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…
Backwater – New Poetry?
I have spent years listening to other people’s voices and learning ..now it is time to play..so here is the first product of my new ‘writing’ life….prose poem/short fiction who knows…This is a Berkshire boy rendering Raymond Carver’s ‘Deschutes River’ I make no apology for that. I cannot go round him so I will have…
Song Man- Poetry and Music crossovers….
I have just finished this book by Will Hodgkinson. A companion to his first tome ‘Guitar Man’ it pretty much what it says on the label. A series of encounters with various songwriters underpinning his first and possibly last recorded work being recorded at Liam Watson’s Toe Rag studios and then released as a 7″…
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…
Well I Never….until now…..chocks away Henry..
The past two weeks have been both liberating and slightly scary. Having jumped ship so to speak from the Cruise liner NTU ( currently headed for Corporate Tax Haven Islands with a monetising Captain whilst flying a pure blue Tory ensign) I have had a few days to ponder what next… I currently have two…
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…
The Bear Pit – Oxford Channel 6 TV – 1999
Filmed for poetry slot on Oxford 6 one of the first local TV channels in the country. Filmed direct off TV hence quality. Summer 1999? I am stood on location i.e. in the Bear Pit it still there 🙂 I am a lot younger (40) thinner and beardier… The Bear Pit – Long Wittenham –…
The Broken Brush: Writing and Painting?
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…
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…