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

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

Conference Poem

This Conference Poem is constructed from words and images generated by conference participants in presentations and discussions, while I was Poet-in-Residence at Association of Psycho-Social Studies conference. The ‘drop-in sessions’ focussed on creating word clouds to reflect what aspects of the conference captured peoples’ attention, and played with their order to create a poetry fragment.  These are incorporated into the poem … Read More

Poet-in-Residence at the APS conference

Poet-in-Residence – Association of Psycho-Social Studies, Conference 5-7th April 2018 Linking identities: exploring connections between social science and poetry During the conference I will be presenting ideas from my practice as a consultant to organisational change, and exploring how this interweaves with my emerging identity as a writer of poetry. Both these identities depend upon a heightened attentiveness to one’s … 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