He was the uncle that my father never knew, as Dad was born two years after he was killed. My great aunts, Bena and Edie could have told me about him had I known to ask while they were still alive. On a recent Writers trip to the battlefields I went to look for Victor.…
Poetry Postcard Fest
Although I am working on a second book as well as doing a full-time day job and various other things I thought I would join in with the annual August Poetry Postcard Fest organised by Paul Nelson and others. The idea is that each day during August you write a poem on a postcard and send…
The ultimate bookshop – Albion Beatnik in Oxford
For a long time I’ve been promising myself a trip to Oxford to go to the Albion Beatnik and last night thanks to Cinnamon Press I finally got there. I thought that the bookshop would be a nice place, rather like Ottakars in Milton Keynes before it got taken over. What I had not expected…
One year on….
I came close to calling this blog post being a ‘proper’ writer as it’s a year since Convoy was published and so I’ve been reflecting on the past year. In lots of ways life goes on just as it did before publication; there’s still laundry to be done, children to be collected from school and…
My Writing process
Rebecca Gethin (Liar Dice, A handful of Water and What the Horses heard ) has kindly asked me to take part in a blog tour of writers where we all answer the same questions and tag other writers who will do the same the following week. A nice way to keep in touch and learn about new people! …
Good things
Any readers of my blog who know me in real life will be aware that there’s been little time for poetry in the last couple of months. But I’m making my way back into the flow and lovely things have begun to happen again, like the Magma celebration reading at Keats House. This was for…
The Year in Books Part Two
I spent the summer and autumn reading and re-reading Wilfred Owen’s poetry, again in company with friends on Good Reads. Gillian Clarke puts it much more eloquently than me writing on the Magma Blog when she says “Owen’s words, read once, are unforgettable almost a century after he wrote them.” The on-line Getsparked project allowed…
The year in books Part One
I’ve decided to look back over a year of reading rather than producing my list of books of the year and therefore things that you should read too! There are books which I’d recommend but it’s up to you as many of us have more books to read than hours in which to read them.…
The Poetry dinner party
Following on from the early posting about Half Life of Fathers the poetry dinner is now in full swing with guests, William Blake, Issac Rosenberg, Christina Rossetti, Dylan Thomas, Seamus Heaney and whoever it was who wrote the Song of Solomon. Vanessa Gebbie is organising them into reciting their poems as follows: I’d like to…
The Half Life of Fathers
Today I’m delighted to welcome the multi-talented Vanessa Gebbie to my blog. Vanessa is the author of The Coward’s Tale, published by Bloomsbury, Words From A Glass Bubble and Storm Warning two short story collections published by Salt, editor of Short Circuit, A Guide to the Art of the Short Story which has recently gone…