Category craic

Whisper it quietly, but I’m having a bit of a year when it comes to poetry. One poem shortlisted in the Verve poetry comp, and now another awarded joint second place in Poets & Players. Last Saturday I headed up…

It’s fifty-five years since Enoch Powell made his infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech, and judging by yesterday’s comments beneath a Twitter post pointing this out, there’s plenty of people dumb and deluded enough to still believe “eNoCh WaS rIgHt” despite…

Maybe it’s because the clocks are going forward and I’m anticipating the arrival of summer already, but this last couple of days I’ve been having something of a spring clean. The house is tidier, the hoover’s been pressed into action,…

I suspect every poet – and every person who tries to scrape some kind of living in the arts – has days where they wonder if what they’re doing has any kind of value. And lord knows we’re living in…

Winter can be a right old struggle, but this one has been considerably brightened by the news that my poem ‘El Vaquita’ was one of twenty-one poems commended by judge Kim Moore in the Verve poetry competition, which sought poems…

I’ve always been fascinated by other forms of creativity – ones that I have neither the talent for nor the patience to learn – whether that be painting, sculpture, music, or working in wood, metal, or glass. I find it…

It’s been a while since one of my poetry collections got reviewed, so I’m very grateful to Saturday Books in Dudley for this appraisal of thirty-one small acts… especially as they seem to have nailed what I think the book…

Last Thursday morning I started the car up and headed north. A long, leisurely drive up the M6 with Emma Purshouse so the two of us could do a gig in Gatehouse of Fleet in SW Scotland. It was good…

I spent yesterday sititng on a sofa halfway up Whitchurch High Street while the cavalcade of wonder and nonsense that is the town’s annual Blackberry Fair swirled around me. Cider stalls, cider drinkers, morris dancers, buskers, food stalls, musicians, and…

Odd things, poems. Prone to turning up when you least expect them. Last Thursday I woke up on a tour bus as it pulled into Wembley Arena – I was busy earning a crust with the day job as a stage…

Bit of a clickbait title, that. I haven’t taken up the offer of a well-paid role as writer of patriotic doggerel at Conservative Central Office – the offer hasn’t been made, to be fair, nor am I expecting it –…

Several years ago, over a boozy pint or three (or possibly seven, ed) in the Lych Gate Tavern in Wolverhampton, Emma Purshouse, Dave Pitt and myself decided it might be fun to work together, collaborate on projects, take it in…