Lighthouse launch: reading a new poem and its prequel

Tomorrow evening is the online launch of Lighthouse Journal #22 in which I have a poem called ‘Let’s pretend to go shopping together’. This poem revisits an older one entitled ‘Closure’ which first appeared in (the late lamented) Envoi in 2014 and then again in my Cinnamon pamphlet All the Relevant Gods (only £2.09 atRead more ⟶

Currently reading (part 1)

Through the letterbox fell two parcels yesterday, one from Germany and one from Wales, although both in English, luckily. A Bee’s Breakfast is the latest anthology from Beautiful Dragons, a Facebook-based collaboration and the brainchild of Rebecca Bilkau. This is the third ‘Dragons’ anthology I’ve contributed to and I think it has the most beautiful coverRead more ⟶

News round-up: the good, the bad & the ugly

Facebook blackout – the verdict It’s now been two months since I stopped checking in with Facebook and I’m enjoying the freedom it’s given me. I’ve been writing, little by little, not an avalanche of new stuff, but a lot of reworking of old material. I’ve also found new possible projects popping into my head, which may orRead more ⟶

Quick update – submissions, good news, real life stuff

The big news this week is that we finally completed our purchase of the new flat, and we’re now wondering what we can afford to do to it in the five weeks before we move in. Within an hour of getting the keys I’d already stripped wallpaper from an entire wall – it came offRead more ⟶

How many times do you send out a poem?

Since my last post I had a very welcome email from Jan Fortune at Envoi to say she would take for the next issue all five of the poems I’d sent her. Just the sort of thing you want in your inbox, and on National Poetry Day too, hurrah! I’m particularly pleased about one ofRead more ⟶

Waiting on, working on, poems stock-take

I’m sat here with a number of scribbled-on poems around me, trying to decide which one(s) to resume work on and which to re-file for now. They’ve all been workshopped at some point, some of them to the extent that I’ve fallen out of love with them and not looked at them since. But surelyRead more ⟶