of South East London
A little bit of fun. I shared this recently on Twitter for Black Bough Poetry’s #TopTweetTuesday.
The Keypad Thieves
Normally I send poems out to magazines and websites, before I put them on here, hoping an editor will take them, so it’s not only me who thinks there’s something in them. With this one, I have no idea where I’d send it, or what chance it would have – perhaps it would be seen…
Richly Evocative 