'The code parlours, the tattoo parlours - all run by one-eyed poets sixty years old, loaded on Carmondy Rose bourbon - the storefront tailor operations and chop joints, their tiny show windows stuffed with animated designs like postage stamps or campaign badges from imaginary wars or bags of innocent coloured candy, were already crowded with … Continue reading Cheap and Tasteless
Blog
The Interrupted Sky by David Lawrence
My review of The Interrupted Sky by David Lawrence appeared in issue 66 of The Journal. For seasoned watchers of American competitive reality shows—think tattoos, drag queens, fashion design, glass blowing— a phrase pops up with grinding inevitability. Usually uttered by some under-pressure competitor in the process of exiting events, no sooner are the following words out of their … Continue reading The Interrupted Sky by David Lawrence
A Parched Place
'The highway pushes onwards into the desert like a flat, grey cincture holding the dry, brown hills asunder. This was the road by which John Oxenshuer finally chose to make his escape. He had no particular destination in mind but was only seeking a parched place, a sandy place, a place where he could be … Continue reading A Parched Place
I Don’t Want To Go To The Taj Mahal by Charlie Hill
My review of I Don't Want to Go To The Taj Mahal by Charlie Hill appeared in issue 66 of The Journal. The first time I ordered a drink in a pub, I found myself asking for a 'light beer'. I don’t know what I was thinking, really, but I'd probably picked up the term in some American film or TV show. After a … Continue reading I Don’t Want To Go To The Taj Mahal by Charlie Hill
Bloom
My review of Sarah Westcott's new book, Bloom, has been published on Wild Court. 'The poems in this luminous book, Bloom (Pavilion Press, 2021) are tight, fragmented things, varying in shape and typesetting, in a style both abstract and committed: the world placed firmly underfoot even as the work revels in strangeness and uncertainty. The first poem, … Continue reading Bloom
Flatirons
Caught By The River published another of my poems in March, a little homage to the Flatiron mountains in Colorado. 'We headed for mountainsafter dark, a drunk planhatched in his apartment,scrawled like graffitialong the strip mallscarparks and empty lots, the sullen edges of the city.I’m not sure I ever walkedso far during those days,my idea of … Continue reading Flatirons
Verges
Here's a link to a recent poem published on Caught By The River, a little celebration of roadside verges and all they've meant to me over the years. 'Here I learned to thrivefull as cow parsley, ripeas roadkill bursting sweetlyin teeming hedgerows. These were the places I first alighted into the world,on trips to the crossroadsand beyond, the … Continue reading Verges
Tagging The Maze
I've been hugely busy of late with family and work, and the spare moments have seen me working on a new novel. All of this means that I've fallen behind with many things, and that includes posting things on this blog. Here's a recent piece: a personal essay on a poetry collection by Robert Selby, … Continue reading Tagging The Maze
Map of a Plantation
My review of Jenny Mitchell's recent collection Map of a Plantation has now been published on Wild Court. The title of Jenny Mitchell’s follow-up collection to 2019’s Her Lost Language begins with a gesture to objectivity. Map of a Plantation (Indigo Dreams, 2021) – we’re offered a sense of distance, a dispassionate realm of depiction, the chart not the … Continue reading Map of a Plantation
The Political Economy of Tango in the Twenty-First Century by Richard Schwarz
My review of The Political Economy of Tango in the Twenty-First Century appeared in issue 64 of The Journal. Where to start with this collection by Richard Schwarz? Begin with the beginning, then, or at least the title, which is very good in this case. The Political Economy of Tango in the Twenty-First Century: it's both fun and recondite, … Continue reading The Political Economy of Tango in the Twenty-First Century by Richard Schwarz
Absence Club 