All Blog posts
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.
Best Books of 2024
It's been a good year for books. I've finished 42 this year (here's the full list) which is a little below usual, but I've enjoyed savouring and taking my time with them. Currently I'm halfway through Don Quixote and unlikely to finish before the new year. So here are my favourite books of the year in arbitrary categories.
Three Ghosts
In this Christmas film, Tiny Tim is wrapped
in yellowed sheets, fever embracing him tight.
Unnamed family members stand round the bed
muttering 'rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb' to give
the illusion of speech. Not long to go now.
Then a swell of strings, spotlight narrows -
A miracle! Tiny Tim sits upright in bed
and starts to tell weeping extras a story of
500 Posts: Failing in Public
This is my five hundredth post on this website. I've had this site since 2016 in various forms. During that time, it's become one of the most valuable things I've done.