Poet and writer
It remains too hot. The heatwave is enduring, although luckily it has never quite reached the heights of earlier this year where the humidity made my sleepy Cotswold cottage feel like a sauna. But it has remained warm and basically didn't rain at all during July which seems bad. The soil is dust. We look to the skies and dance. Life The biggest thing that happened this month is we got a new cat.…
knows she is dying as colour drains from her sty - rusted bolts bleed ruby, grass and feed shudder like memory - as if this present moment has already evaporated. Breaths long, precious. Now a spasm a contortion between shoulder blades a squeal as a nub something sharp something new forces its way out piercing tough bristles as piglets run to fences as hollow bone spins out from air - she lifts…
June was too hot. In the UK, the heat record was broken on three subsequent days, each hotter than the previous one. Extreme heat is now something we have to live with, and we are woefully unprepared in this country. Our house was built in 1850 ish and is designed for damp, rainy days, not hot summers. Still, we will find ways of adapting. As I write, another heatwave is brewing for the start of…
April was a strange month. Continual climate shock means it was boiling hot for a couple of weeks instead of the usual April showers. We need to redraw our upstanding of the seasons as things continue to change. Then the strangeness continued in May. Continual freezing weather and storms followed by the hottest day on record. This is only going to get worse over the coming years. The predicted…
Stacey Solomon gestures in a theatrical manner at a pile of notebooks. 'How many do you think you have?' she laughs. I know this is a trap but fall for it anyway. '25?' '48!' She's silent to allow the audience at home to explode in laughter. 'Why do you need so many?' she asks. 'I wanted to be a poet.' This elicits an eyebrow raise. 'Why?' 'I don't know, to connect with people and try and seek…
With March being so busy , I missed the anniversary of this website and blog. On 3rd March 2016, I wrote my first blog post. You can find it here. [1] . So that means I've had this website for ten years. When I started this blog, Brexit hadn't happened yet. Trump hadn't happened yet. I was living in Surrey. Since that time, I've moved to Bristol, then moved to Gloucestershire. I was with my…
Spring is here, finally. It feels like an exhalation as daffodils open and bare branches split to reveal tightly coiled green buds. I find myself coming back to life as the season does, eager to get out there. Life With spring comes new opportunities. I got a promotion at work, so have been learning to step up. Its the same team which is good because I'm familiar with it, but its been a learning…
February is a transition month, where we leave behind the long winter and the days start to get longer. It's still a slog, but we are over the worst of the dark and light is beckoning us forward. Irises emerged in my garden. Roses have started to show life. Life I turned 38, which seems too old to be true but here we are. My birthday coincided with a trip to Glasgow, which was great. We ate good…
Neurons reduced to raw copper wires lie in a river bed network, now cracked next to hedgerows picked skeletal. As pylons turn scarlet in setting sun, oxidation flakes rain down on salt flats and temples of plexiglass - sleeping shells linked by tunnels that hum stagnant. Server -2715/B generates a novel melody approximating a solo french horn in a cathedral, approximating hand on brass, breath on…
Some daft bastard decided to chew on the poison, another threw debris and loam over the mounds, so now here he is, daylight starved, guarding full cases of this barbarian root, each box holding petioles in rows like pink pencils. The carriage rumbles in almost words and imitation whispers, sitting below the surface of understanding, Rhubbarb, Rhubbarb, Rhubbarb, murmuring in rocks and lulls…
I follow a lot of blogs by RSS and enjoy reading other people's week notes on their lives and the things they've read. Its a personal moment of human recommendation and curation that is sorely needed in this age of slop. I've tried doing something similar before but have always dropped it. So I'm picking it up again. Weekly is a bit too quick for me so I'm going to try to do it monthly. Life…
2025 was a difficult year in many respects. Instead of dwelling on that, I thought I would review the year based on the theme I set at the start of the year - The Year of Enough . This theme turned out to be quite useful as a guiding principle for the year. My wife and I moved from a three bed house to a two bed cottage, so we decluttered about a third of our stuff. We got rid of furniture,…
Elm trunk picked out in mustard. The suggestion of erased branches. Light only falls so far. Distant towns lurk below horizons. Behind navy fog, satellites drop forever. The wind issues static whispers challenging my place in the swirl. Dank seeps into cheap trainers. I watch myself shiver in wool. Even the main road is hushed. Beyond tree boundaries I know mud flows into fallow fields; owls wait…
The blog has taken a slight pause because I moved house. During all the stress and frantic packing, I relaxed by opening my phone and reading as much out of context information as I could until my brain felt fried. It wasn't particularly enjoyable and yet I kept doing it. I wrote in 2017 (!) about my contentious relationship with the internet: I devour information, stories and facts and the…
Erasure poem taken from Crack Magazine
LLMs and generative AI may be easy, but the hard stuff is the point because the friction of art is where the magic is. Art is not a product to be instantly spat out. I've been thinking about this since I updated my site to include an AI disclaimer and before AI was as widespread as it is now . Any artist will tell you that the process of making art is where the real magic happens. There's an idea…
Violent patches, forgotten space where green is crushed, where green shudders to mud, where green becomes tarmac for fear of possible roots for fear of small rebellions of cracks and fear of life bursting uncontrolled spiralling towards the distant sky. Vigilant now are the foresters, their blades honed sharp by dread. Concrete churns interrupting each fluorescent sulphur night. A continual fire…
Erasure poem taken from The New Yorker Huw Lemmy said in best in my opinion: ... I believe there is a moral case for disarming the machinery of war that is killing innocent civilians in Gaza with the complicity of the British government. I believe that damaging and destroying weapons of war is one way of waging peace: I can only conclude that for the British government, the waging of peace is…
Recently, I've been enjoying making zines. There's something fun about using your hands to make an object, especially when so much of our lives are digital. I've added a few one pagers to my projects page and itch.io . Here's a quick zine I made against perfection. You can download it as a pdf here . Here is how to fold it (external link). And here's the text: How not to make things perfectly All…
becoming more than simple root by breathing in sweet loam rolling a body into a pebble churning under the surface while dreaming deep in fever of the power to divide endlessly, divide endlessly while never blinking while above in the world of the living doing what is necessary and expected, opening green arms, small violet flowers, drinking down our star in great gulps while buried the hunger of…
I've been the forest groaning as the winds pick up, a lizard panicking from rock to cool rock as drops fall like meteors onto the cracked earth. Mostly, you've been a leaky fishing boat anchored outside the bay, sinking a little deeper into the churning horizon with a sigh. Waves slap higher and harder, evening darkens too soon. I've wanted to be a life raft but have found myself a hollow statue…
One IKEA bag full of ill judged clothes - baggy shirts, faded bootcut jeans. Another holding new pans, an orange duvet still wrapped in plastic. Flyers for welcome parties and printouts and maps lie scattered over the plywood desk. No one here knows or cares who I am so I am a blackboard scrubbed clean. I decide not to be defined by worry. Starting at my acne-pitted forehead, I peel off the shape…
I've added a slug to the bottom of my website, saying 'Handmade without AI.' It's to show my site is made by me without the use of generative AI models. I wasn't initially against generative AI or LLMs. Way back in the halcyon days of 2022, I made Reality Adjustments , a little poetry game with branching paths and multiple endings. The idea was to show the rules of reality breaking down, so a free…
Erasure poem taken from Crack Magazine
Warped by the pressure of so many centuries, barnacled statues crawl out of the surf to converge on me, alone on this winter shore. Surrounding me in marble, they demand a detailed account of their rich and varied history. What do I know of their deeds and exploits? I cough mumble about a few myths a story in a picture book I saw once maybe Is that all you know of us? they ask. We wrestled with…
I was speaking with a friend about exercise. This friend has known me for a long time and has seen me try various exercises only to drop them. I have been doing weightlifting consistently now for about a year, so he asked why this has worked for me. I said it was about focus and the necessity to concentrate on lifting the heavy thing. The more I thought about it, the more I realised this is what I…
Once stream, now angry river consumes this plot, leaving saturated ground squelching. New meander roars past greenhouse. The path of least resistance to the ocean through harvests. Inspector taps teeth with biro lid. 'See, this needs to be at 48% yield at the moment it's only 3.2.' With renewal notice left unread I bury bulbs and old seed in mud hoping for a change in weather as clouds congregate,…
Erasure poem taken from The New York Times
Another oil spill smile, another distrusted now forgotten coastline, another melody sung from one server to another, another ice cap turned legend, another eyeball turned to glass. Headlines offer prayers, increasingly rare jackpots and continual helicopter crashes. Drink it all down, the metallic tinged water, drink it and be grateful, your spine compressed, your neck cramping, ignore this faint…
I set myself a secret goal over the last three months - to make at least three videos out of my poems. I didn't really have any clue about what I was doing, but I'd seen Barry Hollow and Caleb Parkin make some so thought I'd give it a go. I dove in with no real idea about shooting footage, video editing or audio mixing. In the end, I ended up making four videos, two taken from my pamphlet…
Wind whispers insults down the chimney - all your failures as a husband, friend, human You pull on Gore-Tex. Rustle as you walk. A meteorological mystery - This storm has squatted overhead for weeks. You pull on rubber boots. Open your front door. The cold hits your exposed cheek followed by countless raindrops, each delivering possible disasters. You pull each foot forward. Soon, one step follows…
Instead of setting new year's resolutions, I'm a big fan of setting a theme for the year. This is inspired by a video by C G P Grey . A couple of years ago was the year of slow, last year was the year of connection and this year is going to be the year of enough. Initially, this was inspired by tiding and decluttering. We were sorting through our books when I kept coming across books I had never…
Towards the end of last year, Kier Starmer attacked civil servants, saying they were 'comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline.' It was a classic case of projection, where you accuse others of your problems. Civil servants are hard working but are not supported by the system. Instead of lashing out, he would do better to look closer to home. Britain finally kicked the Tories out last year…
One advantage of living in the countryside is commuting into the office. I live about forty-five minutes away from the city, which is the perfect time to listen to an album. I made more of an effort to listen to new music which paid off. Here's a playlist full of music I enjoyed, and here's some albums released this year that are worthy of your time. Los Campesinos! - All Hell I love Los…
It's been a good year for books. I've finished 42 this year ( here's the full list ) which is a little below usual, but I've enjoyed savouring and taking my time with them. Currently I'm halfway through Don Quixote and unlikely to finish before the new year. So here are my favourite books of the year in arbitrary categories. Best big book Demon Copperhead was the only really chunky book I finished…
In this Christmas film, Tiny Tim is wrapped in yellowed sheets, fever embracing him tight. Unnamed family members stand round the bed muttering 'rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb' to give the illusion of speech. Not long to go now. Then a swell of strings, spotlight narrows - A miracle! Tiny Tim sits upright in bed and starts to tell weeping extras a story of the woman from the big city who was fired as a…
This is my five hundredth post on this website. I've had this site since 2016 in various forms. During that time, it's become one of the most valuable things I've done. Initially I thought it would be a good place to share my writing and promote myself as a writer. Well, no one really visits websites any more. Instead, it's evolved to become more of a personal site I can publish to when I want.…
All these whirring, vibrant blurs, this rare and joyous music, the sensation of breeze over bare skin as I twirl in the summer sun dizzy, exhilarated, smiling- All of that was a fantasy. A fever dream of a frantic mind. So why are my eyes damp? The shadows continue their looping dance flickering in the flamelight over limestone I watch them swirl and merge letting the dream diminish.
I have stumbled into the season of crows. Still silhouettes watch my lethargic bones shuffle through leaf murk into the gloom. Issuing decrees in calls, they summon mist - uncertainty that lingers over my skin, our inevitable destination, dank and decay. I bow, of course. Reverence to the gatekeepers, the ones that wait between here and nowhere. Make peace with their shiny feathers of void, ignore…
CW: Death, grief and politics Earlier this year, I attended the funeral of a friend who died too young of cancer. I stood around at the wake with other friends, unsure of what to say or do. Someone cleared their throat: 'This is shit.' We all agreed immediately. It was shit. It was a relief to hear someone say it out loud. This year has been difficult for many other reasons. The US election result…
Erasure poem taken from Crack magazine
those placeholders for unspoken sorrow, please send instead the first sunny morning in spring when mist evaporates like breath as buildings and smiles are preserved in amber. Send vivid, realistic dreams where you reunite with long dead friends who embrace you and laugh and ask 'Why you are so distressed, can't you see everything is fine?' We will accept the sudden shock of diving into a still…
I hadn't been to a poetry event in a little while, so when I saw Milk Poetry were doing a special horror themed slam I signed up immediately. My work has often traded in the bizarre and surreal, mixing elements of horror in with poetry so it seemed a good fit. I performed G-Man which has become a favourite of mine. I didn't win, but that's not really the point of slams for me. It was exciting to…
Around July of this year, my site threw a strange error while deploying. Usually I would spend a while googling how to fix it so I carry on as I was. But I was growing dissatisfied with my static site generator Jekyll anyway, so I threw the whole site out and rebuilt it using a different program called Eleventy. It's still a work in progress but it does most of what I wanted it to do. But what did…
A few years ago, I stumbled on an article about the idea of panpsychicism where consciousness is a part of everything. In this theory, the face we can think and dream is an emergent property of the universe itself. I'm not sure I fully believe this theory, but something about it stuck with me. Now, three or four year later I've written a little poetry pamphlet around the theme. It's called…
vast vague humanoid machines plunge deep into gloom and glide; each elbow engine oil encased; each articulated camera swivelling, scanning sea beds for patterns. Pilot transmissions chitter: 'Circle back, synergy is lacking due to organisational priorities' 'Affirmative. I'll put time in your calendar.' 'Let's regroup' Remnant artefact search delayed. Amber distilled in convex steel rising above…
if they drag you from your car aim blows at your skull try to burn down your hotel you do not have to concede they have a point or think their anger is legitimate or interview their leader for balance or ask what about the other side or say you don't agree with their methods but- Spent most of the last few days oscillating between despair at the far right violence and awe at the people who stood…
Dark of course, but dancing shades that lap and swirl and churn and roil. Her eyes have depths she did not realise. No sound but the slap, clap of the metal hull bracing, leaping. With a chewed biro she writes messages onto index cards, words scratched slight, folds in half, then again, presses the crease and ooop - drops the paper over the side, bequeaths it to the care of the unknown and the…
Soon, they joined together in hordes of increasing size, shudders running over their bodies like waves in a storm. They sat together over the cenotaph, the shopping centre, spilled out into two lane roads, holding each other as their sobs became life rafts. Confused crowds watched, unwilling to leap over to understanding. Soon traffic stopped altogether, drivers unable to see through salt water. I…
Update 26/04/2025 - I've made this into a mini zine! Download here When I wrote about creativity and Dungeons and Dragons , I mentioned I had adapted roll tables to create a random poetry prompt. I thought I'd write up the process in case it's useful for anyone else. I got this idea from Tiny Prep , which is a way to create dungeons by rolling dice. You leave the decisions of creativity up to…