This poem was written whilst on a river trip from Amsterdam to Budapest in May 2017, whilst I was awaiting the results of a biopsy to determine what sort of cancer I had. Here in Bamberg we are buying history grateful that no symptoms show the guides are …
I am a strong believer in renewable energy, but it’s not a free lunch. Significant amounts of energy has to be used to change quartz sand to silicon. Silane gas produced during the manufacturing process is extremely explosive, and explosions occur. Another risk is that we currently have no …
There is a wonderful walk along the line of the old narrow gauge railwayline to Southwold, where it runs alongside the Blyth estuary. I led a walk for a group of poets there this year, and this was one of the poems that I read on the walk. We had …
The East Anglian Daily Times ran an article entitled ’22 beautiful poems about East Anglia’ in their Saturday magazine insert on March 18th this year. I was very pleased to see this poem of mine on the same page as poems by Sir Walter Raleigh and George Szirtes. Spring’s …
By way of a change, here is a short piece of prose: In a writers’ group this morning we were challenged to write a short story in 150 words. The story below contains exactly that number. The light was starting to fade, and breaking soft waves seemed even quieter. …
How many things that seemed eternal early in life, have completely vanished? Sometime in the nineteen-fifties it perched on the hundred-foot workshop, where Waitrose’s entrance is now. It would pace the working lives of hundreds. First as boys, learning to master metal …
I wrote this poem in mid November this year, then my e-mail inbox started to fill with ‘Pre-Black Friday’ offers, then ‘Black Friday’ offers, followed later by ‘Post Black Friday’ offers, and now I am seeing ‘Black Friday repeat offers’! Reality has overtaken imagination. Due to the delirium of Brexit …
I agreed to sit as the model again this morning for an art group producing portraits. We had a cultural exchange as at the end of the two sessions as I recited the Haikus composed in my head during the forty minutes of the sitting. I then exchanged a book …
This poem won a ‘Commended’ award in the recent 2016 George Crabbe Poetry Competition. The competition judge, Moniza Alvi, wrote of ‘Last Orders’ “Tragic and hard hitting, I found this poignant poem compelling.” ” This is a poem with a real sense of urgency”. Every night at seven, he shed …
During a few days in Liverpool we visited Crosby Beach, to see the Antony Gormley sculptures arranged as ‘Another Place’. Two friends had been examining the work, and turned to walk off the beach. I took the photograph below, and the poem was written after I examined the image, using an …
Here is a shared experience from the night of the full ‘Strawberry Moon’ on June 20th. A warm evening after a wet morning promised the sight of Nightjars hunting, and the moon was a bonus, The mist quilt slips across the sodden heath thickening at waist height in the …
Two days after the referendum, and still dazed by the result. Soon the longing can begin, but the awareness of our loss will take longer for all to own. Already the Young feel despair for they were closer to hope than the wrinkled, palsied hands that signed away their …
This poem recently was selected by Helen Ivory for appearance in the poetry webzine ‘Ink, Sweat and Tears‘, it also appeared the the Suffolk Poetry Society’s magazine ‘Twelve Rivers’. PLEASE CLICK ON THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM You can never prepare for this task. It …
PLEASE CLICK ON THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM He glides the Hog to the sidewalk, blips the throttle then kills the big twin cam but not cleanly, the rig shakes twice with pre-ignition. Shit! – He hates when that happens, it spoils an entrance. …
I was asked today to write about a hat! Please click on the arrow button above to hear this poem The good thing is that it travels well. It has little style only patterned stitch work marks its drab coarse surface. Khaki cover for a nascent bald patch, a …
The Blythburgh Estuary, such a wonderfully calm landscape, or is it? PLEASE CLICK ON THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM The Blyth snakes down to the brine soothing our senses as it idly curls grazing past tall murmuring reeds, stirred to voice by a gentle …
This poem started in a session of poets writing together, with Michael Laskey and Dean Parkin. Dean produced a ‘Spot the Ball’ page from an old newspaper, and we all enjoyed marking our X. We all missed! PLEASE CLICK ON THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM …
Who considers this American import matches the idea of ‘Seasonal Goodwill’? Black Friday, the official day to be suitably depressed by buyers and sellers greed. Not to be confused with The Black Death, but similar in effect.
This poem was written after my wife Jean said that she would write a children’s book called ‘That Bastard Bird’ PLEASE CLICK ON THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS READ. See the big bird. The big bird’s name is Percy. Percy has big feet. Percy’s big feet …
This poem is itself an interactive response. Jacqui liked the reference to ‘simple joy’ in my poem Migration Counterpoint and decided that concept would be the subject matter of the interactive installation she was to display in The Undercroft in Norwich, for the 2015 Norwich Fringe Festival. When she told …
