It’s the future. Earth, environmentally ruined and abandoned, has become the dead planet, and a martian – with the ‘m’ of species rather than the ‘M’ of locality – is sent back there by his unspecified supervisors to collect samples and seek for new life.

Life on Mars itself isn’t great, as we learn bit by bit: the radiation, the pollen-storms, the food that’s basically mould, the terrible sex. And the culture is brutal: even martian fairytales and lullabies are grim and sadistic, and the planet’s Adam and Eve are vengeful, genocidal children.

The martian, who’s small, fat and black, and his accompanying robot, who is tall, white and shaped with ‘overt femininities// all relics of an ancient era’, land and find a place to inhabit. They raid the shops and he goes out daily looking unsuccessfully for life. He casually destroys museum and cathedral artefacts, starts to think telephones…

BIO: Whiskey Radish @WhiskeyRadish leads an uneventful (outer) life in an uneventful (real) town. Whiskey R. is seeking a crack agent to represent her work.

Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker and many more platforms

The 4th episode was a happy Host of Hoglets as I was accompanied by poets all with collections published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press who published my debut collection, also called Eat the Storms. On the show was Nigel Kent reading poems from his collections Saudade and Psychopthogen, Patricia M Osborne reading from Taxus Baccata, Gaynor Kane reading her from collection Venus in Pink Marble, Katie Proctor reading from Seasons, Brendon Booth-Jones reading from his collection Vertigo to Go, Zoe Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe reading from her collection I Have Grown Two Hearts and Margaret Royall reading from her forthcoming collection Where Flora Sings. In between I read poems from Eat the Storms and three extra poems based on my days living in Amsterdam.

Below is a link to The Hedgehog Poetry Press whee you can find all…

Podcast is available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Anchor, Bleaker and Apple Podcasts and many more platforms.

The 2nd episode of Eat the Storms, The Podcast, aired on 11th September and featured my very first guest, Belfast born poet Gaynor Kane who joined me to share poems from her latest collection, Venus in Pink Marble, also published by The Hedgehog poetry Press. During this episode I also share poems from my collection Eat the Storms, read a poem of mine that appeared in the 1st issue of the Fahmidan Journal and read two poems which were inspired by the Cobh Readers and Writers Twitter poetry prompts during Lockdown.

Venus in Pink Marble, the latest collection from Gaynor Kane is available on her website…

Podcast is available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Anchor, Bleaker and Apple Podcasts and many more platforms.

The 3rd podcast on the 19th Sept 2020 was the 1st episode to feature bumper to bumper amazing guest artists from all around the world. From Aotearoa to Cobh in Country Cork, in Ireland, this almost hour-long feature was a delight to put together and listen to. On this show was Ankh Spice, Eilín de Paor, Aisling Keogh Catherine Ann Cullen, Kevin Bateman, Sarah Connor, Ruairí de Barra and Jane Dougherty (all available on Twitter). This was also the launch week for my debut collection Eat the Storms, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press and I was so fortunate to be surrounded by the poets I love, respect and admire…

My debut pamphlet poetry collection Eat The Storms is available to buy here…

My debut poetry pamphlet collection is called Eat the Storms and was published on the 17th September 2020 by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. In 2019, while still living in Paris, I was one of three winners of the White Label Debut Poetry Pamphlet Collection and this collection is that winning dream come to life.

‘I wanted to draw the sound of the moon on a sun-drenched beach…’ that is the 1st line from the 1st poem in this collection and that is what I was looking for; to capture those impossible moments when the senses are confused as to which one should be working. To stand in a darkened room and still see a spark of light so as to not completely disappear into only sadness. To see fragility as not something weak or wearisome but as something as precious as the marbled perfume of the ocean as its waves…

I can remember, creeping down the stairs, after midnight, my parents sleeping, my heart trying to break out of my ribcage, turning on the tv as the sound of my breath rose beyond control, turning down the volume and clicking on to Channel 4 to watch Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane as nerves stuck like knives in my belly and skin shivered like I’d been dropped in the middle of Antarctica, naked. But all this means I can completely relate to the line in David Hanlon’s debut collection that reads ‘the film held my hand like a parent holds the small child’s at the seaside as they take their first steps into vast unknown waters.’

And that water returns, throughout this collection, ‘I was the slow drip of a leaky sink faucet’ but its flow is not that of a steady stream, for nothing is that easy for anyone that ‘only came…

Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker and many more platforms

This episode aired on 17th October 2020, the 1st month birthday of my debut collection Eat the Storms published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press and I was joined by poets Anna Saunders, Paul Brookes, Devon Marsh and Matthew M C Smith. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…

To find Anna Saunders…

Poetry

To purchase books by Anna at Indigo Dreams…

https://www.indigodreams.co.uk/anna-saunders-gfb/4594255832

To find Paul Brookes…

https://thewombwellrainbow.com/

To Find Devon Marsh…

https://devonmarsh.com/

To Find Matthew M C Smith…

https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/matthew-m-c-smith

You can buy Deep Time Vol 1 and Vol 2 on Amazon co.uk/com

My debut collection Eat the Storms is available here…

Until next time… Stay Bloody Poetic!