Gabriella

And even when she wasn’t there

as the life and soul who everyone loved,

She was, magpie-like

Always looking down on us

Gabriella, ‘strength’ in Hebrew

An Italian with broken English

And a broken sense of direction

She was, not pigeon-like, no formel

But she was as loyal as any she-wolf

Always looking out for us

I met her in Hackney, late Ni...

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Drawing is

I have always drawn for as long as I can remember

Drawing is my first artistic passion,

as it not just because I enjoy image making

but as a calming meditative process

Like Da Vinci who drew the body to help him understand,

I too learn using pencils in my hand

To slow reveal

Surface tension, fleshy, layers seep underneath

and reveal themse...

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One day, one day
We will sit on that bench 
under the lights 
Overlooking the river 
which you sweetly 
think is the sea

One day, one day
You will drown 
I will drown 
One day, one day 
I will drown you 
You will drown me
In happiness 
In smiling nuts
In pistachios 

That truck that’s travelled
all the way from Mexico 
on its way to the stores 
loaded with pistachios 
will cr...

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In Greek mythology, Leda and the Swan

is a story in which the god Zeus,

in the guise of a swan,

seduces Leda, a Spartan queen 

As a swan, Zeus falls into her arms

for protection from a pursuing eagle

Now, you may not believe me but,

taxidermy, dating and the art of seduction

go hand in hand with  the joy and torture of desire

I remember a first date, H...

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Out of frame

Outside the box

the feathers continue to 

fall

on cigarette ash

where the marks

Of love’s desire came and burnt

The softness and subtlety at which they

fall

silently are disturbed by the noise

Of the men simultaneously cumming

And they continue to

fall

onto the back

Of the male muscular torso frame

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We are caught,

caught in a stream of floating heads

Provocative faces preaching divisive politics

Spewing universalist values as well as those who meme these voices

Through a satiric vernacular

We live in a spectacularly tense age,

the complexities of speaking

bound up with far wider socio-cultural politics,

the question as to how to represent a voice,

to articulate a hu...

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All he wants to do is wrap his arms around him

But he must curtail the sanguine of his love 

There can be beauty

There can be sanguine

in enchevêtrement,

in complication and entanglement,

in mismatch and incongruity

Two opposing feelings

do not have to fit together,

It doesn't have to be a conflict

We created rupture

We prised open something

...

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Breaking from a

thirty-year habit

of only buying

medium thin green,

today, I bought

brown flavoured Rizla

Even though I

never use filters,

prefer it raw,

they don’t taste

quite as liquorice-y

on my own

than smoking liquorice

roll-ups with you

Neither that sweet

reverb after inhale

Nor comfort kiss

of eating liquorice

shoelac...

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I’ve done the heart

I’ve done the fist

What will I speak through next,

this poet-cum-ventriloquist?

It just sort of crept up on me

My bus ride to the station

Me buying of a flat white

Me fancying a man on the platform

All the people going about their business

It all seemed very normal

I had no reason to fight it

because I didn’t know that it was ther...

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My heart, she is a poetress
Goes back and forth and then some more
Thought she’d found beauty in his caress 
but beauty is far from what he saw 
 
Now let’s be frank here poetress
He’s blinded you, too blind to see 
He’s locked you in his mind fortress
That doesn’t sound like love to me 

But manipulation, more or less
By he you think can do no wrong 
He’s a slimy toad,a frog at best, 
...

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Centipede

Have you ever engaged in radical deep listening?

Do you listen to what’s crawling around your feet

but is making the loudest sound?

There is no sound as loud as silence

But the centipede is not silent

Listen carefully and he will deafen your drums

Why do we only hear

the loudest speaker with his mic?

The centipede is the one creating

the loudest sonic ...

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Tremors that he gives me confirm that 
the heart is a muscle
as mythical, as magical, as mysterious  
as a stitcher, tailor, clairvoyant, wordsmith
made manifest as a minotaur 
who cares for his brothers
A sage who is fuelled by compassion
Not seduced by illusions of fairweather friends

Even though we often 
stay up late swapping each others poems,
talking about a shared love of physic...

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Don’t lock yourself!

Unblock yourself!

Unlock yourself!

Shock yourself!

Speak, be outspoken!

A pint in my local, Christmas Day 1999

First time I looked over at Danny and thought ‘Damn, he is fine’

Playing pool with the lads, Danny-boy on my mind

Bent over the table, that peachy behind

His wife on the phone saying turkey is served

I quick brushed up against h...

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Even though we often stay up late swapping each others poems

and talking about a shared love of Geoffrey Chaucer,

 I’m still too embarrassed to ask him how to pronounce his name

Last night he gave me a lighter and told me I could keep it

Standard looking with no distinguishing features

unlike the way he carries himself in his lime green coat

which seems to consume his whole b...

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Image: Mum’s, Anne Campbell’s (nee Styles)  sewing kit circa 1959

The heart is a muscle

Caller:  Hello, is that Lee?

Me: Yes, speaking

Caller: Hello, I’m Paul calling from The Missing Bodies List

I am pleased to say that we think we may have found your heart

It was found outside shivering in the cold on the side of the road

by a late-night drinker. Broken ...

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Just going about your day 
Making a cup of tea 
You're at Tesco’s,
you're buying lettuce, 
‘Oh yeah’
A ball can drop very rapidly 

Certain times of the year
you feel more connected,
at the same time, 
sometimes,
just out of nowhere
 
The last couple of years  
he decided to go to work
Focus
To feel like his life 
hasn't been ripped apart
That memory of his life 
falling apart a...

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Just allowing it to be,

stop trying to intellectualise it

stop trying to find an answer, 

Or try to make rational sense of it

Futile.

It must make sense, 

everything and nothing makes sense

I hold myself to this standard

I regard myself a logical human being,

which I know is a contradiction

in and of itself

Humans are not logical

We are emotional

So why am I ...

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She just couldn't, 

She couldn't literally continue

Her whole life breaking down,

she’s had to build her whole life back up

And it's happened in such a painful,

but in such an incredible way 

that she could never have imagined, 

He has given her 

this incredible gift of her new life

But she wishes that he was with her 

He got the call, it happened

He was ...

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Humour is in my blood

Dr Campbell has a thesis,

a catalogue of comedic wordplay weapons to engage, disarm, highlight, defend, parry, attack and destroy

Heckler and poetress in camp and absurdity

Challenger, transgressor, subversive, rebel

Whether I’m Dr Campbell,

or Mademoiselle Camp-Belle,

humour is my disruptive and cathartic act

‘Even when you’re not using ...

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POW! WOW! WHAT’S THIS?!

Susan Broadhurst, author of Liminal Acts

writes that my work challenges what performance is

and at the same time interrogating liminality

meaning the ‘in-between’

For me, the window is a liminal threshold

that is neither private nor entirely public

When I was around 15 or 16,

I slept with a glass jar on a table by my bedside

Inside...

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She’s been getting away with it, repeatedly

She’s been walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose, repeatedly

She’s been forcing herself not to forget just to feel worse, repeatedly

She hates that mirror, it makes her feel so worthless, repeatedly

She’s an original sinner but when she’s with him, she couldn't care less, repeatedly

She thought she gave up falling in love a l...

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See, I thought I’d found my Tiana

A nice little smoochy snog,

behind that rock shaped like a toad

your kiss turned me into a frog

Not way it’s meant to be I thought,

was like that fable in reverse

Your kiss made this already prince

into a toad, your kiss was curse

And though your kiss was rather nice

and pleased as hell we did it did it

Opened my mouth to my...

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Surprised you’re not a footballer

You played a blinder tonight

Surprised you’re not a tailor

You stitched me up good and proper

Surprised you’re not a barber

You had me by the short and curlies

Surprise, surprise, mate,

you ain’t worth the agg.

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Collaboration is about being in the world

unless you want to be alone in the woods somewhere

And it is not about perfect unity,

collaboration is, as Tim Etchells suggests

about differences, collisions, incompatibilities

Are you ready to feel the embodiment of these terms?

Or are you feeling them already?

Friendly, convivial and equal collaboration,

is that possible...

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CREEPER

It just sort of crept up on me

The bus ride to the station

the buying of a flat white

the fancying of a man on the platform

the people going about their business

It all seemed very normal

I had no reason to fight it

because I didn’t know that it was there

Until I started having this feeling

and so, I butchered its body

Into pieces but as a whole...

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Thought is made manifest in the mark as a trace

but let me tell you about the trouble with traces

I rummage through life’s leftover marks

Traces from a previous exhibition

Text left on a wall,

plinths not yet been removed,

drawings now dumped in a corner as rubbish

I am for a poetry of embodied debris,

left in the aftermath

Speaking bodies caught

between memo...

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Image: Lee Campbell, ‘PITCH FACE’, pins and mixed media on canvas (2005) 

When I was young, JD and coke

Tried acting macho, what a joke

My friends knew that was mirrors smoke

‘Be yourself Lee, don’t cut him out!’

Whilst acting macho, breath it stink

Jack Daniels was my favourite drink

I gave right in to his wink wink

Lost all control, was on the brink

Control of...

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‘If there is a troubadour washing, it is he

If there is a man about town., it is he …’

It’s the liminal hour, neither night nor day,

2am is when troubadours come out to play

Urban street savages roam around the pitch black

Most people fast asleep but not in next door’s flat

where two male cubs through the walls, I hear growling

It’s not just the foxes outside that ar...

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Carbon Literacy Training

Pledge allegiance to

Cut my carbon

Push for change

Cut my carbon 

Push for change 

Be part of 

Community as catalyst for action

Community of reflection

Community as refuge

Community as compass

Community as accelerator

Sat in a circle 

to discuss our test results 

Most of us, 

Footprint shamed

Pleasure killer

Carbon do...

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I’ve got a crush, I’ve got a thing

For this mister, fancy him

In my local fat boy slim

‘Fat boy,’ Cockney slang for gym

He’s my treacle, Mister Romeo

Go hardio on cardio

Go fast on him or slomio

Go hardio or homeo

Go faster, increase speedio

On him, I start off medio

Increase my pace if needio

on Instagram Live video

A crush, I’ve got a thin...

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Tremors he gave me confirmed

The heart is a muscle

Never my heart beat faster

than standing next to him

Sadly the stars didn’t align

Our hearts not in sync

Cards dealt me cruel hand

Losing both him and Mum

Find Mum’s childhood sewing kit

Anne Styles’ thread and pins

Fleshy muscle torn by grief

Sew it back together again

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I’ve come to realise 

it’s time to let go 

and that saying goodbye 

means saying hello 

to a better me, 

the best I can do,

the realisation of what it is

I love about you, 

your qualities that bring out

 the best version of me 

So, I will try being the friend 

that you need me to be. 

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I’ve come to realise 
it’s time to let go 
and that saying goodbye 
means saying hello 
to a better me, 
the best I can do,
the realisation of what it is
I love about you, 
your qualities that bring out
 the best version of me 
So, I’ll be the greatest friend 
to you that I can be. 

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There is no violence as loud as silence

Silence as violence

Silence as violence

Silence as violence

Silence as violence

Kill the silence! 

Coming to terms with that oppressive feeling of

having to keep everything I feel about you quiet, silent

How can I swim and keep my head above a sound

so deafening, so loud, so violent

A hissing sound with a freq...

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I was hungry feeling whack

Drunk a few with James and Jack

Got last  train departing at

midnight but the driver slack

Did he go off for a snack?

Having piss around the back

whilst he doing line of crack?

Maybe likes a little smack

On my train, got on my track

6ft Santa, sexy black

in his costume with his sack

Lets just say he had no lack

Ooh ...

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CHRISTMAS CRUCIFIX

Tie them up tight

these ribbons to tree

but I’m feeling choked

by this constant cheer

Call me miserable and uptight

but at least this means a week off work

Tie them up tight

those thieves who stole Christmas

who ripped it from its pagan roots

Stripped it and stuck on it a great big sticker,

a story based in Bethlehem

Tie me up ...

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Better keep quiet

This moral dilemma

cannot get out

Keep your mouth shut, boy

Better keep quiet

Ever breathe a word

of this oral dilemma,

I’d have to tie your tongue up, boy

Words are mapping pins

Wasted mine on a charmer disarmer

Fuck his reticence!

Few pins he ever spoke never showed the alchemy of his flesh

And you, poet, smiler boy, fuck yours...

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Light as violence

Light as violence

Light as violence

Light as violence

LIGHT!

You do not necessarily need to ‘see’ something to be a witness.

Implicate yourself in an ordeal

through oral connection by means of

conversation with your inner voices

Self-reportage bestowing upon you 

a certain involvement and moral dilemma

My two eyeballs hanging on t...

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You do not necessarily need to ‘see’ something

in order to be a witness. Implicate myself in this ordeal

through oral connection by means of

conversation with my inner voices

Self-reportage bestowing upon me

a certain involvement and moral dilemma

The pins started to fall one by one in domino effect

Now my continual fight to be heard and seen

must take an involunt...

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Bruv, you know that thing, that thing we were talking about

when we went out for drinks and we almost passed out?

Bruv, you know that thing, that thing, the other week in the pub

we were chatting about when we were out

on the lash and I was up for a snout?

Looking back, I regret it, like what must you think?

This thing that I told once I’d had a drink?

You know ...

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Paul, my mate like to mock
John, my Dad, Scottish ‘Jock’
Sat at home, doorbell knock,
Open door, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’

Out with dog, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’
Dog and bone, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’
Down the phone, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’
Slam it down, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’

Where’s his brain? Out of stock
But lock the door, he’d pick the lock
Round the clock, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’
‘JOCK THE COCK!’, ‘JOCK THE COCK!’

Sai...

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It’s going well

between you and your date

Until he puts in a spanner

and calls you ‘mate’

Oh fuck.

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We are cut  

from the same cloth

Our poetry, our words 

are mapping pins

The inner rip

The visceral tear

The internal cut 

Fist rage embodied 

in every silent tiny prick 

of the mapping pin 

Your pins,

in their cadence, their sound,

Gravity loss in my pins

Damn it! You’re clever

you keep my feet still on the ground

Your pins map the ...

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We are cut

from the same cloth

Our poetry, our words

are mapping pins

The inner rip

The visceral tear

The internal cut

Fist rage embodied

in every silent tiny prick

of the mapping pin.

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Better keep quiet. This is complicated. Multiple parties involved

Save the answer until better times

ME. Reckless homosexual, romantic punk

loves being taken on journeys

with as few words as possible

HE. Charmer, disarmer, gambler, better

His few words took me on journeys

Did he ever really care? I bet he never did

FUCK HIS RETICENCE!

I bet on him and lost

YOU. K...

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BETTER

All that I had in mind for me and him in the future,

now in a long but unforgotten past

You are the better version of him

You are all the things I wish he would have been

He, who I had no so many hopes for,

promises he never kept

He was a charmer, disarmer, an addict, a better

I bet my dreams on him and lost

You are the present day version of him

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SMUDGER JOCK

Though in the print by trade, how the bills got paid,

my Dad for years went window cleaning

Smudger with scrim,  I remember him, 

 Jock kept those windows gleaming

With bucket in hand, throughout the land, my Dad was fit as a fiddle

Up high he would go whilst I’d stay low, not even to the middle

of his high ladder, would go my bladder whilst Dad up 80 foot

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Friend, you are the better version of him

You are all the things I wish he would have been

He, who I had no so many hopes, dreams for,

Promises, he never kept

All that I had in mind for me and him in the future

now in a long but unforgotten past.

Friend, you are the present day version of him

but I will never tell you

how you embody all those hopes, dreams

Prom...

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I’m going about my day

NEWSFLASH!

Unexpectedly

like a bolt out of the blue

my body interrupts me

46 years of chronic pain sciatica

has taught me the disruptive nature

of the body’s physicality

Visceral newsflashes

Corporeal shoots of pain

Physiotherapy and Amitriptyline only temporarily numbs

My body heckles me

Poetic, lyrical, unexpected, transformative interru...

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Following my feature set,

sharing poems about losing Mum,

the next artist started his

shouting something rather dumb

‘BIG UP ALL THE DEAD MUMS!

My Mum died years before your Mum, Lee.

And I was much younger than you

when my Mum died. So, I WIN!'

This woman in the audience then shouted back,

‘IT'S NOT A COMPETITION!

NOT A BATTLE OF THE MOURNERS’

I would no...

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