All Blog posts
Doggerland
Warped by the pressure of so many centuries, barnacled statues crawl out of the surf to converge on me, alone on this winter shore.Surrounding me in marble, they demand a detailed account of their rich and varied history. What do I know of their deeds and exploits?
I cough mumble about a few myths a story in a picture book I saw once
maybe
Is that all you know of us? they ask. We wrestled with the fear of a winter sun suddenly diminishing. We never once considered glaciers to be mutable, and we always thought our land was permanent.
We created detailed plans for a future that would never arrive, inscribed in detail into our city walls. We loved each other with such intensity we thought we could mould the very oceans to do our bidding.
Together we danced and laughed and wept and dreamed. It is your duty to be honest. Is that all that remains of us?
I consider my shoelaces
Experimenting with the < pre > tag to format poetry with spaces on my site, apologies if it doesn't work.
Chasing Flow
I was speaking with a friend about exercise. This friend has known me for a long time and has seen me try various exercises only to drop them. I have been doing weightlifting consistently now for about a year, so he asked why this has worked for me. I said it was about focus and the necessity to concentrate on lifting the heavy thing. The more I thought about it, the more I realised this is what I have been chasing in a lot of activities, the feeling of complete focus. It's the same with swimming, where you have to focus on your breath and each stroke to push forward.
Quota
Once stream, now angry river
consumes this plot, leaving
saturated ground squelching.
Metallic Screeching
drill baby drill
Another oil spill smile, another distrusted now forgotten coastline, another melody sung from one server to another, another ice cap turned legend, another eyeball turned to glass. Headlines offer prayers, increasingly rare jackpots and continual helicopter crashes. Drink it all down, the metallic tinged water, drink it and be grateful, your spine compressed, your neck cramping, ignore this faint smell of petrol. Words falling like ashes after a forest fire. Fingers tingle with static potential then escaping blood then you don't feel anything. The moon they say, any day now, the moon. You've heard the sound a dream makes when it pops, you've heard the city groan at night when girders settle. You've listened to the scripture of complex hydrocarbons. You've heard the morning scream. Up to your stomach in industrial by-products now, it's better this way. Out in the harbour, machine mountains are churning day and night, trying to force the ocean to remember land. Watch the colours shimmer and merge on the surface, the neon red bleed into the blue. Breathe in the salt and solvents. I hear funding will be cut soon.
Recent Video Poems
I set myself a secret goal over the last three months - to make at least three videos out of my poems. I didn't really have any clue about what I was doing, but I'd seen Barry Hollow and Caleb Parkin make some so thought I'd give it a go. I dove in with no real idea about shooting footage, video editing or audio mixing.
Forwards
Wind whispers insults down the chimney -
all your failures as a husband, friend, human
2025: Year of enough
Instead of setting new year's resolutions, I'm a big fan of setting a theme for the year. This is inspired by a video by C G P Grey. A couple of years ago was the year of slow, last year was the year of connection and this year is going to be the year of enough.
2024 in Review: A Tepid Bath of Managed Decline
Towards the end of last year, Kier Starmer attacked civil servants, saying they were 'comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline.' It was a classic case of projection, where you accuse others of your problems. Civil servants are hard working but are not supported by the system. Instead of lashing out, he would do better to look closer to home.
Best Music of 2024
One advantage of living in the countryside is commuting into the office. I live about forty-five minutes away from the city, which is the perfect time to listen to an album. I made more of an effort to listen to new music which paid off.