Biography

I am a poet musician and teacher based in Carlisle. My first collection called 'Dark Horse Pictures' is published by Selkirk Lapwing Press. It will be launched in Carlisle on the 26th September, at The Source, in Denton Holme; I am one of Carlisle's 'Speakeasy Poets' and my work is also published by Earth Monkey (see the Talking Monkey sublabel: http://www.earthmp.com/). Mike Smith, who also features on Write Out Loud said some wonderful things about me in his chapbook published in 2007 for Carlisle Arts Festival. I did a gig for Amnesty International and they wrote 'working at a very high level of intelligence. He creates not mere poetry, but totally immersive worlds on the page and in your mind.' Selkirk Lapwing called me sophisticated, complex and 'a breath of fresh air in the contemporay poerty scene'. You can decide for yourself; watch me read live on You Tube (although it's only a fraction of a poem), from Carlisle Arts Festival 2007. Go to http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm5ADb9wVeA.


I regularly perform live in the North West, a poem never seems real until it has been performed. Poetry seems important now because it can be done with a purity of motive - the 'market' has its sticky fingers in all art forms, but poetry (and perhaps only poetry) resists it, reinvents and reshapes itself, even as it is being digested by the beast.

The fact that ANYONE can do it, is both the best and worst thing about poetry, but the 'live' situation is what it's all about.

Samples

When it is winter in the soul place

there is perfect complicity
nothing small breaks curfew
everything vast is taut
every sound has no cause and is the last sound.

When it is winter in the soul place

firs loom
wind has no influence
listen
listen to the bronchia of forest.

When it is winter in the soul place

the air sits
it just is
water chatters water words to moss
ditch pool bears the meniscus weight of heaven, like Atlas.

When it is winter in the soul place

rock is backlit
there is the brackish ghost of fox
nothing else has ever paused here
but hoofed things pass this way

when it is winter in the soul place.

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