So pleased to announce that If Any Thing Was Ever Done is now published by Dunlin Press. You can get a copy here. Before I give the full official blurb about this epic whatever-it-is, here’s what Ella Johnston, who did all the art for the book, said about it: “When I read the manuscript forContinue reading “If Any Thing Was Ever Done”
Tag Archives: poem
Some Comments on Fred Frith
Fred Frith writes music with titles such as ‘No Birds’ and ‘The As Usual Dance Towards the Other Flight to What is Not’. He prepares and plays guitars with drum sticks, ping pong balls, ribbons, anything. He is an expert with delay. Fred Frith is an experiment. Are there rules? What are the rules? NeedContinue reading “Some Comments on Fred Frith”
I am not here
When we first moved to Wivenhoe, Essex, over six years ago now, my compass still pointed towards London. The railway was a thin chain, a line of landscape that linked our new home with our old home in the city. A combination of changing jobs, Network Rail’s interminable bus replacement services, and a general diggingContinue reading “I am not here”
Elliptical Movements – Billy Mills review of Scarecrow
I’ve been rewarded this year by being introduced to the poetry of Billy Mills, whose recent The City Itself is one of those occasional collections that can make you question why you write the way you write. It simplifies the complex, and finds huge space for exploration in what is seemingly simple. It’s about place,Continue reading “Elliptical Movements – Billy Mills review of Scarecrow”
Preview: Scarecrow is coming
I love a proper big art project – one that starts as isolated moments and then starts to coalesce, condense into some serious thinking, serious time and serious work. I’ve just completed one. About four years ago I went to a Poetry Wivenhoe evening and was encouraged to go away and write something, andContinue reading “Preview: Scarecrow is coming”
Into the woods
Something hidden in the woods.
An early January edit
January is a month for new writing, completing older projects, and walking around Essex’s wilder places.
100-Word Fiction: ‘Cancer Party’
It was the week she discovered Bob Kaufman and read a poem of his (now forgotten) while the rain streaked across the window of her suburban flat. It was the week the cancer first looked ineluctably fatal. The news streamed in dolefully: news of supporters and opponents, the disaffected and the quietly optimistic, as ifContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Cancer Party’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘Faces and Names’
To S___ on High Street it would be the time when the names were erased. She counted them up, window-shopping in the spring sun. The names that were now gone, in such a brief spell of time. Sam T and Granny F. Uncle, suddenly. The fit guy in the year above. And now they disappearedContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘Faces and Names’”
100-Word Fiction: ‘The Red Dust’
The red dust came from desert skies sanded the paper and screens of the press caught in the eyes of conspiracy freaks piled up the stress of Western dreams grazed the feet of measured prose stormed the sounds of drum and song covered the rows of memorial crosses and all their long-remembered losses tickled theContinue reading “100-Word Fiction: ‘The Red Dust’”
MW Bewick 