Category craic

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…

This past week I’ve done two poetry gigs – one ‘live’ on the Isle of Arran, and one online in Shrewsbury’s virtual twin – and really enjoyed them both. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, really, as I’ve always loved getting…

Over the Easter weekend, I was working with fellow pandemonialist Emma Purshouse over at the newly-opened Stourbridge Glass Museum, writing poems on demand for visitors. I know some poets who’d rather lose their eye teeth than have to write under…

There’s a proud and wonderful tradition in poetry and song of sharing work which mocks our lords and masters. Work which is witty, and barbed, and furious, which climbs to the rooftops and shouts to the world that the emperor…

Back in October 2020, a musician called An Croenen got in touch to ask if she could put the words of my poem Fatima to music, and created something spellbindingly beautiful. Then someone else offered to make a video to…

Some people have a clear idea of where their lives are going to take them, draw up a detailed plan of how they’re going to get there, and set off. I’ve always had more of a distracted-by-the-shiny-new-things approach to the…

As of this morning, you can take a walk through Wolverhampton and listen to how nine artists have re-imagined some of the empty spaces to be found within the city centre. The IfWeHadThisSpace project is part of #offsite9, which offers…

You might think that – confined to the house with one leg in plaster – I’d have been writing poems to beat the band over the past couple of months. You might, but you’d be wrong. I’d vaguely hoped I…