An inner-city secondary school in Peterborough; the end of an early Autumn term day. It’s been bright and sunny, which makes you lazily regret the loss of freedoms you had only a matter of days before. Everyone has told, re-told, and swapped the stories about how they spent their summer holidays. Timetable anomalies and rooming glitches are mostly ironed out. Students and staff have started along ...

Read and leave comments (0)

The Celtic Spring begins today, so Happy Imbolc.

__________________

Green Man

on a ceramic head

by Paula Zimmermann

I know that you must be there,

innocent divine,

although at first I cannot see;

your martyrdom, daily,

amidst brick, steel, and glass

goes almost un-noticed

and has made us blind.

We have all but buried you.

But then I find ...

Read and leave comments (0)

March - June 2020 :

During the early months of the UK lockdown, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic - I've been organising and running an online community writing project through various Facebook community boards, but in two different communities: Fakenham, in north Norfolk, where I live & work, and the Isles of Scilly, which I've known and loved for over twenty-five years. The two poems produ...

Read and leave comments (1)

our streets

are empty now:

spring sun tempts us - "lower

your guard, fall into this loving

embrace"

                             a cinquain

Read and leave comments (2)

I'm posting this following a conversation I had with the botanist John Parker (Director, Cambridge University Botanic Garden, 1996-2010) after a public reading from the book Deciphering Ancient Minds: The Mystery of San Bushman Rock Art by David Lewis-Williams and Sam Challis (Thames & Hudson, 2012). The South African San "bushmen" and their culture are a particular interest of John's, and we brie...

Read and leave comments (2)

This is my own edit of an appearance I made on Radio Scilly last month. I've been a frequent visitor to the islands for twenty-five years, and they feature a lot in my work.

Linda Thomas is Scilly's estimable librarian, and it's great to be able to give her this shout-out as she's been a real champion of my work for several years now. The show itself was a blast (although you may not get that f...

Read and leave comments (0)

against the grey chill

a fire-red heart hammers its

fine threads of silver

Read and leave comments (0)

at Oíche Shamhna, time of the aes sídhe

A ragged tonsure,

Or botched surgery,

Where the sooty soul exits.

Absences for features:

Swallowing the dark through

A pulpy hell-mouth.

Read and leave comments (1)

We could be

sheltered

from crumpling

horizons,

but atmospheres

are tempered

and all the weathers

culminating.

I don't want to stay

and await the flood:

there is already

in your face

a rain that will not

soon be dried.

Read and leave comments (0)

Hitting the Wrong Note

Rooted next to his upright piano,

close in the tiny room,

I couldn't breathe.

He held one hand

to the small of my back,

the other across my

taut diaphragm:

(I can believe he loved

the music, but he craved

only angels, expected them -

and, by God, he was

going to have them,

even if he clipped

their wings along the way).

Read and leave comments (5)

This essay first appeared as an article in the spring 2010 edition of Wavelength, the journal (now sadly defunct) of Poetry-next-the-Sea. I'm glad to say that the festival is still extant, and grows from strength to strength. I make no pretence to comprehensiveness here - the subject is huge, untidy, and difficult to define -  the references are simply to films, television films, and presentations...

Read and leave comments (1)

For the first girl I really loved ... long gone ...

____

Final Act

Brevity,

playing the fool

with time,

composes

his longest

soliloquy

in the actor's

dark asides.

Among the packed

stalls of eternity,

silence follows:

louder

than the aeons

of applause

life received.

Read and leave comments (1)

Heron Taking Flight

Rickety, this ruckle

of struts and ragged canvas,

a collapsing tent

of awkwardness

unmade by the earth,

by degrees cranks into

its one true element:

slipping tethers

into air.

________

Preliminary Findings

Preliminary findings

suggest a probable

leakage of fuel

before the tank exploded.

(Cockpit not located

at th...

Read and leave comments (6)

I guess that at one time or another - if we're being honest - we've all been blinded by the white hot heat and light of our fantasies, dreams, and ambitions; as poets it's practically in our job description to be thus.

The following poem owns up to flying too close to that particular sun, and the resultant crash-and-burn,

That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying for the impossible though ....

Read and leave comments (0)

Hi Everyone,

The Isles of Scilly are a jumble of granite scraps thrown down twenty-eight miles west from the coast of Cornwall. Five of them offer shelter and a living for some one and a half-thousand people. Needless to say, for a community that sits permanently in the eye of Atlantic storms through the winter, and basks in beautiful, temperate Gulf Stream-fed summers, there is no shortage of ...

Read and leave comments (0)