Knowledge

To feel waves must crash if they thirst for the shore; they must trip stones smooth, burst jagged hands, pierce the stretch strain of speckled beanskins learning the ground. The walker must trip. 2003, after Las Vegas, Death Valley and Flagstaff, USA — “Knowledge” appears in Shining in Brightness (2013), my first book of poetry.

he growls today and shakes his whole self

“Look At“, a poem posted this time last year, is a combination of a journal poem and a pavement poem. Derived from mental notes taken during a walk along East Finchley High Road, it documents the comings and goings of an ordinary morning. Observing the ordinary and everyday is a recurring theme. “Look – really look”

Exalted thus, we left

An old favourite revisited, because artists are allowed to have their obsessions. “Exalted thus, we left” is a reworking of a poem from 2011: I love the Dorothea Tanning painting that spurred the original “Jacob’s Dream for crinolined girls”. When I’m in Tate Modern, I’ll usually try to pop into the Surrealism gallery to gaze

look – really look

I will be 80 this year here in my flat only a mile and a half from where I was born. I have tried to lead by example, by plunging my narrow balcony into the principality of hanging gardens. Concrete is brutal. It needs softening. Plants should have dominion. We breakfast amidst the crisp verdure

Spring Wants

The poet wants new curtains, please. Yellow and white, in a gingham print of medium squares; lined in white cotton. The light will stream through across the room and catch the duvet on the bed in a stroke of sunny warmth, The poet wants new curtains, please. New ones that don’t slump from hooks that