That time of year again. A blackbird sings from a vantage point in a back garden somewhere along the street. And I feel a little more alive. Someone has lit a barbecue. And I don’t mind. The sun is shining. I used to view my life with a sense of disappointment. Compare myself to others who had made a better fist of it. Who had bigger houses, better cars, more glamorous lives, more exotic holidays.…
I was an ornithologist when I was a kid. I say was. Once a bird-watcher, always a bird-watcher (I’ll leave others to supply the punchline). I still get a bit of a thrill when I see something unusual in our small city garden, not that we get many birds here – even the Magpie that perched on our fence this morning was a bit of a rarity. We had Peregrine Falcons nesting in the church…
How was Eunice for you? Or Dudley? Or Corrie, Malik, Barra or Arwin? Are you looking forward to Gladys, Herman, Olwen or Ruby? I’ve read some of the reports, seem some of the data. There’s lots more of this, and worse, on the way. We all know this. But we kid ourselves that someone, somewhere has the solution. And maybe they do. And is there anything we as individuals can do, whilst oil companies make…
We finally won the pub quiz at our local the other week. Two and a half years of trying, losing on a tie breaker twice and second place on so many other occasions, often by 1 point. Sometimes less. It was a moment of relief, a time for celebration. And also a time for disbelief. Each week there is a news round. I have stopped watching the news. Picking up snippets here and there. The…
In addition to books on my poetry bookshelf, I also have a lot of pamphlets, including this one by Cliff Forshaw, published by Happenstance Press in 2011. Pamphlets are a great way for poets who haven’t had a collection in print to pull together an initial selection of work, or for other writers to create a smaller thematic collection of poems. Tiger falls into the latter category. It is 22 pages long, and themed around…
The Australian poet, John Kinsella, has written over thirty books. I only have Armour, which was published in the UK by Picador on 2011. My copy arrived as part of the Poetry Book Society membership I had at the time. The back blurb states that Armour is a beautifully various work, one of sharp ecological and social critique – but also one of meticulous invocation and quiet astonishment, whose atmosphere will haunt the reader long…
I’m lucky to live within a five minute cycle to the sea. Living in Portsmouth, it doesn’t matter where you are, you are always within a 5 to ten minute bike ride from salt water. It’s one of the benefits of living on Portsea Island, along with the lack of hills. With the sea comes wildlife that you wouldn’t otherwise expect from the most densely populated city in the UK. Families of seals. The occasional…
Two new poems online in 48 hours … next up is a poem on the Pens of the Earth website – and also on Star & Crescent, the Portsmouth based independent news site – it’s one of a series of poems and prose pieces by local writers on the environment, but with a positive, hopeful outlook. Mine isn’t exactly cheery, but there is hope. There is always hope. I hope you like it
I shouldn’t be writing a blog post today. I had managed to secure tickets in this year’s ballot for the first day of the test series against the West Indies at Lords, where I have never been for a match before. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal. But it was something I had been so looking forward to. Especially as today is my 26th wedding anniversary. Oh how I miss…
Last Friday I went to a show at the Winchester Discovery Centre Planetarium. Described as an epic fulldome experience, now featuring newly revamped graphics, it was an opportunity to listen to Pink Floyd’s 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon , from start to end. Some of the graphics hadn’t aged well, but despite this, it was still a very enjoyable experience, and something I’d like to repeat with other albums. The same band’s Wish You…