My fifth book, dedicated to the memory of my father, will be launched on Weds 27th April, 7.30 pm at The Lamb, 94 Lamb's Conduit Street, WC1, and anyone reading this will be most welcome to attend. Wine.

The book, my third with Lapwing Publications, has poetry and prose over sixty pages. Here are two of the shorter poems it contains:

Wheat

These histories, all these histories,

descend into history

like sediment.

But I know, that the

            abundant, fertile wheat fields of Ukraine           

are steeped in blood

and that the occasional ploughing there

still turns up a skull.

 

Iraq

Here, my forearm, where he pushed out his cigarettes:

punishment for my baby girls.

The West toppled our dictator.

Mine remains at home.