Publication News

My poem 'Hotel Room Tuesday' will appear in Aesthetica Magazine 14. Publication of this issue will be on 1st August, 2006, and will be available from Borders Bookshop and the Aesthetica website.

The Aesthetica website seems to be getting bigger and better each time I visit, and there's a lot of good stuff going on there, so I'm thrilled to have had a piece accepted there...

Paradise Street - a poem

Voices arc the street –
electric sparks
blue - too blue - against this sky
and day smirks
balanced on the white-glossed sill

waiting

the confession loiters low at the
window
curtained for a moment before

riding
on the rolling wave of engines
clattering shakes of buses pressed to full with
faces
mouthing

rising
on the tightly
plucked out song of birds
all praising now and now
as if it mattered

gliding
far from her - this room - this window
this open street
of Tuesdays - Thursdays -
strung out flags of welcome
red with celebration

but not for her

she curls against it -
lets the sting invade
and burn its way
to the root
then pinnacle
of her –
to cauterise the almost-longing
that she felt
but couldn’t keep
couldn’t save
couldn’t allow –

there isn’t enough day
isn’t enough

falling back - a poem

You rampage
shining through your life

sabotaging from the inside
before they can.

Easily done
without too much thought

or preparation

just this
relentless
leaning into the void

faltering on the brink
then falling back

if allowed

or not –

but
by then it
doesn’t matter.

By then
there’s nothing to fall back
for

sonata - poem

She plays here every Saturday
in this cliff top café -
Beethoven, Mozart,
depending on the weather –

while he sits by the window
watching the sea
and feeling
the sweep of the notes

as her fingers glide,
fluid as the waves,
as clean as the gulls’ sheer flight
to the horizon.

He trails in her wake –
displaced
a little more
each time,

dying with the last
resonance –
falling in a way
he doesn’t yet know the name for

and all the while
her fingers place the notes
there
then,

closer,
as the waves flatten whitely
against the shore
white against black

to the brink of him
and beyond.

'listening to the earth as it curves
down and down to the waves �
tight-roping between the fields'

'the edge of the world'

published sort of stuff

I try to write - some things have been published but most haven't. Short stories and poems have so far appeared in: QWF, Decanto and Gold Dust Magazines. I have also been long listed for the Bridport International Poetry Competition 2005,the Cinnamon Press First Collection Award, 2005 and Cadenza Short Story Competition. Two of my poems have been reviewed for the Guardian Poetry Workshop and are published on the Guardian's website. And that's the gen to date. More if and when...

Traces - a poem

Hauled from a blank-sided sleep
by the splash on your face
of an early spring morning –

and a bird you don’t recognise
sings in the tree in the applelight –
each note playing across
your drink-roughened thoughts like

a breath

recollected.

I slide around the edges of this moment –
glide along the margins of your life,
disturbing the planes of your senses –
a sudden taste familiar
as my mouth stops yours

my scent decorates the air
gratefully tracing a route –
your way of escape –
if you could only decipher it.

I’ll wait, though, till you do
and cradle the weight of your grief
in my hands;

ease between this skin of death
and dark. Insinuate a way
through to your dreams –
mark the way more clearly.