Can you ever know if a poem’s finished?

Writing poetry can be a strange and frustrating exercise. Sometimes lines, or even entire poems arrive like a kind of gift from the subconscious and you must record them on whatever comes to hand. Occasionally you might get one that feels complete from the off. Though in my experience this is rare. Even dreamlike poems,…

Street sailing into the world

Poetry, Bloody Hell – to paraphrase a dour, fantastically successful Scot (if only he’d joined Bristol City in 1986).  I am now, a published poet, with a book under my belt. Despite still having to pinch myself, this feels a huge validation. Six months ago I wrote a post concerning imposter syndrome. This one is as…

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…