Biography

I'm an english teacher and writer based in Peterborough. I've been performing in the area for a couple of years now and am looking to get out and about a bit more. My writing seems to go down well and i'm about to go on a national tour with Murray Lachlan young, Aoife Mannix and Woodpigeon, which should be very exciting.

Samples

I want a girl who reads

“So, what do you go for in a girl?”
He crows, lifting a lager to his lips
Gestures where his mate sits
Downs his glass
“He prefers tits
I prefer ass.
What do you go for in a girl?”

I don’t feel comfortable
The air left the room a long time ago
All eyes are on me
Well, if you must know

I want a girl who reads
Yeah. Reads.
I’m not trying to call you a chauvinist
Cos I know you’re not alone in this
but…

I want a girl who reads
Who needs the written word
& uses the added vocabulary
She gleans from novels and poetry
To hold lively conversation
In a range of social situations

I want a girl who reads
Who’s heart bleeds at the words of Graham Greene
Or even Heat magazine
Who’ll tie back her hair while reading Jane Eyre
and goes cover to cover with each waterstones three for two offer
but I want a girl who doesn’t stop there

I want a girl who reads
Who feeds her addiction for fiction
With unusual poems and plays
That she hunts out in crooked bookshops for days and days and days
She’ll sit addicted at breakfast, soaking up the back of the conflakes box
And the information she gets from what she reads makes her a total fox
Cos she’s interesting & unique
& her theories make me go weak at the knees

I want a girl who reads

A girl who’s eyes will analyse
The menu over dinner
Who’ll use what she learns to kick my ass in arguments
so she always ends the winner
But she’ll still be sweet and she’ll still be flirty
Cos she loves the classics and the classics are dirty
So late at night she’d always have me in a stupor
As she paraphrases the raunchier moments from the works of Jilly Cooper

See, some guys prefer asses
Some prefer tits
And I’m not saying that I don’t like those bits
But what’s more important
What supercedes
For me
Is a girl a with passion, wit and dreams
So I want a girl who reads

Small town Drama

No-one knew for sure why the pub was closed
But our tongues all had their suspicions,
And by the time the doors caved in
Local lips were sealed tight
With the three day old squeals we’d heard about at midnight;
The bleating kids holding their rucksacks tight,
While Mike from the bike shop
lifted the boot up
Told the landlord it was over
How he was keeping her cooped up
And she squawked in the headlights
Flapping fingers amidst their flight
Shrill voice insisted she was tired of this life
Tired of the fights
Tired of telling lies
And her tyres told the truth
Across the tarmac out of sight.

So as we returned to the bar, we were somewhat surprised
To find him still ready, shirt ironed;
Smile firm in place
Chuckling over frothing pints,
Contentment welded on his face
His greying eyebrows and cheeks shaking
You would have been mistaken
For thinking he was happy

Except...

This huge wall display of olives
That used to be behind him was gone.
Those neon green and black jars
That had dominated the bar space,
Where she had swooped in, replaced
The scratchings, the pickled eggs
And uncouth snacks with olives instead

Now those jars were sacked from the back bar
And although we’d heard he’d said nothing
As she’d driven off in that car
In the calmness of his surrender,
The olives had been his only scalp
He had ripped them out,
Let out one desperate shout
by placing

Pork pies

Loads and loads

And loads

Of ugly, smelly, dry
Pork pies

With him in the middle, nestled
Safe within a fort of brown crusty testicles
And so he seemed the same
But for those fatty sentries that sat
Watching him wish for those long lost years back

And he never ever grumbled.
He never once mentioned the kids
But every Friday when he’d offer us a pie to go with
Our pint
We’d stop laughing
And our lives and our loves seemed so easy, so hasty
Conscious of the monstrous
welt of pain that hung from his neck
Sloppy, as if bandaged with gelatine and pastry.

I want to be one of those poets

I want to be one of those poets
Morose poets
Whose misanthropic throes of agony
towards their unaccepting society
result in late night recitals
with raunchy underworld types
women who speak elvish
and men who wear tights
Oh I’d be the best of the bunch I am sure
Impressing young emos with my gangly allure
Cheekbones all high Bleach-skinned and demure
Not dissimilar to Robert Smith from The Cure
The public would wonder at what it was that ailed me
Was it depression, repression or just a bad case of TB?
And these questions would hover at my feet to empower me,
With a desire for excesses that would begin to grow hourly

Cos I want to be one of those poets
Those prose poets
Who Juxtapose
Their unhealthy dose of rhyme
With a bawdy lifestyle in the bars at closing time
You know, those guys in frayed suede jackets
With a far-off shine
on their eyes
Mahogany breath that smells of wine
and impressionable women’s thighs
Oh, I’d witter so well about current affairs
After a few whisky chasers and chocolate éclairs
Late night politics shows with cigars and some port
Devising my next snide and witty retort
Writing heightened thoughts during soulless
int-er-course
And then of course,
the daily horseplay I’d enact without remorse

Cos I want to be one of those poets
Verbose poets
Who don’t even suppose that it offends yer
When they urinate through your letterbox during an all night bender
And you can send through a bill but I won’t even remember
To open the envelope before it goes in the blender
You call it weird, Well I call it arty
If I bring my own cutlery to your dinner party
And sit there flinging forks at your husband quite smartly
It’d make a great Pollock effect if I hit his left artery
My tendancy to act weird would start to do your head in
You’d invite me to the reception but never to the wedding
And I’d produce heartbled work of unpleasantness so graphic
It’d routinely offend every possible demographic
But the Times would tout me as 'edgy and complicated'
Like a rubiks cube so complex it’s actually become frustrated
with itself till it’s squares are dilated
desperate to be free of the prison it’s created,
a technicolour snowglobe when once each side was flat
And if you think that I’m sounding a bit of a twat
Just you wait, soon I’ll stretch all my similes like that

Co I want to be one of those poets
Closed poets
Who will not be there to catch you when you fall
But will thatch a caul so snug and tight
Out of neatly measured metaphors on their laptop late at night
That you’ll realise your shame was both trivial and trite
Upon reading the drafted version on my myspace site
I’d write in-depth attacks on our political system,
Waxing lyrical with anyone who will listen
No time for passion in life, I’ve long forgot the kissing
Just get me some fridge poetry and I’ll never leave the kitchen

Cos I want to be one of those poets
A know it all poet, a throw it all away poet

At least they know what kind of poets they are

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.