Poetry

Blanket Bog

Blanket bog clothes the land
like a black melancholy, shrouding
the slopes in the weight of its slo-mo layers.
Grudges and peat break down slowly.
Bones of old loves and hates
are kept intact for ever.

Sphagnum can absorb
twice its own weight in tears.
Crazy insectivorous plants
thrive on trapped flies and imagined slights,
and lost birds wail, raking through pools
and stirring the endless mud.

Keep it safe, keep it undisturbed.
Under these tons of peat and apathy
enough carbon is sequestered
to melt the last chips of polar ice
and burn up every one of us
on the whole raging earth.
From The Territory of Rain

The Bird Who Brought the Fire

The birds have come back to the garden,
second brood starlings and sparrows
lined up along hedges, combing the lawn's thatch
for spilt grass seeds, emerging ants. Blue tits
cling to whippy branches, dunnocks pry into cracks
in the bark, goldfinches pick apart seed heads
of nettle and marigold. A willow warbler slips
furtive between the stiff dulling birch leaves
and blackbirds plunder the ripening currants.
The last swifts scythe the hot air, quilted
with sulk and threat of storm. The cormorant's
black crossbow looms above, heavy with hunger
and this year's wren sings on a high branch
claiming in summer his winter territory.
El Niño has exhaled a great hot sigh.
The ice is melting, sliding off Greenland's cliffs
into seas blooming with plankton. There are storms
and flash floods, blight and failure of crops.
There is drought in Africa and famine and war.
But the wren is on his high perch singing.
The druid's bird, the bard's bird, shaman's bird,
Brigid's chicken, the mouse's brother,
sits on his high perch and cries out, so loud
a voice in his small breast 'Now! Now! Now!'
From Haggards

Ice Birds

After sunset, when the moon oils
both hinges of the winter, I hear
new voices in the dark, crying change.
Redwings, bell chimes in the hush
of chill October, bring frost
to stripped orchards, stubble fields,
plunder the hedge of hips and haws.
Then when the world tips sunward,
and wind shifts two points to the west,
oystercatchers’ frantic whistling
over the tide-bare, night-bound flats
opens the locked throat of January
tells of softening mud, a venturing out
of hidden things waiting for a thaw.
from The Well of the Moon

(Please note on smaller devices line breaks may appear in incorrect places)

Books

  • Wherever We Live Now (2011)
  • The Territory of Rain (2015)
  • Haggards (2018)
  • The Well of the Moon (2021)
  • Charms for the Healing of Grief (2023)

As a poet, I'm most interested in the processes of creativity, the weather and the passage of the seasons, the sense of home, and how we build it, the links between language, place, traditions and migrations. My first collection Wherever We Live Now, (RSP 2011) and my most recent, The Well of the Moon (2021) deal with these issues.

While still at school, I began to write out of my childhood reading of ballads and folktales, mythology and fantasy. I liked the intrinsic connection between word and music, the bare, stripped-down style, the brisk pace, and the patterns of repetition and refrain. I found I had discovered new awarenesses and ways of connecting with the world I lived in, which became both a sensual and a practical experience, and when I returned to poetry in later life, I grounded it in a practice of engagement with the natural world I call ‘walking the territory’, based on the principles of permaculture and geopoetics. I dealt with this in my second collection, The Territory of Rain (2015). My third collection, Haggards (2018) had a particular focus on herbs and the growing consciousness not only of our unreadiness to deal with the social and environmental catastrophes we face, but also, and more importantly, the goodwill and determination of many people - individuals and communities - to build and regenerate.

Copies of my books can be bought from my online shop or from my publisher Red Squirrel Press

Readings

I have given readings widely at events hosted by the Scottish Poetry Library, St Mungo’s Mirrorball, The Write Angle (Falkirk) and many others. I have appeared at StAnza, and The Wee Gaitherin, and also participated in events at Wenlock and Ledbury Poetry Festivals. If you would like to book me to read, you can reach me via the contact form. I am registered on the Scottish Book Trusts’ Live Literature Database which means that if you are organising an event which qualifies for funding, you may be able to get help with the expenses involved in booking me. You can see my profile on the Scottish Book Trusts website.

Editing

I have edited PhD theses and masters dissertations on subjects as diverse as parish structures in Nigeria, the publishing industry in Malaysia, games development for the iPhone and neuromorphic engineering, but I much prefer editing poetry. I have edited a total of twenty-seven books for Red Squirrel Press.

Translations

I am not a scientific translator, but I have studied several ancient and medieval languages, and translations from Old English, - including a translation of the Lacnunga (Charm of Nine Herbs) - Old Norse and Latin appear in my work.