About Me

About Me

Gardener, Writer

A former English teacher and bookseller, I now work as a self-employed gardener (National Certificate in Horticulture) and write poetry, plays and essays. My writing credits can be viewed here. I have had two poetry books and two poetry pamphlets published by various publishers. I was a co-translator of Alain-Fournier:Poems (Carcanet). I commissioned and edited Four American Poets (The High Window Press) and was a co-editor at The High Window (2016-2018). My essays can be read at the Fortnightly Review. I enjoy cycling, fell-running, sea swimming, dog-walking, jazz, travel, reading, horticulture and garden design.

17.12.15

ANGLES & VISIONS


(from Angles & Visions, 
publication March, 2016)


THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES 

A strange treatment on love, with echoes 
of Sirk and Rosselini: anachronistic sex
in a cable car above some alpine state, 
a pencil-skirted, platinum blonde ... American? 
A dark-haired man in suit and tie ... Italian? 
She considers their fleeting romance 'platonic'  
but, empathetic to his character and need, 
hands the gentleman a handkerchief. 
She turns her back and he turns his, 
as - cut to mise en scène - he masturbates. 

As an act of kindness, it seems 
enlightened, unlike the attempted rape 
of Athena, the shot load of Hephaestus;
a foster-son stuck on her virgin's thigh.  
Wiped off and dropped to earth 
on a scrap of wool, a boy germinates, 
who is reared by Gaia and placed, 
on Athena's orders, into the box where 
he grows to the length of a serpent:  
                        Erichthronius 
frightening to death the women who lift 
the lid and look inside, the kind of half-man 
half-snake that curls around your neck.