Category craic

Last weekend, I learned that putting on an exhibition is a lot of work. A lot of work. It’s also a huge amount of fun. The work comes first. More of it than you’d imagined there would be. Emails, meetings,…

This website has always been the place where I post about my poetry, my gigs, and my writing. But this blog is about something I’ve put together which is a little bit different…. It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that…

When my grandfather moved down from Scotland to the Midlands in the ’30s, he was one of the only GPs who would offer treatment to the gypsies and travellers who still passed through the area, camping on pit bonk or…

Every poet has quiet times. Or do they? I don’t know. I do, I’m sure of that. Times where life is so busy I can’t find time to collect my thoughts, or the news so depressing I can’t find the…

It’s great being a poet. But without the hard work of people who organise and put on poetry and spoken word nights, and who put in all the hours of graft to make sure they get bums on seats, we’ve…

As I take five minutes to scribble this blog down and piece something coherent together, it looks as though a piece of my work is going viral. For the second time. Last time round, it was the letter to Caffè…

There’s always a risk for poets in writing about current affairs. All too quickly, today’s burning issue becomes tomorrow’s chip paper, and all that hard work you put into knocking rhythm and rhyme together counts for nothing. And who wants…

There are always people out there who make a life and a career out of winding up liberals, portraying themselves as daring renegades who dare to stand up against the tyranny of political correctness. They say something callous about the…

We live in a crazy world. Doubt it? Here’s an example. This weekend the news has been full of stories from the ‘snowmageddon’ on the east coast of the USA (because just calling it ‘very heavy snowfall’ isn’t anything like…

It’s become increasingly fashionable to sneer at art. Philistines on the right dismiss it as not being a proper job, while their counterparts on the left say how it fails to liberate the masses, and virtually all of us roll…

The ghost of the Xmas turkey* is already dead and gone, and the horror of the New Year hangover is still just a twinkle in an ill-judged cocktail’s eye, so what better time to let my fingers do the walking…

Many years ago, back when life was stretching out before me like an endless adventure, I hitched back down from Leeds to Walsall for a party. My best friend in the world was turning eighteen, and her mom and stepdad…