My first poems from 1981-1985 after art college. Some were published in the first volume of a’The New Magazine’ then just started by Gerard Woodward who  went on to be a well known poet and novelist. Unsure of my writing I used the  ‘David Bell’ alter ego. 32 poems including the sequence ‘The New Country’…
poetry
Buying Time – In or Out it’s the same old story…
Buying Time I’ve been buying time since I was born It is what the working class were made for No trust funds, no foreign holidays No gap year, no kindly Aunt’s dowry My father taught me to buy time Any chance you get son take what you can Don’t be dishonest, keep your pride, do…
Before Cubism – The Rocket Press Letterpress 1992
Here a novelty. As all things letterpress are uber trendy these days ( Pop Press just opened in St James Street) I thought I would share this one-off. Hand set by a crazy Norwegian student of letterpress at Jonathan Stephenson’s original Rocket Press way back in time. Beautiful example of real letterpress. Poem from my…
Natura Morte – The Poems that became Trees 1992
In 1992 Whilst living at my parents I joined Didcot and Wallingford Friends of the Earth. We went on demonstrations (B and Q mahogany etc) with Earth First and raised funds for tree-planting. I created this small ilustrated poetry booklet and sold 25 at £2 each which equivalent to 25 new trees. I also took…
Horseshoe Press 1990-92 : 2016 – An old idea revamped
Original Horseshoe Press Pamphlets from 1990 -1992 The Horseshoe Press was first used as my self-publishing name in 1990. I have just revived it as a method of disseminating more recent work. I was then working at The Poetry Library in London and part of my job was photocopying thousands (literally) of poetry magazine and…
Burning Books : where did it all come from…
Having self-published the latest pamphlet in an intentionally ongoing series ( I aim to publish a ’round-up’ pamphlet twice a year from now on) here some author’s notes on the poems. The latest is ‘Burning Books’ Horseshoe Press Pamphlet No. 2 and I thought I’d try and describe what influenced the poems and…
Saturday Night Blues – Sunday Morning Shifts – Working Class Writing?
A seasonal Amazon worker USA The following was written as a comment on facebook about the Tim Lott article on the Guardian published this week. This sparked some interesting comments on the notion and as Lott specifically flags up Sillitoe and this now a City of Literature I thought it might be worth expanding on….
The Drifting Village: Collected poems 2000-2015 released as pdf
The Drifting Village Released into the wild today as a downloadable pdf. The first of an irregular series of pdf pamphlets released as and when I feel like it.Basically a resume and calling card showing the fairly small output of the last 15 years and hopefully leading to more poems in the future. I have…
The strange case of POSH Mark Haddon…
Part of my new found ‘freedom’ is the ability to find bargains ( both cost me 50p which at 25p each makes it the cheapest pair of books I bought all week) and secondly having the time to actually read the damn things… So not only are they like buses but I have read both…
Skeleton at the Plough…my Scottish Ghost.
I took on this present nine month career break (ends Friday) in order to confront some ideas I had about myself. Number one was that I was a poet. Correct only in terms of the statement ‘I was’. However, despite the RIBA Edwin Smith commission, I am no nearer resurrecting that particular career than I…