My thanks to Neil Richards for posting a poem of mine on the Poetry in Surrey Libraries website. Amongst other recent posts are excellent poems, also, by Write Out Loud Woking co-hosts Greg Freeman and Rodney Wood. My poem is a response of sorts to Liz Berry’s poem ‘5th Dudley Girl Guides’, from her collection… Continue reading Poetry in Surrey Libraries
Fokkina McDonnell’s blog
I’m delighted that Fokkina McDonnell has featured four poems of mine on her excellent blog. There is a lot of good stuff among Fokkina’s previous posts, not least her own wonderful poems.
John Foggin’s ‘When All This is Over’ project
Over on his ever-excellent blog, John Foggin has revealed the names of the poets behind the 26 ‘When All This is Over’ poems chosen, out of 80 or so which were submitted, for publication in a Calder Valley Poetry pamphlet. Like many great ideas, this project has a perfect simplicity to it, and it has… Continue reading John Foggin’s ‘When All This is Over’ project
Hampton Court haiku 3
wayside hawkweed skylark after skylark burbles its best
Hampton Court haiku 2
scaffolding up hedge mustard renovates the palace wall
The Beach Hut
‘Half Board at the Alum Sands Hotel’, the poem from which the title of my collection The Evening Entertainment derives, is featured over at The Beach Hut. Now that holidays for Brits this year (if we have them at all) will have to be ‘staycations’, its posting seems quite timely.
Five English tanka
I’ve written comparatively few tanka over the years – probably no more than fifty. Those which have any merit are fewer still. Writing worthy tanka is a difficult art, let alone doing so in English without the cultural allusions which infuse Japanese tanka. Those poets – such as John Barlow, Claire Everett and Alison Williams – who… Continue reading Five English tanka
Poetry and psychedelia – part 2
Last night I was thinking about the 1987 television programme, It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, shown on ITV 20 years and a few days after the release of Sgt Pepper. I video-taped it and must have watched it many times in the autumn of that year, after I’d been to West Berlin for three… Continue reading Poetry and psychedelia – part 2
OPOI review of Noelle Kocot’s Humanity
Here is another review for the wonderful Sphinx. There are so many reviews on the site - it really is worth a good long browse or two.
Poetry and psychedelia – part 1
Last night, I watched Bryan Forbes’ 1966 comedy The Wrong Box for the first time in 30-odd years and found it to be as pleasantly daft as I remembered it to be. It features superb comic turns from Ralph Richardson and Wilfred Lawson – as, respectively, an elderly polymath with verbal diarrhoea and a decrepit… Continue reading Poetry and psychedelia – part 1
