Hot off the press!

I am very excited to announce that my latest book, “In the Ocean“, is now available for preview and purchase! Simply click on the image to access my Blurb Bookstore. This volume collects together all 104 poems of my recent 2×52 project. For those of you who are curious about creative process, you will enjoy the

Nice words #4

stuffs extrapolation exponential resonate apt assimilate peanut chickens plait — As promised yesterday, a current list of favourite words. Bachata should also be included, but it didn’t really fit with the rhyme and rhythm of the list. Follow me (@BeadedQuill) on Twitter for the latest on my current favourite activities, which include AfroCubanLatin dancing. I’m also on Facebook

Roverhampton Bodensee

An old list of nice words that became a poem. There’ll be a fresh list tomorrow. Do return to read it. Yours, BQ

Ask the Poet

In response to the questions often posed to me about my writing, I have decided to introduce a new feature on my blog: Please explain… Send in your questions about a particular poem, a running theme or even a line that puzzles you. If you’re curious about the creative process behind a poem’s existence, you may

The Superhero of pre-used words

‘The Poet’ (a find from the archives) was composed from lines written on the tube after reading the freebie magazine The Short List: you’ll need to use me again tomorrow because our words are all pre-used but if you set me down in words and lines then published me I’m already seen and done cutting edge A

Poem 104

Escucha My new muse is light in his visits, is late, never calls, smiles his cheek, tells me nothing. So I invent everything. My new muse wears white-soled trainers and a St. Christopher tucked against the tattoo, never seen in full. When the night begins, the muse’s t-shirt smells of clean laundry. My new muse

On this beach, I wish to see the end of time

I often write to capture moments that I have experienced in solitude. Consider for example the afternoon that produced this poem, “On a rock amongst rocks“. I had walked out beyond the beach of white sand to the rocky inlet beyond the seafront houses, the fishermen and the dog owners. Each day I used this landmark as the half-way point measure

Nearing the End

The second-to-last exertion is not the rainbow. It is the to-and-fro flight of a raven clamped in darkness for 150 days. Let there be beats the raven’s wings Let there be beats the raven’s hope No land, raven. No release. Below yap choppy waves, corpses float and catch on broken trees. No release, raven. No

Behind the Brightness: Poems from a Mystical Decade

Shining in Brightness, my first book of selected poems, documents the hopeful years of 18 to 30. I hold a special affection for this creative scrapbook. It is a nostalgic artefact of a time period I declared ‘a mystical decade‘.

Reviewing the Pursuit

With the spit and fizz of fireworks, I clinked flutes of resolutions on a New Year’s Night. Now March, the ashes have blown away. — A week ago, I wrote about how my effervescent poetry-writing productivity has ebbed. Wail and gnash as I might, not much seems to be helping. In fact, strange circumstances have