Behind every fighting man are fifteen more…

Ceremonies this week are marking the 75th anniversary of allied landings in Normandy.  This poem was originally published on-line at karnacology.com a wonderful blog and resource from Karnac publishers, now a part of Taylor & Francis, and no longer available. The poem is a researched poem, generated from family papers and materials held at the Imperial War Museum.  It is … Read More

Parchmarks: a re-surfacing of what has gone before

The heading photo for this piece is an example of a parchmark, and here reveals the underlying architectural features of a former Prisoner of War camp on Merrow Downs. These marks have usually only been seen from the air or on Google Earth, but after the long dry  summer of 2018 they appeared brazenly in familiar landscapes. When I am … Read More

What’s in a name? experiences of transition and identity

We have come down from the village of Agios Germanos towards the border with the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). This is a land of ancient orchards, vines, almonds, walnuts, above cultivated belts of the huge Prespa bean which dominate the region’s agriculture. Below us on the shoreline of Lake Prespa lies an area of dense vegetation. It is … Read More

Selfie taken a few miles above Tintern Abbey

Where’s the selfie I hear you ask!  But if Wordsworth had this technology to support his memory, would he still have honed that ‘inner eye’ enabling him to retain such vivid images of the Wye Valley? And could he have retrieved them with such effect to sustain and enliven him  between his first visit and his return? Nowadays, I might … Read More

Identity and Place

The insights afforded by questioning ‘who I am?’ and ‘who I am here?’ bring attention to the contexts of time and place that are essential considerations in my work in situations of change.  What is capturing my attention now, and what is it relating to? Identity Recognising who I am, at any one time, how I reveal different parts of … Read More

Here is Where I am

Here is Where I am –  Tavistock Institute 70th Anniversary Festival: a workshop to explore the question ‘where is Tavistock’? and drawing on some of the images generated by participants. 

Local Plan

North Downs

This poem is written in response to a local government consultation document, earmarking potential sites for housing development. It concerns the brown-field site of a former airfield at Wisley, Surrey. It has been published in Best of British, 2017 (Paper Swans Press) and as ‘settlement’ in The Keystone anthology 2015 (Dempsey and Windle). 

Still Here

This poem was long-listed in the Cookham Festival Stanley Spencer Competition 2017.  The long-listed poems are published in Stanley Spencer Poems: An Anthology, edited by Jane Draycott, Carolyn Leder and Peter Robinson (Two Rivers Press, 2017)  The poem both imagines what Spencer might be doing were he still to be an artist in the village today, along with images from … Read More

Elemental

Elemental (2012)
In Attachment: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis. Vol 6 (3) pp. 228-231