Making letters

Muse, come to this blankness and take my unrequited offer to hold and stroke your shape to form. Rest here where fingertips may take their pleasured time with you. Today we have all day until 6pm when I’m due out. Muse, come in and be a while. My page is yours. — The poem above

5 poems reworked

BBC Radio 3 is my station of choice. I listen to hours and hours of their programming, both on the clock radio that rests on my bedside chest-of-drawers and on iplayer on my laptop. Sometimes I schedule upcoming programmes or concerts into my diary, or mark catch-ups on my to do list. During these many

Making soup again

These days I refuse to sigh for cooked up futures. Potatoes from a friend and a bag of mixed root veg for £1 assure companionship. This bounty grated, cooked with stock and bay leaves, will be ladled out for half-a-dozen bowls dressed up with haricot beans. The appraising birds perch in the top bare branches,

Another Food Poem

You cooking me Two burnished hazelnuts singe flax. Golden Savoiardi shake loose vanilla pods. An oiled aubergine turns roasted cumin seeds. The sorrel and bay sauté with wild mushrooms, freshly picked. A wholesome slice seals the Dijon. — I have written a number of poems that draw on the influences of cooking and kitchen. Today’s

A cooking attempt for colleagues

(inspired by Sachin’s story) the fat floated to the top I scraped it off on setting I melted a combination dark chocolate and caramel bars. Dark chocolate I love. At work they prefer caramel bars. On setting to the top a combination dark chocolate and caramel bars separated as fat on the top. On setting

Most versatile

The morning egg is most nutritious, the lunchtime egg substantial; eggs for dinner are a light, quick fix. Boiled, scrambled, poached or fried, to a life of laying thanks is owed for this. — On the dining-table of our kitchen lives a refillable plastic peppercorn grinder. In absent-minded moments when I’m forking stir fry vegetables

Just right – a poem about a cooking-pot

When baby bear had left home and then had had a pot, it would’ve been, I like to think, like the silver one I did adopt from outside someone’s wooden gate in the back roads of North London. Either the owners had to relocate or make space for Christmas plunder. Into my little pot, thrice

Recipe

Using washed hands soft in the palm, scoop voluptuous, ivory nibs since stripped of their brown seedcoat. Blitz briefly those gently ridged amygdalae thrown by the precious palmful. Blitz briefly those sweet, curved kernels. Using floured hands sit finished dumplings on top. Ah, almonds: sweetmeat of the fruit. — I love gathering words, sentences, phrases,

In this place

A post-breakup mediation posted this time last year, but dating back further in time. The poem appears in my book Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys under the title “A quiet thought”.