I keep looking back at my posts from January and February last year. Those days before Covid. How little we knew then. I’m sure many others are doing the same, whether it be on social media, or through apps like 1 second every day ( https://1se.co ) . Our lives are lived in full view. Our thoughts, however inane, are captured for future review. Whether this is a good thing or not is for a…
A quick post to mention that I will be reading my poem Bird in Hand on this month’s edition of The Poetry Place on West Wilts Radio at 4pm on Sunday, February 28th, when the two guest poets will be Claire Booker and Jennie Osborne. Claire is a poet and playwright. Her latest poetry book, ‘The Bone That Sang’ (Indigo Dreams) follows the success of her debut pamphlet ‘Later There Will Be Postcards’. She’s widely…
I was introduced to Vahni Capildeo by Maria Jastrzebska, (a superb poet who I shall write about in the future), when I was organising one of several annual Poetry of Exile events for Tongues & Grooves, back in the autumn of 2009. I’d set up a poetry film project that was shown on the BBC big screens in Portsmouth and Dover, and made contact with Maria, as part of this. The Tongues & Grooves event…
Just a quick post today. Like anyone who runs a blog, I am swamped with spam messages. I guess some of them get through – it’s a percentage game. A bit like a bloke I used to know as a student and his chat up techniques. Anyway I digress. Occasionally these spammers do get a reaction. One made me laugh out loud. I thought I’d share it here, as it might make you laugh as…
I’m new to Tranströmer – The Half-Finished Heaven was a Christmas present from my daughter, and I am still working through the poems. Maybe this post would have been better in a few months’ time, but I thought it would be interesting, at least once, to write about a poet on first reading of their work. As a starting point, here’s the title poem of this selected poems collection, published by Penguin Classics in 2018;…
After Bird in Hand was published on the Football Poets website, it got a mention on an article on the Write Out Loud website. Which was nice. The article is primarily about Torquay United’s poet in resident. I wonder if Pompey have one? Perhaps I should offer my services…you can read all about the Bard of Plainmoor here https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=112181&fbclid=IwAR0DJ8iAd39J2vkCews7sd1i1YWio5EOBcolmfyNYXh4qJblTUMslTVCJmQ There’s a link in the article to a recording of me reading Followers, plus three other…
Just a quick post to mention that my poem Bird in Hand is the featured poem on the Football Poets website today. I’ve posted a couple of other football related poems there as well. If you pop over to the site you’ll see loads of other football poetry alongside my three efforts. There are new poems being posted on a daily basis. This is one of the great things about poetry – there are poems…
Brian Turner served for seven years in the US Army. This included a year spent as an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq from November 2003. Here, Bullet comes from that experience on the front-line in the Iraq war and subsequent occupation. I first encountered Turner’s poetry at a Tongues & Grooves reading in the Florence Arms pub in Southsea. Here, Bullet had recently been published in the UK by Bloodaxe, and Brian…
A quick post to mention that last Sunday’s edition of The Poetry Place is available to listen to on the West Wilts Radio website. Really good mix of poets and poems. The show includes a recording of me reading ‘Ashes’. The show can be found here: https://westwiltsradio.com/shows/the-poetry-place/