Poetry
On this page you’ll find a small selection of the stuff that I’ve written, published, and performed. Works by other poets – long dead or newly-emerging, famous or obscure – you’ll find over on the blog.
Grampa Death
I remember my Grandfather
a month before he went off,
full of death, he rifled
through it, like a
Bluebird tin,
hunched at dinner
over peas, dragging the
mounds to his mouth
As the plates pulled away
he would kiss me,
a black gravel breath pulled in,
suck my cheek hard
till the red blood rose
like poppies.
It must have helped,
dying as he was,
to sense what outgrew him,
as he decomposed in
the gloom of his chair, his battle
skulking, arms tightening.
While I was roped for good
to that trench of him
and his jowels, soft as silt.
Spectacle
If I wore glasses darling
I would only take them off
for you,
unhook the delicate
circles
trapped by wire
just like you do
and give the pub
their frames for an hour,
while we two sat
with nude eyes busy
being seen
by the one other thing
that knew.
As the great poet Michael Donaghy said about this poem : ‘it’s a beautiful little machine.’ No more, no less. It is not a great poem. It doesn’t have to be. This is an example of how poetry is about economy and these 40 or so words say so much because of their precision and power of observation. Poetry like this reminds us that even sitting in a pub with a drink with a lover in terms of language can feel like a beautiful little machine.
'The Kiss'
After Rodin
Kiss kiss
kiss kiss.
Eternity can’t be bliss
will we always be stuck like this?
Your face, my lips, your happy wrist
frozen like a butterfly
where it hurts to twist and
where the white stone pins.
Will it only ever be this?
isn’t a kiss-supposed to end
and then begin?
I have been Poet in Residence at the TATE, the Royal Academy of Arts, at John Murray and the British School Rome.
Having spent most of my time performing my work… there is a little printed matter.