Fading by degree
One of our shyest Summer visitors, the Grasshopper Warbler sings in a high range, somewhere between 5 to 8 kHz. Reeling in the reeds your high pitched Summer love song ageing ears can’t hear
Mapping
It seems to me that memory and the structure of complex spiders’ webs in Gorse bushes have comparisons. This poem was recently selected for posting on the excellent poetry and prose webzine Ink, Sweat & Tears by editor Helen Ivory. Click here to visit this website. PLEASE CLICK ON THE …
Perception
The simple act of looking is one of the most complex processes that our body carries out. It is also a perfect illusion, because it convinces us that reality is universally identical. PLEASE CLICK ON THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM How convinced we are that what …
Poetry Workshop at Shotley Peninsula
On January 10th 2014 I took part in a poetry workshop, led by Geraldine Green, who was in fine form and enthused the small group of good poets who were taking part. The poem below was one of the ‘spin offs’ from the day. PLEASE CLICK ON THE ARROW KEY …
Lightening our hearts.
Last year about sixty Siskins, escaping from the Scandinavian winter, stayed with us for over a week. They ate copious quantities of Sunflower seed and left us this Haiku: When dark winds roar South hulled hearts of the Sun’s flower warm flocking Siskins.
Mike East’s Misstep
A lesson in early childhood about the fragility of life. PLEASE CLICK ON THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM We learnt about friendship talking as we walked to the infants’ school, like the others I had envied in their noisy groups. Steeping over bad luck …
Lapis Lazuli
Do you remember that time of freshness, when some words – heard for the first time – had a resonance of mystique? This poem attracted a comment from Anne Boileau, who is currently Chair of The Suffolk Poetry Society and an excellent poet. Lapis Lazuli features in one of her …
Enough
A moment of re-adjustment. PLEASE PRESS THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM The bone ache mimes the North wind’s bite as Siskins mine the feeder teeth mutely lengthen in old gums in ears coarse hairs foregather hands are gloved with his parents’ skin age spots bloom the …
Jesse Gough fecit
Four generations of my family were by chance involved with an enterprise launched in the 1880’s by another family, The Goughs. Perhaps I own the only artefact from that history. CLICK ON THE ARROW ON THE BAR ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM The marker for a …
The Scream
I recently missed, by error, an excellent lecture about the painter Edvard Munch’s work, with particular reference to his best known painting ‘The Scream’. Two days later I found a remarkable hagstone (i.e. a stone pierced by one or more holes). PLEASE PUSH THE ARROW BUTTON TO HEAR THIS POEM …
The endless linear moment
At an excellent recent poets’ workshop, brilliantly led led by the poet Robert Seatter, one of the exercises was to write in response to a given image. I was handed a copy of Edward Hopper’s 1959 painting ‘An Excursion into Philosophy’ and the poem below is the final outcome of …
How to age a rabbit
He always breathed with a nasal drone
wet lips stroking a Woodbine
as he eviscerated game
a failed feint to distract his nose
from the glistening raunch of guts,
the thick stench if a stomach burst
and the half-digested last meal
oozed darkly onto newsprint.
Flooring a myth
Without apparent stimulus the brain suddenly decodes something from childhood. PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM The fence still stood when I was a boy. My fingers knew it was significant a strange structure in its second life
A Sestina for Jean
A sestina for JeanThis poem in a very traditional format has gone through many re-writes, this version was completed just before a reading last night in The Seagull Theatre, Lowestoft.
A Wall in Naples
When your preconception about something you are looking at is suddenly and completely overturned, the experience is memorable. This happened to me in The National Gallery in London a few years ago. PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM The proof that less is more …
Latent Heat
An energy source to rival nuclear power.
The Paradox of Personal Time (in Naga-Uta format)
A poem of failed searching in Naga-Uta format.
Unattended baggage
This poem came out of a recent Suffolk Poetry Society workshop, ‘Tree Ring Time- Clock Time’, led by the excellent Kate Foley. I wrote it thinking about the mass of empiric knowledge we have to accumulate in life.
Proximity.
On May 2nd 2012 we took a break in a five-star hotel on Malta to recharge our batteries after a long winter. The first day held a surprise.
Burnished Copper
A dynamic hue that attracts attention to itself with strong symbolic overtones.