This looks like a great event as part of this year’s Arundel Festival Big House laying down some jazz groovesRaine Geoghegan, Chris Hardy, Naomi Foyle and Barry Smith laying down some lines I’m sure Big House are great (I haven’t seen them perform myself). I know that all four poets are excellent. Event link below. https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/Arundel-Festival-of-the-arts/t-yaqomgr
An event which might be of interest to some (it looks good but I won’t be able to make it). Come and join us at Escape to the Farm on Saturday September 10th in the idyllic countryside near Hambledon as The Front Room is part of a nurturing event featuring activity such as yoga , tai chi, meditation as well as great music and poetry. The event is designed to keep families entertained and there…
AGENDA POETRY EVENING with David Harsent, Patricia McCarthy, Timothy Ades, Barry Smith, John O’Donoghue, Elizabeth Barton, Josephine Balmer and South Downs poets, the White Hart hotel, 55 High Street, Lewes, BN7 1XE, Sat 13 August, 6pm. Join us at this historic hotel where Tom Paine and the Headstrong Club met, for an early evening of local and global poetry organised by the famous literary journal, Agenda, and the South Downs Poetry Festival Music by Nigel Horn on…
This looks like it will be an excellent event – this Thursday in Midhurst A celebration of the poetry of naturalist Richard Williamson at South Downs Park HQ Memorial Hall. Also features the renowned Stradivarius Piano Trio. More details below; https://madhurst.co.uk/event/flights-of-the-mind-poetry-evening-thursday-11th-august/?fbclid=IwAR3br5vhvWv0fiuVQha3TVF-FAujCQiTZDWgwDAht_xcFHovF_of6ROCE9s
A quick post just to say that the most recent three poems shared on this blog are now on my poems page. There are 46 there now. Almost a collection’s worth – though a good few have already appeared in my first book, Landings.
Tarnishing and Rust On empire’s home-port shore,an old strength resisting.Lucknow to Sierra Leone,yellow fever to mutiny,marble balm for victories’ loss. A row of forgotten obelisks;lists of salt-seasoned names,of letters that shined like surffused in iron and brass,to seal a collective sigh. But stone flakes into shrapnel, the once hard edges of words,soft and reddening. Metal breaks down and dissolvesinto the reckoning earth. First published in Poetry & All That Jazz (2021) Portsmouth is full of monuments to…
I was delighted to hear that one of my poems was nominated for this years’ best of the net competition. It was nominated by Acropolis Magazine, who have accepted a few of my poems in the past. To see my poems on the Acropolis site, and those of others who have appeared there please go to https://acropolisjournaluk.wixsite.com/acropolisjournal The prose poem that’s been nominated is the darkest piece of writing I have ever submitted anywhere. You…
The poem which I’m sharing today, and have also shared on my poems page, was previously published on the Ink Sweat & Tears website in April 2021. It’s from a prose poem sequence that if I’d got my act together, could have been published this year. But it wasn’t ready, still isn’t. Comprising around 40 pages, all in a prose format, I’m not happy with it yet. I keep dipping in and out of it…
Something for your diary on Sunday 24th – a programme on Radio 4 about the Portsmouth dialect, which is different to all others in the UK. Poet Maggie Sawkins, winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, explores the language, dialect and poetry of her native Portsmouth in Hampshire. Maggie meets fellow poets Denise Bennett and Liz Neal at the city’s Historic Dockyard, to ask whether the Pompey dialect has been relegated…
Just one new poem shared as a post in May, so that is now also showing on my Poems Page, along with about 40 others. Free to read, download etc. Just credit me if you use any of them please. Holiday in a Portsmouth Garden