All Blog posts
Colston and the Myths of History
Every country is deluded in how they narrate the past. No history is complete and each history is a story shaped to make the narrators feel better. But I think here in Britain, we are more deluded than most.
Revelations
The Sky is Damaged
From her vantage point of the second highest branch, Cassie saw it first, growing over the horizon like a bruise. She often spent afternoons by herself in the garden, away from the noise of the house- The music pounding from her brother Jamie’s closed door, Sampson barking at nothing, the rumbling of the ancient boiler. Her parents constantly screaming at each other. Or worse, being polite through gritted teeth. Cassie preferred the relative silence of the garden. Birds might chirrup at each other, but it never sounded angry. For most of the Easter holidays, she had got into the habit of marching out in the morning, her current book under her arm, with cheese and tomato sandwiches and lemonade in her backpack, plus another book just in case the first ran out. Suggestions of family days out and trips to places had been stubbornly resisted. She didn’t want to hang around her loser family at all, even if it meant going to a cool castle.
Noise
Summer is here
All change
You may notice my website looks a little different. I have moved it from Wordpress to Jekyll, teaching myself rudimentary HTML and CSS in the process. I changed a template by DpStrange, modifying it to fit my needs. I also transferred all 278 (!) blog posts over. I honestly hadn't realised I'd done so many, but then I've been working at this blogging game for the last four years. I'm pleased with the results, but it you see a problem or coding issue please let me know.
Condolences
What good is this scattering over the grass,
this gold and white confetti, these eyes
opening at dawn and closing in the twilight?
These are Freya's flowers and she is welcome
to them. We have no use for blooms. Callous gods,
you cannot substitute one beauty for another.
What help is protection now? Your garlands
are mere distractions, we have no desire
to chew on the pollen, fill our mouths
with bitter medicine. Left long enough
the petals blister our skin, we become
sun scaled. Spread them no more, perpetual
reminders of our sorrows that raise their
heads above the green then proliferate
over the fields. They will never bring
back those who have sunk below, those now
cradled by the waiting arms of roots.
Echoes and Edges Collaboration
Echoes and edges were kind enough to set my poem How to hear the hills to an incredible deep soundtrack as part of their live stream collaboration. You can watch it here.
The end of an era
Taken from the review pages of Crack magazine, March 2020
Among the trees
