Category Poems & Poetry

First Mayor of Richmond

Delighted to announce that my poem First Mayor of Richmond, will feature in the 4th August online edition of Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis FIRST MAYOR OF RICHMOND T’was sixteen hundred and six,for legend has it so,when, whilst out hunting…

Poetry Events: coming up

On Sunday Poetry-on-the-Moor (2) will be taking place on Baildon Moor. On Monday and Tuesday I will be involved in Poetry Zoom events hosted in Leeds and Milton Keynes respectively. I have two other live (in person) events later this…

Outdoor Poetry event!

Looking forward to being able to share poetry for the first time in a non-zoom context, since before the pandemic began. Four weeks from today in an open space, not far from home, with a number of other local poets/writers,…

NORTHERN ECHOES

A poem from earlier in the year, reflecting that whilst we in the North may have had our historic differences, we have so much more in common than those down in the ‘south’ espoused by certain politicians. Northern Echoes Somewhere…

Enchufe

A poem after Denise Levertov. Her classic question and answer poem about Vietnam was a start point. My subject however, was a reflection on my walking from Seville to Santiago and my writing of that experience, in Show Me The…

AGAR

This poem takes me back to Winter Sunday evenings in my mid-teens. My mother seemed to have a love affair with health food and natural ingredients and used seaweed based agar agar as a setting agent. I was the eldest…

Wild Blue Angel

50 years ago on the 31st August, I was one of around 600,000 people who spent a glorious weekend on the Isle of Wight in the company of such legends as; Free, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen,…

Open Mic events

Last night I had the privilege of being able to share some of my poems at the indomitable Runcible Spoon Zoom night hosted by Kathleen Stafford. 15 or 16 brilliant open mic-ers interspersed with four headline poets. The sensual words…

Zoom Events – Updates

I thoroughly enjoyed my return to ‘open mic’ land on Monday with the wonderful David Driver hosting an exclamation of local poets. Up coming this Saturday is an Open Mic with BIASAN, an event that is part of the Bradford…

Normality

So, you want to go back to normal when this is all overWhere our NHS is underfundedAnd under-prepared for what is neededYou want a normality that seesKey workers on zero hours contractsOr paid the minimum wageYou want to take for…

Poem of the Day 29/03/20

Encouraging the dog to bark Social distancing in the park Going out on my bike for a ride Acting like I’ve something to hide Setting off on a gentle run With my gloves and face mask on plans go well…

Graveyard

I spent time with Alyson Rhodes, as part of a workshop looking at inspiration for writing that can be derived from a cemetery (Bingley Cemetery on this occasion). The second of the two workshops was cancelled due to Coronavirus. However,…