Category Poetry

If music be the food of love then poetry may just be the language of emotion. Home for my own words and those of others who in some way inspire, inform, entertain or educate me.

Two smiles

Tying up loose ends, you saidAll crow’s feet and beak. A confiding birdPerched by your desk peckingAt the keyboard when I walked in. That smile still startles I swear it’s youSpin sad to find myself window shopping for one not…

The elephants in the room

It was billed as an evening of music and words. And because it was being held at the Chang Thai bar in Ludlow with its Buddhist kitsch decor, was called The Elephant in the Room. What the organisers hadn’t reckoned…

Black Hole

Bloodless skin too tightly drawn for lips. White. Like supermarket chicken. A row of teeth along the bottom curve. None along the top. (You lost those long ago.) And that moustache that grandmas get And tickle when you kiss. It’s…

Cloud lines

We live on the lower slopes of Titterstone Clee Hill in South Shropshire. Our house straddles the ever-shifting boundary (sometimes less than a vegetable patch wide) between what is shrouded in mist or cloud and what is clear. Between the…

Learning by rote

I hadn’t learned anything by rote – apart from my bank PIN number – since playing Friedrich Von Trapp in the Parkfields School production of The Sound of Music. And that was back in 1972. So when my poetry coach,…

Fern Hill

by Dylan Thomas My poetry coach, the wonderful Pele Cox, has asked me to commit this poem to memory. It’s proving to be a tough gig. Not least because the last time I learned lines was probably as Friedrich von…

A birthday poem

I was asked to pen a birthday poem to celebrate the first anniversary of The Big Live Breakfast Burrito – perhaps the weirdest, most eclectic but nonetheless wonderful LinkedIn live you’ll ever see. Follow the Burrito link to see the…

So Sunflowers Grow

Ukraine sunflowers

Of all the tear-jerking images of war on the edges of Europe, one or two have stayed with me: birds shocked from their treetop roosts by the deep boom of artillery fire; a woman handing out sunflower seeds to occupying…

Lost Words

Here’s how the dream unfolds: behind the gritted lids of night is told the story of an ironed-flat sea – moonlight over mercury. Soon out. Beyond the beach. Deep down below the folds and creases. Rapid eyes. Heart beat increases.…

A Postcard from Tenerife

Dear Mum Wish you were here! El Medano reminds me of Swanage. Sand, sea, sunshine, taut salty skin. The tide of geological time turning as the waves wash in and out and in…But then these days everywhere reminds me of Swanage.  Wish…