A selected volume – The Cloud Factory Poems 1996- 2011 can be read here.
Self-Publishing
The Rattle Bag
This rather nice vintage French leather bag came my way yesterday and I am going to use it to carry my poetry around in and hence the name ‘the Rattle Bag’ which I copped from the Heaney and Hughes anthology title… As Heaney said :Ted suggested we call it by the name of a strange…
Burning Books – hiding in plain view?
Last year I did a reading for Nottingham Poetry Festival in which I produced a small ‘polemical’ pamphlet called ‘Burning Books’. The pamphlet was a one off and most of the poems after ‘outing’ in paper form were then hidden away as ‘too political’ for my readers by myself! I censored myself which crazy but…
Substitute : New volume of poems 2018
Sometimes all it needs is a trigger and Kit de Waal’s excellent piece in the Guardian yesterday brought together a lot of things for me that been bubbling under the surface. Her article ‘Make room for working-class writers‘ touched a nerve….. read it here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/10/kit-de-waal-where-are-all-the-working-class-writers- Also she made a comment about how the Proper v Performance…
Towns on Shallow Hills – Horseshoe Press No.1 1990
In 1990 I had a short temporary job at The Poetry Library in London. Whilst there I was inspired to both continue writing poetry and met some wonderful individuals like Ivor Cutler and Michael Donaghy (over the counter). I also met some arses but such is poetry. The job was very menial and weekend…
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…