Anthologising is, assuredly, a contentious art, not just a little like canon forming, despite numerous protestations. The mere act of including someone and leaving others out, with its corollary to granting book publication, seems nonetheless indispensable. We need to try to get a better flavour of the times, to put worthy contributions within the same pages of a collaborative volume, just to digest and try to sample what has been going on. In contrast to the BloodaxeStaying Aliveseries, which began in 2002, Carcanet’sNew Poetrieshas just reached its eighth volume, having commenced in 1994, with by the standards of the series more contributors, some 24, than usual this time out. A slight bias is doubtless inevitable in that we find here Carcanet authors as well as Manchester associations. Nonetheless the range of poetries is highly diverse.
Aside from the high calibre of the various poets, presentation wise…
Today I welcome Hedgehog Poetry Press poet, Brian McManus to reflect upon a poem from his new collection, Solastalgia
Definition of Antecedent (Cambridge English Dictionary)
‘Something existing or happening before, especially as the cause or origin of something existing or happening later.’
How important, or otherwise, are our antecedents? How, if at all, do they impact, colour or shape that which follows, comes later? We are all guilty of sometimes castigating ourselves for missed opportunties, beomaning what might have been if we had acted differently, or indeed simply just acted at all.
Philip Larkin, one of post-war Britain’s most popular and famous poets, opined that the way in which we live, the actions we take or fail to take do absolutely colour and shape our lives. A failure to seize opportunity when it presents itself he would call ‘time torn-off unused’.
-Masquerading As Rocks, written and performed by Kathryn Cowley
Muses
Here are her muses, ocean borne, beach combed. Her teenage confusions and mumbling frozen tongue that can win no arguments bring her out here, where stories are written in a language she understands.
Endless tourists snap their picturesque romance of seals and seabirds, the painted clinker-built boats. She doesn’t talk to them, hooded parka pulled tight, alone on beach below ancient stone pier, touching base with her realm.
Among the Sulphur perfumed seaweed, things speak to her. Blue, blue, fishing nets twisted into gordian knots. Barbed wire, rusted orange and no friend of the unwary. A yellow fish-box. A clear bottle of Klondyker’s vodka – a mostly empty message.
Excited tourists photograph a pod of orcas, she sees oil rigs, trawlers netting vast subsidies, a white sheep skull poking ridiculous teeth through the weed. She pockets a lava rock from Iceland, maybe sell it to a tourist after, maybe not.
And here, a bird with a broken neck, bright feathers catching sun, dead eye pinned to the sky perhaps homesick. If she could only speak to others as this bird speaks to her, say all that matters, ever matters, is to honour the world before you.
Originally published The New Shetlander
-Maxine Rose Munro
STRAY DOG IN THE RAIN
It has been wet for days. The sun is a fading memory, squeezed beneath these swaddling clouds. Compressed,
her outline smudges blood and mud across the sodden sky. Her skin turns black and blue under the violence of the storm.
The weather is dictating terms. Invading ocean roars, heaves its bulk onto the land, drowning out the little cries of birds.
Her throat shapes anxious sounds beneath her tattered coat. No-one here will hear her prayers. Stone deaf in its rage,
the supine land will lie in wait. Soon it will have its say. It coils its spring. It does not care what becomes of her.
-Clare O’Brien (First published by Lunate, March 2020)
TO A SINGER, FROM HER SONGS
You have driven us for years. Counting our notes like sheep, urging us over storm-weathered hills.
Our cries are nothing to you. Some you catch, stretching them beyond your rhythm, into the dark.
Some of us you call, softly at first; Some you flay alive, the sound reverberating as you feed.
Sated, you are tender then; caressing our bones, draping our wet skins over the chords to dry.
-Clare O’ Brien (first published by Nightingale & Sparrow, May 2020)
-Jane Rosenberg LaForge from her collection, Medusa’s Daughter, Animal Heart Press
(untitled)
I’ve strayed too far from this mud, this earth to which we all belong, I will plunge my hands into the cool soil and feel fresh roots strike forth from my fingertips anchoring this trembling heart deep within the land.
-Charlotte Olivet
I Create
Something to care for, saved on this blessed earth. A poem’s words walk into wilderness. A painting is a deep focus, unearths details, how trees frame, repairs brokenness.
Folk in my head seem quieter in woods, and in the cemetery. I usually only hear the loud mouthy ones, the no goods. Now, I listen to quiet ones slowly.
Some are no goods too, but most, not. Listen, They tell me woodland air is sacredness. Keen, I write and sketch, all senses sharpen. I never knew here, in my inwardness.
Outside of myself there are outside selves. Too many is a burden, all is wealth.
-Paul Brookes
Bios and Links
-Jane Rosenberg LaForge
writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays from her home in New York. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and three full-length collections, the most recent being MEDUSA’S DAUGHTER from Animal Heart Press. Her novel, SISTERHOOD OF THE INFAMOUS from New Meridian Arts Press, was inspired by the life of her sister, a one-time punk rocker and prodigy in mathematics. She also is the author of the novel, THE HAWKMAN: A FAIRY TALE OF THE GREAT WAR (Amberjack Publishing 2018) and an experimental memoir, AN UNSUITABLE PRINCESS (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). More information is at jane-rosenberg-laforge.com
-Jo Fearon
Is Public Sector Administrator and hobby poet. Second of Ian McMillan’s guest Hear My Voice Sonnets on You Tube. Soon to be published in HMV Barnsley 2020 competition anthology. Passionate about live music especially rock/blues/punk. Aiming to devote more time to what I love. Rediscovered love of writing the past 2 years.
-Maxine Rose Munro
writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com
—Kathryn Southworth was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, and now lives in Camden Town, London and Prinknash, Gloucestershire. She is married with three surviving children and three grandchildren.
She has always written poetry but returned to it in earnest only after a long career as an academic in midlands universities. She was a founding fellow of the English Association, Head of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and held senior management posts there and at Newman University and also worked for the Quality Assurance Agency. She has been a governor of the Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust and is currently a governor of Rose Bruford College of Drama and Theatre Arts.
She has published poetry and reviews in several magazines and anthologies and reads at a number of London poetry venues, including the Poetry Café and Torriano Meeting House. The literary canon informs her writing, as does her Catholic faith, surreptitiously.
-Dr Sara Louise Wheeler
has Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1, a genetic condition which affects her physical appearance as well as her hearing. She writes the column ‘O’r gororau’ (from the borders) for Barddas Welsh poetry magazine and her poetry, belles lettres and artwork has been published by Unique Poetry Journal, Dark Poets Club, Fahmidan Journal, Cloverleaf Zine, and 3am Magazine. Sara is currently writing an autobiographical bildungsroman opera called The Silver Princess, funded by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. Originally from Wrecsam in North East Wales, she now lives on the Wirral peninsula with her husband Peter and their pet tortoise Kahless
The holiday hike arrested as slow treacle time drips down leaves, oozes over boulders. Held by cessation, embracing abandonment, you entered and left yourself behind. You sit in forgotten worlds that do not see you become lost in the vastness of how small you are.
-Maxine Rose Munro
Wombwell Woods by Paul Brookes
The Void
I take a look, see myself in the void. So I resolve to walk in Wombwell Woods. Ancient forest. Once called dark and devoid of kindness. Home to killers, thieves no goods.
I can handle ghosts. Real folk do my head. I find a regular track. Don’t want to be lost. Uphill patched with cobbles leads to spread Of water, folk call the res where anglers boss
their lines, I wend the other way through bird talk, twigs snap underfoot. I am elsewhere, home. Things float in spring sunbeams as I slow walk Intoxicated, bathing in trees dome.
This is not a void, this is substance, worth. Something to care for, saved on this blessed earth.
-Paul Brookes
Bios and Links
-Jane Rosenberg LaForge
writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays from her home in New York. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and three full-length collections, the most recent being MEDUSA’S DAUGHTER from Animal Heart Press. Her novel, SISTERHOOD OF THE INFAMOUS from New Meridian Arts Press, was inspired by the life of her sister, a one-time punk rocker and prodigy in mathematics. She also is the author of the novel, THE HAWKMAN: A FAIRY TALE OF THE GREAT WAR (Amberjack Publishing 2018) and an experimental memoir, AN UNSUITABLE PRINCESS (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). More information is at jane-rosenberg-laforge.com
-Jo Fearon
Is Public Sector Administrator and hobby poet. Second of Ian McMillan’s guest Hear My Voice Sonnets on You Tube. Soon to be published in HMV Barnsley 2020 competition anthology. Passionate about live music especially rock/blues/punk. Aiming to devote more time to what I love. Rediscovered love of writing the past 2 years.
-Maxine Rose Munro
writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com
—Kathryn Southworth was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, and now lives in Camden Town, London and Prinknash, Gloucestershire. She is married with three surviving children and three grandchildren.
She has always written poetry but returned to it in earnest only after a long career as an academic in midlands universities. She was a founding fellow of the English Association, Head of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and held senior management posts there and at Newman University and also worked for the Quality Assurance Agency. She has been a governor of the Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust and is currently a governor of Rose Bruford College of Drama and Theatre Arts.
She has published poetry and reviews in several magazines and anthologies and reads at a number of London poetry venues, including the Poetry Café and Torriano Meeting House. The literary canon informs her writing, as does her Catholic faith, surreptitiously.
-Dr Sara Louise Wheeler
has Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1, a genetic condition which affects her physical appearance as well as her hearing. She writes the column ‘O’r gororau’ (from the borders) for Barddas Welsh poetry magazine and her poetry, belles lettres and artwork has been published by Unique Poetry Journal, Dark Poets Club, Fahmidan Journal, Cloverleaf Zine, and 3am Magazine. Sara is currently writing an autobiographical bildungsroman opera called The Silver Princess, funded by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. Originally from Wrecsam in North East Wales, she now lives on the Wirral peninsula with her husband Peter and their pet tortoise Kahless
Peter Larkin has been publishing poems about trees for almost 40 years, yet with each new collection he brings fresh perspectives. This arises in part from his close attention to trees, an attention which he invites us as readers to share. It is also nourished by his interest in scientific research into trees and forests, and recent philosophical debate on the non-human and our relationship to it.
In his latest volume,Encroach to Resume, ‘Bodies the Trees of’ is a good example of the way science informs the poetry. The poem takes as its principal sourceThe Body Language of Trees: A Handbook for Failure Analysisby Claus Mattheck and Helge Breloer, a book given to Larkin by J H Prynne. The handbook is focused on the hazards that trees can pose: how they break, why they break, and why sometimes they break when we don’t expect them to…
One stone for every day she is ok. This one is from a loch.
She reached into cold water and took it home, the first, her chosen
foundation. It sparkles darkly. The second came from a hill.
Under uprooted Ash, between exposed roots that fed still-living tree,
broad, flat, and coloured earth. Her third a broken, river-rounded
section of tile, taken from a garden. Terracotta, pitted
yet smooth to feel when held against cheek. Next, reddish slate
from a shore below castle, slipped from turret above, part of the roof.
Its fall shaped it into a heart that echoes her own
romantic notions. One day she will find a stone belonging to the sky,
it will be blue. Or white. Her tower will be done. She will rest.
-Maxine Rose Munro
Happens
You can’t plan it. Get out. Breathe. It makes sense. I fetched in wild as postcard from nature. greetings and wish you were here. Some intense rock from a Wombwell charity shop shares
space with unpainted pine furniture, grain and knots need to be seen, to lose myself in swirls, still rivers whose eddies are tamed in these marble bookends split whole length
reveals metamorphic designs pressured heated limestone packed with coloured crystals formed from impurities. Beauty impured. I am not pure. Who split me ogles.
When nature is a mirror I avoid, I take a look, see myself in the void.
-Paul Brookes
Bios and Links
-Jane Rosenberg LaForge
writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays from her home in New York. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and three full-length collections, the most recent being MEDUSA’S DAUGHTER from Animal Heart Press. Her novel, SISTERHOOD OF THE INFAMOUS from New Meridian Arts Press, was inspired by the life of her sister, a one-time punk rocker and prodigy in mathematics. She also is the author of the novel, THE HAWKMAN: A FAIRY TALE OF THE GREAT WAR (Amberjack Publishing 2018) and an experimental memoir, AN UNSUITABLE PRINCESS (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). More information is at jane-rosenberg-laforge.com
-Jo Fearon
Is Public Sector Administrator and hobby poet. Second of Ian McMillan’s guest Hear My Voice Sonnets on You Tube. Soon to be published in HMV Barnsley 2020 competition anthology. Passionate about live music especially rock/blues/punk. Aiming to devote more time to what I love. Rediscovered love of writing the past 2 years.
-Maxine Rose Munro
writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com
—Kathryn Southworth was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, and now lives in Camden Town, London and Prinknash, Gloucestershire. She is married with three surviving children and three grandchildren.
She has always written poetry but returned to it in earnest only after a long career as an academic in midlands universities. She was a founding fellow of the English Association, Head of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and held senior management posts there and at Newman University and also worked for the Quality Assurance Agency. She has been a governor of the Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust and is currently a governor of Rose Bruford College of Drama and Theatre Arts.
She has published poetry and reviews in several magazines and anthologies and reads at a number of London poetry venues, including the Poetry Café and Torriano Meeting House. The literary canon informs her writing, as does her Catholic faith, surreptitiously.
-Dr Sara Louise Wheeler
has Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1, a genetic condition which affects her physical appearance as well as her hearing. She writes the column ‘O’r gororau’ (from the borders) for Barddas Welsh poetry magazine and her poetry, belles lettres and artwork has been published by Unique Poetry Journal, Dark Poets Club, Fahmidan Journal, Cloverleaf Zine, and 3am Magazine. Sara is currently writing an autobiographical bildungsroman opera called The Silver Princess, funded by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. Originally from Wrecsam in North East Wales, she now lives on the Wirral peninsula with her husband Peter and their pet tortoise Kahless
The holiday hike arrested as slow treacle time drips down leaves, oozes over boulders. Held by cessation, embracing abandonment, you entered and left yourself behind. You sit in forgotten worlds that do not see you become lost in the vastness of how small you are.
-Maxine Rose Munro
-Kathryn Southworth from “A Pure Bead”, an account of Viginia Woolf’s life.
Llanystumdwy beach by Kathryn Southworth
Wellbecoming
I forgot how afternoons could be simple and peaceful, and how to lose myself in the murmur of the tide; how life was – before the busyness, pressure and anxiety – and ghastly decisions which muddle the mind completely.
How to close my eyes, absorbing the atmosphere, appreciating the essence of the day, without it having to ‘count’.
I didn’t consider how a group of new friends could drift to the beach, enjoying the break without guilt. I forgot how it felt to be healthy, with a clear mind, and a future full of possibilities.
I learnt once again how to sit still, enjoying the breeze on my face, and the smell of the seaside; how to watch a lone bird on a rock, surrounded by water, and to casually wonder why it was not with the others on the bank.
In this creamy sunlight, a pair of swans are swimming in slow, silent circles. The world has ceased spinning around me, and my spirit is lifted; whatever the future holds, I am optimistic.
-Sara Louise Wheeler, Tŷ Newydd, 2019.
Written on the beach near Tŷ Newydd writing centre. Originally published in Welsh as ‘Dychwelyd’ (return) by Y Stamp literary magazine; later renamed ‘Llesddŵad’ to match the English title. This English version was published by Dark Poets Club and featured in an associated anthology about mental health called ‘Pluviophile’.
-Jo Fearon
Will Get Out
Not enough for myself, but I will, I will get out. Force this skin against itself. My head screams “No!”, stay here, stay safe until pain in your head is gone, in better health.
All you will find out there is death, disease you don’t want to infect kindly old folk. I get out. Sat in cemetery’s ease. Jackdaws turn their beaks as if I’ve just woke.
Don’t sit with me. Don’t don’t talk to me. Don’t. A ladybird appears on my coat sleeve. A delicate thing. Blow it away. Won’t. It unlocks it’s cage and flits and I breathe.
Unexpectedly wonder just happens. You can’t plan it. Get out. Breathe. It makes sense.
-Paul Brookes
Bios and links
Bios and Links
-Jane Rosenberg LaForge
writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays from her home in New York. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and three full-length collections, the most recent being MEDUSA’S DAUGHTER from Animal Heart Press. Her novel, SISTERHOOD OF THE INFAMOUS from New Meridian Arts Press, was inspired by the life of her sister, a one-time punk rocker and prodigy in mathematics. She also is the author of the novel, THE HAWKMAN: A FAIRY TALE OF THE GREAT WAR (Amberjack Publishing 2018) and an experimental memoir, AN UNSUITABLE PRINCESS (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). More information is at jane-rosenberg-laforge.com
-Jo Fearon
Is Public Sector Administrator and hobby poet. Second of Ian McMillan’s guest Hear My Voice Sonnets on You Tube. Soon to be published in HMV Barnsley 2020 competition anthology. Passionate about live music especially rock/blues/punk. Aiming to devote more time to what I love. Rediscovered love of writing the past 2 years.
-Maxine Rose Munro
writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com
—Kathryn Southworth was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, and now lives in Camden Town, London and Prinknash, Gloucestershire. She is married with three surviving children and three grandchildren.
She has always written poetry but returned to it in earnest only after a long career as an academic in midlands universities. She was a founding fellow of the English Association, Head of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and held senior management posts there and at Newman University and also worked for the Quality Assurance Agency. She has been a governor of the Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust and is currently a governor of Rose Bruford College of Drama and Theatre Arts.
She has published poetry and reviews in several magazines and anthologies and reads at a number of London poetry venues, including the Poetry Café and Torriano Meeting House. The literary canon informs her writing, as does her Catholic faith, surreptitiously.
-Dr Sara Louise Wheeler
has Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1, a genetic condition which affects her physical appearance as well as her hearing. She writes the column ‘O’r gororau’ (from the borders) for Barddas Welsh poetry magazine and her poetry, belles lettres and artwork has been published by Unique Poetry Journal, Dark Poets Club, Fahmidan Journal, Cloverleaf Zine, and 3am Magazine. Sara is currently writing an autobiographical bildungsroman opera called The Silver Princess, funded by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. Originally from Wrecsam in North East Wales, she now lives on the Wirral peninsula with her husband Peter and their pet tortoise Kahless
Jamie McKendrick’s enthralling new pamphlet merges visual art and language in an osmosis that allows interference but, at the same time, keeps the two elements at ‘an unsocial distance’, as the author claims in the foreword. His hope ‘is that image and poem can speak to each other without losing their autonomy’. The two media of communication are in conversation with each other, alluding to different perspectives and multiple interpretations. This gives space to multi-layered meanings and to a sense of ambiguity which seems embedded in the human condition.
McKendrick has published seven poetry collections and won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 1997 forMarble Flyand the Hawthorne Prize in 2012 forOut There. He is also an editor, reviewer and translator. He has translatedIl romanzo di Ferraraby Giorgio Bassani and Valerio Magrelli’s poems (The Embrace, Faber and Faber, 2009), the latter…
Day Two: Using All Your Senses To Connect With Nature
Catching Giants
Here, on my lichen painted stool, cold air blown in from the sea collides with my own extremities till flesh becomes hill and glen together with tear choked streams, and the winds blow ragged spoor of a haunted wilderness to me. I know I am not alone.
Hidden in hillside scrape, gnome-like, squarely placed at the median like the old duke of York, neither at the bottom nor the top, ice eases in when I inhale, foretelling snow, but I am happy and will cast out nets of dream to catch myself a wish.
Elsewhere in this liminal landscape filled by emptiness and secrets, a bird pipes once, twice, thrice, but before I can eyeball it it’s gone – a Boojum my inner ornithologist says. Yes, truly I should have come in the spring, when everything was fresh and green.
Still, I will bide awhile. I’ve come late and I’ve come old, but yet I’ll wait. For maybe then I’ll see again the lands beyond our home, where trows play and giants stravaig.
Trow: fairy creature of the Northern isles Stravaig: wandering journey
-Maxine Rose Munro
Photo by Paul Brookes
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Barrel rolling through currents and tides, you ventured too close to the edge of the world. The ocean swell delivered you, a parcel spilling helpless mystery. Out of your element, you toiled in our alien gravity, Your lustre drying in the sun. I came upon you in the evening. You were quite dead by then, your stilled frilled limbs like soft blown glass. Your bell, with its grey fishmonger slab sheen, had settled like a parachute in the sand. Beneath your skirts you were the ancient oyster pink of corsetry.
If I wade into the shallows, let the water lap around my soft white legs, will I make sense? Will the world you came from be my life support if I lie down and let my body float out to sea? Or will my muscles slacken, robbed of resistance, my bones slowly softening in the salt? Your sea would dissolve me like a slug. I’d drift, defenceless, silent, stingless, until all that was left was a shadow and a sigh, my voice whispered in a wave’s breadth. Fading like these jellyfish, whose dehydrated pink rosettes are shadow printed on the sand.
-By Clare O’Brien (Originally published Northwords Now, April 2020)
Valley by Anjum Wasim Dar
NATURE
For days and months I sit and watch for hours on end receive with happiness what Nature does send birds on the trees singing with the breeze or silently praying while I shivered and sneezed but again the clouds would stay and I would know the rain will pray take away the sadness and the pain and then let the sun shine all the way Life is in the clouds in the skies if we turn our eyes and hearts and listen we would know there’s no one else no place to go Nature is The One The Truth I Share Nature loves Nature Takes Care
-Anjum Wasim Dar
Believe
Loud birdsong, speaks of more than I believe. Nature’s struggle to survive gives me peace of mind. Breathe in slaughter of those who must leave hungry young to murder another kind.
Delight in tranquil forest where spiders chew on trapped prey. Where they find energy to keep going on I wish I’d their verve, strength to up and out, answer mystery.
Where’s the sense, where’s the good in going on? You struggle and then you die. Why bother? The dead are dead despite the wild birdsong. Folk say how I moan while others suffer?
Wish I wasn’t so selfish, cared a little, not enough for myself, but I will, I will.
-Paul Brookes
Bios and Links
-Clare O’Brien
Born a Londoner, for the past two decades Clare has lived by a sea-loch in the north-west of Scotland, which suits her much better. She’s currently working on a novel about atomisation and disconnection, called ‘Light Switch’. Her recent fiction and poetry credits include Mslexia, Northwords Now, The London Reader, Lunate, The Mechanics’ Institute Review and The Ekphrastic Review, and anthologies fromThe Emma Press, Hedgehog Poetry and Unimpatient.one.
-Maxine Rose Munro
writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com
Aidan Andrew Dun spent his childhood and adolescence in the West Indies and knew his calling for poetry from an early age. Returning to London as a teenager to live with his inspirational grandmother, dancer Marie Rambert, he attended Highate School but left without A-levels. After several years travelling the world with a guitar Aidan was drawn back to London to explore the psychogeography of Kings Cross, a magnet to other visionaries before him. Vale Royal (published by Goldmark, 1995) written and recited in the form of a quest, dreams of transforming an urban wasteland into a transcultural zone of canals at the heart of London. Vale Royal was launched to critical acclaim at the Royal Albert Hall and earned him the title ‘Voice of Kings Cross’.
*****
*****
Having published his second epic poem Universal – India Cantos(Goldmark) in 2002 he embarked on an American tour, reading…
The Wombwell Rainbow 