I studied poetry at the University of East Anglia under George Szirtes and Lavinia Greenlaw. That got me an MA with Distinction and a good while standing alone in a brutalist amphitheatre, certificate in hand, feeling very proud, prouder than ever. Since then, a smattering of my poems have appeared in some lovely journals, including Stop Sharpening Your Knives, Lighthouse, Clinic, etc, but not for a while.
Here are a few
Mandelbrot's Trim
When the girl whose job it is to sweep the salon floor
passes behind him, and in doing so happens to be caught
for a moment between two mirrors, one in which he sees himself,
Benoit reeflects on how her elegant push of the broom
echoes besinde him, leading his eye, in time,
to a point as sharp and complex as a woman's voice
calling from a payphone to say never.
Stop Sharpening Your Knives 5 2013
Benoit Mandelbot was the father of fractal geometry
Theodore Cadogan Martin Gunning Best on Hold
with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs
upon which the woman on the line and I
laugh about my names
and I wish her luck
as she turns on some looping jazz
to set, she hopes,
my direct debits up.
I feel, that little laughter later,
surer I can pay what I owe
if not all of it right now.
Perhaps some distance
from one’s name helps,
a light touch on a given thing.
Take the sequined Ray Bans
from the British Heart Foundation
my cool friend bought and wears,
the healthy scoffs he makes at his own glittering,
how they draw us all into forgiveness
for the expenses we’ve accrued,
since the Ray Bans were a given thing,
are distant, even on his face,
like a name,
and laugh at that
perhaps we all can laugh,
our debts be paid
as from some looping jazz
a softened voice says right
and tells us when.
Unpublished
The Roly Poly
I've learnt a lot from Peter North, a man
who lives up to the name he gave himself
and never hesitates to state what he wants.
He gives credence to nietzche's observation
that 'men believe in the truth of all that is seen
to be strongly believed in'. So I can see now
how to came to take my late passivity beneath you
as rejection, though I had in fact discounted myself,
and thus lay inthe one place I could withhold my love
long enough for you to come to discount me.
Stop Sharpening Your Knives 5 2013
I read this to a girl on a first date once. She said that was 'brave'.
Owl Dialectic
Argue what you will
with the tail of an owl
insofar as it contributes
to silent flight
as the same time
as poise for a view
of a vole in grass at dusk,
it planes the air to a fulcrum.
Thanet press around 2020
Incidentally
sometimes
I laugh so hard
I spill my coffee, and then
the thing is to go on laughing while
my napkinless hands hover like a pair of bees
transfixed by the flower they have seen themselves in
Thanet press around 2020
Rallentando
The other day I overheard a man
telling a woman he thought he loved her.
She tossed her hair and laughed ‘that thing of yours’
before she turned, tutting, and walked away.
Though I admired the fact he didn’t laugh
with her, as other, lonelier men might have
feeling themselves unwanted and absurd,
I hoped his quiet smile wouldn’t come to mask
a deeper doubt, that he would not then balk
at his heart, regarding it as numbly
as the poet who, working at his desk,
is deaf to the rallentando tapping
of the radiator cooling, until –
suddenly shuddering to feel in the just
comprehended cold, a hand at his neck,
a hand between his thighs – he asks himself
‘when did this happen?’.
Unpublished
English as a Foreign Language
today
a man stands in a bottom corner
by an equals sign
his arms
are limp black daffodils
blue dots arc from his eyes
yesterday his mouth was a bowl
* * *
three clouds rise
from a young man’s frown
in the last he’s on his knees
and a woman with green cheeks
says of course I will exclamation mark
* * *
there are eleven dashes on the board
we have
s blank r blank n
d blank p
blank t y
under this
a man with x’s for eyes
hangs by his neck from a gallows
some of the alphabet watches
* * *
a man is on the phone
his right foot is in the mouth of a dog
at the left of the board
a woman with a dot for a mouth
has answered a call
a squiggly line connects them
* * *
today
the board is covered in fruit
tomorrow it will be vegetables
next week animals the names of meat
cutlery cook cooker the kitchen
bedroom bathroom
living room on Friday
Stop Sharpening Your Knives 4 (I think)
I used to work as a EFL teacher,. This poem is about board-work.
Charon Ushers in the Cinephiles
I used to have a boat, an oar
a robe slung over one shoulder.
I used to have a beard
of bubbled wrack,
and the thunderheads
would gather round
whenever I called names.
The dead?
They used to queue for years
to be paddled across
the irrelevant waves.
That’s all below me now.
I work my shift in this Odeon.
I lift the corners of my mouth and vow
that once you’re in you may come out,
go in, come out , go in and out and wait – no glass,
no drunks, no children.
Are you buried?
Steady, it’s a simple slope down
but it does go down
toward music and voices
muffled as if heard
through the membrane
of a uterus.
My palm as your guide, I finger
the furred wall as you fade,
then turn back to brush
your faces in the carpet
with my shoe.
You’re late
you’re cold
you’re stumped by the rows and aisles.
You puke
you faint
you shit to block a bowl.
No pig gelatin too trodden in,
no disintegrated Butterkist
a match for squat, red Henry -
with a blue glove and a black bin bag,
a Maglite and a lanyard
I am Staff.
I service the worlds either side of these doors,
one stub per soul to prove you alive
should the fires break out and I evacuate you.
Think twice by the handrail.
Recount with me
comforts of car interiors,
tooth whiteners,
of pensions and stellas and the slogan
that dirt is good.
I, too, shuffle down this corridor
having kissed good night
the friend with the empty glass.
I, too, stop rustling
as the lights are dimmed.
The difference being
I need no ticket
for the privilege.
Coffin Bell, 2022 (?)
I used to work as an usher in a cinema.
Solace in a Kiln
The fire set
to fuse your form
fix your glaze
was fierce
but you haven't burst
so you are a good pot.
Ink, Sweat and Tears 2013(?)