For me, penning poems is to writing novels what 
eating chocolate is to eating everything else; 
utterly necessary but I don't get to do it every day.

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*credits: Aesthetica 2024 creative writing award (for short fiction - Birdie); Law of Consequences (2024, anthology); Misfit Mirror (anthology, 2008); Complexities of Life (anthology); Perceptions in Poetry (anthology, 2004)

A humble offering on the 40th anniversary of John Betjemen's death:

Thank you, Mr Betjemen

A simple man (of human unpretentiousness) - 

who wore his trousers out his welly leg

and belted with a tie

and fastened by string a button-hungry raincoat,

looked out off the Cornish shore

darkened of door by row upon row of invading tourist caravans

parading, as mercenaries await the cry to charge - 

remarked, relieved, 'They can't build on the sea.'

Mantra

11.10 am: i am a runaway wife

I iron your shirts, and air the rooms 

of whisky, cigars, my life’s blood.

3.10 pm: i am a runaway wife

My suitcase glares

obese with dreams, virgin jeans and socks

photos of my peach-faced boys

Mother’s bequeathed ring

the costume watch I stole last spring.

5.03 pm: i am a runaway wife

I check the bedroom for things to abandon:

chequered scarves with pasts to match

tights with unwelcome ladders

used to climb my thighs

your bloody body, stiff on the bed

i fantasize.

5.50 pm: i am a runaway wife

The front door clunks, dead on time

my reflex smile appears

yet, still, you heave your crimson rage

into the bedroom

onto the bed

into me.

Through vodka armour i acquiesce

to your sweat and spit and slithering.

10.10 am: i am a runaway wife

My mobile sings:

the station taxi has arrived.

I shall fly in a hot air balloon

climb a mountain in noon sunshine

sleep on a bed of gentleness…

but then there’s a bang and a slap!

I turn, to discover

the mail, just the mail

11.10 am: i am a runaway wife

My guilty ticket flutters 

in the train conductor’s hand

he hesitates

clips the wing.

Spring leaves on trees speed past.

***

I'm delighted that Mantra won Curtis Brown Creative's New Beginnings poetry competition 2022.

And, on the short stories front:

Birdie 

Shortlisted for the Aesthetica short fiction prize 2024. Published in the anthology of the same name.