I have not posted in this writing blog for a while due to a full-time commitment to painting in preparation for the Lady Bay Arts show in West Bridgford on the weekend of 16th and 17th May. The actual physical act of painting has made me look at my writing ‘block’ in a different way and…
poets
Dead Cat Bounce
The photo above shows in their entirety the new  poetry books I  have aquired since the defining moment of the Salt pamphlet ‘Last Farmer’ in December 2010. The only other books missing are the Helen Mort Wordsworth trust pamphlet and my fellow Salt Modern Voices. I have separated them as I regard December 2010 as a break…
Substitute: My problem with poetry
Now I have always had a problem with being a ‘poet’. I come from a straightforward working class council estate background and the only thing worse than being a poet there was becoming a ‘fine artist’ so I killed two birds in one bush there then with my double non-career. I remember digging up a…
Writer’s Block…..smash the piano!
IGGY POP IN A SIDEBOARD Too much thinking fucks you up Too much time slips through the cracks Worrying about the rain, the funerals The way the poplar trees creak in the wind And all along the drip of ice melting off The corrugated asbestos roof a metronome The beat of a disillusioned parade…
The Armitage Stomp
I have delved a little into the Armitage biography and it quite worrying. He has received just about every award and opportunity it possible to get including four Phds (Honourary of course no laborious referencing required). So when Martin Stannard in his review of Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989-2014 raised the possibility that this was…
Simon Armitage: Who’s he kidding?
‘The Martian Owl’ Photo Credit: Paul Wolfgang Webster This post brings together some thoughts I posted online today in response to the attention being given a negative review posted on the Stride website by poet and critic Martin Stannard of the newly published ‘Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989-2014. Review available here: Martin Stannard Review Me…
Pound V Frost: Left V Right?
Pound mugshot 1945 whilst under arrest for Treason in Italy An interesting session last night with Sarah Jackson again focusing on imagery which had an unexpected relevance to me and not in the direct way I might have imagined. There was a good selection of examples and the background reading was interesting if only because…
The Negative Owl – Mark Strand
First lecture by Sarah Jackson and a surprise….a poem from a book I had not really paid attention to but had purchased many years ago…probably because of the cover. The image does indeed turn out to be a negative image of Bewick’s ‘White Owl’ engraving from page 89 of his ‘British Birds’ from 1809. It entirely appropriate…