A new poem will be placed here each month, usually from one of my published collections.
My poem for April 2019 is an animal poem from my recently re-issued Of Earth, Water, Air and Fire: animal poems (Melos 2013; 2019)
ORANG-UTAN
We tense at each collision
as you strike the bars.
Those orange wisps of fur,
the bruised, black nose,
the eyes that plead
as if I held the keys
that could release you,
from this narrow cage.
A New Poetry Collection
My new poetry collection, The Yellow Wheelbarrow, will be published in October by Melos Press.
Highly Commended in Poetry London Clore Prize
My poem “Wodge” was one of two highly commended poems after the three winners in the Clore Prize just announced.
Talk at Presteigne Festival 23 August
I will be giving a talk at the Presteigne Festival on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, looking at their relevance to the state of the world today.
TLS ‘Freelance’ article
My article on book collecting and the World’s Classics series appeared in the Times Literary Supplement of 26 April.
Spectator Poem
My poem “The Last Bus Home” was published in The Spectator 13 April 2019. It is a Liverpool poem placed in the 1970s when I was a student. Another poem, “Cooking in a Bedsitter”, was published in the same magazine on 18 May.
Aldous Huxley Talk
I gave a talk on 20 March at the Century Club on Aldous Huxley and Brave New World.
Poetry at the Music Room Bloomsbury
I read with A.C. Bevan and Cathy Galvin at The Music Room in Bloomsbury on 27th March to accompany the launch of Ian Harrow’s new Melos press poetry pamphlet, The Quiet Life.
Poems from the Welsh Borders
A new anthology of poems from the Welsh Borders is forthcoming from Seren Books and I am pleased to be one of many contributors.
Poetry Podcast
A podcast where I talk about Andrew Marvell and John Donne with Julia Copus has just been released on the Royal Literary Fund website.