Category Archives: Poems

“… it is as if most people have only a very small proportion of their energies available to them, while the rest lie dormant.  Part of the reason they lie dormant is that there is no cause to interest them.  … Continue reading →

Well it’s Wednesday 7 September and I’m on day three of my ‘new dispensation’ wherein I am no longer anybody’s typist!  Apart from being on retreat, it’s the first time in about 25 years I haven’t had an office (or … Continue reading →

The birds can only fly to perfection from the silence of two blank screens. A child, head full of music, you raged at the toy piano. An adult, you shop at Sainsbury’s to fly, and know a Berlingo from a … Continue reading →

Slumberdown Quilt 99 Tea Mc Vities Rich Tea Biscuits Hovis Anchor Butter Robinson’s Marmalade Marmite Camay Soap (or was it Lux?) (Steradent on the shelf) Sure Clarks Shoes M & S Knickers (Persil Washing Powder) Kleenex Tissues Adidas Bag Peter … Continue reading →

Jostled in a mug with other spoons, This one – of hall-marked silver – came to hand. I felt the fine-boned curves, Its crazed bowl, bright with years of use, The bottom flat, the edges thin as sharpened knives. It … Continue reading →

All the wet diamonds of Wales, slung like light along the hedgerows. Plaited rivulets of water glossing down the road, they splay out, spread and twisted by twig and mud and lichen. The Constance Spry arrangement in a fallen, rotting … Continue reading →

These eight white hankies – first I placed them in a pan with bleach and boiled them back towards the sort of white my mother’d have approved. Next I wrung and hung them out so the sun could whiten, dry … Continue reading →

i had spent years already in doing edges those neat pieces that line up so well. that sense of achievement and something quickly coming together. i’d sorted them so carefully. they fitted together beautifully and i was beginning to be … Continue reading →

if i sat every afternoon for two years in the same corner where you sat, i could not draw down such shapes as regularly visit you from the dark and turbulent air like the kettle of questions on the boil … Continue reading →

For years she sold cabbage. Red cabbage, green cabbage, Garlic and ginger, big white radishes, beetroot and celery – only certain kinds of vegetables – cut with a big knife on a board at the back of her stall. She … Continue reading →