The musk of the full moon.
My most successful poem to date, this won me 1st Prize in the Huddersfield Literature Festival Grist competition 2011. It is based on a unicorn myth , and I originally wrote it as part of a satirical narrative poetry collection called On the Verge, which I have since published as an e-book on Smashwords.com, to raise funds for a Black Rhino conservation project. The poem in the e-book is a 3-sonnet sequence, but in this version I edited out two lines to fit the 40 line requirement of the Huddersfield competition. (3x14=42) Read poem.
The boomerang bird.
This sonnet is one of my own favourites from my first book, Birds of the World in Colour. It was first published in Reach magazine. I've only named the species I'm describing very slyly, but I'm sure you can work it out. Read poem.
Watching the rollers.
Another sonnet from Birds of the World in Colour. First published in Orbis magazine, it is based on a rail journey I made from New Delhi to Jammu on my way to Srinagar in Kashmir, while I was back-packing around India in 1989. I'm hinting at the maelstrom of violence that was just beginning to engulf the state of Kashmir at the time of my visit to this most beautiful but tragic region of the world. Read poem.
Dreaming on the Corbett Express.
Another poem about a journey on India Rail. This time Robbie and myself were travelling from Delhi overnight to the Corbett Tiger Reserve in 2008. The poem is one of three of mine that appear in "Along the Iron Veins", an anthology of railway writing published by my friends at Stairwell Books. You can buy the anthology direct from the publisher. It's great! Read poem.
The village marimba.
A poem from my latest book, Gringo on the Chickenbus. A 40-line version of this won me 3rd prize in the Kent & Sussex Poetry Competition 2010. A more-or-less true story about one of our adventures whilst travelling in Guatemala. Read poem.
El condor no pasa.
Another poem from Gringo on the Chickenbus. It is about a visit we made to a lookout point near Arequipa in the Peruvian Andes called Cruz del Condor, one of the best places in the world to get close-up views of Andean Condors in the wild. Formal poetry anoraks will already have noticed that it is in Spencerian Stanza form. Read poem.
Crag Martins.
Another bird sonnet, but incorporating an experiment in layout. This was published in Orbis #154 and won me a prize in the Readers' Awards for that issue. Read poem.
The Cedar Forest.
Based on a day that Robbie and myself spent with a local guide exploring the beautiful forests above the town of Azrou in the Middle Atlas mountains of Morocco. I entered it into a competition run by the Mines Action Group (MAG), a group that campaigns against land-mines, in 2009. The competition is democratically judged by all the contestants, and this poem made it into the final twelve (but sadly no prize for me.) The only poem I have ever written in lines of six stresses. Read poem.
The Jungles of Graball-Youcan.
This sonnet was commended in the Ware Poets Competition 2012, and is published in their competition anthology. I originally wrote it as a part of the same unfinished collection that "The musk of the full moon" is in. Read poem
Scaling the Holy Mountain.
This poem won 3rd prize in the Sentinel Quarterly Poetry Competition 2012. The judge, Noel Williams, commented:
"Third place eventually fell to “Scaling the Mountain” a poem in terza rima. I was partly attracted by the deft way this form is handled, particularly in rhymes such as “helter-skelter/Delta/swelter” and “upsetting’s/spaghetti/confetti”. However, it’s the overall movement of the poem that I found most compelling, as it builds detail and story to a climactic image of swallows enslaved by freedom. I’m not sure it works quite as perfectly as it might at the end, because it seems to overplay its hand a little, but the core conceit of tourists themselves being the instruments of the misery they come to witness is a powerful one, and the final ambiguities of smiles that might be forced, serene, happy, sardonic, hypercritical or much more seemed rich with undercurrents of meaning to me."
Overplay its hand? Bloody cheek... But no, actually a birdwatcher like me gets no greater thrill than to come across an endangered species, and the biggest twitch I can conceive of is a poetry judge who appreciates how difficult it is to write competent formal poetry. He awarded first prize to a sonnet, goddammit! A sonnet!
You can read a prose account of the day in question in my journal of our Vietnamese holiday, Drongos and Dragons. It's February 9th. And you can read the full judge's report here.
The boomerang bird.
This sonnet is one of my own favourites from my first book, Birds of the World in Colour. It was first published in Reach magazine. I've only named the species I'm describing very slyly, but I'm sure you can work it out. Read poem.
Watching the rollers.
Another sonnet from Birds of the World in Colour. First published in Orbis magazine, it is based on a rail journey I made from New Delhi to Jammu on my way to Srinagar in Kashmir, while I was back-packing around India in 1989. I'm hinting at the maelstrom of violence that was just beginning to engulf the state of Kashmir at the time of my visit to this most beautiful but tragic region of the world. Read poem.
Dreaming on the Corbett Express.
Another poem about a journey on India Rail. This time Robbie and myself were travelling from Delhi overnight to the Corbett Tiger Reserve in 2008. The poem is one of three of mine that appear in "Along the Iron Veins", an anthology of railway writing published by my friends at Stairwell Books. You can buy the anthology direct from the publisher. It's great! Read poem.
The village marimba.
A poem from my latest book, Gringo on the Chickenbus. A 40-line version of this won me 3rd prize in the Kent & Sussex Poetry Competition 2010. A more-or-less true story about one of our adventures whilst travelling in Guatemala. Read poem.
El condor no pasa.
Another poem from Gringo on the Chickenbus. It is about a visit we made to a lookout point near Arequipa in the Peruvian Andes called Cruz del Condor, one of the best places in the world to get close-up views of Andean Condors in the wild. Formal poetry anoraks will already have noticed that it is in Spencerian Stanza form. Read poem.
Crag Martins.
Another bird sonnet, but incorporating an experiment in layout. This was published in Orbis #154 and won me a prize in the Readers' Awards for that issue. Read poem.
The Cedar Forest.
Based on a day that Robbie and myself spent with a local guide exploring the beautiful forests above the town of Azrou in the Middle Atlas mountains of Morocco. I entered it into a competition run by the Mines Action Group (MAG), a group that campaigns against land-mines, in 2009. The competition is democratically judged by all the contestants, and this poem made it into the final twelve (but sadly no prize for me.) The only poem I have ever written in lines of six stresses. Read poem.
The Jungles of Graball-Youcan.
This sonnet was commended in the Ware Poets Competition 2012, and is published in their competition anthology. I originally wrote it as a part of the same unfinished collection that "The musk of the full moon" is in. Read poem
Scaling the Holy Mountain.
This poem won 3rd prize in the Sentinel Quarterly Poetry Competition 2012. The judge, Noel Williams, commented:
"Third place eventually fell to “Scaling the Mountain” a poem in terza rima. I was partly attracted by the deft way this form is handled, particularly in rhymes such as “helter-skelter/Delta/swelter” and “upsetting’s/spaghetti/confetti”. However, it’s the overall movement of the poem that I found most compelling, as it builds detail and story to a climactic image of swallows enslaved by freedom. I’m not sure it works quite as perfectly as it might at the end, because it seems to overplay its hand a little, but the core conceit of tourists themselves being the instruments of the misery they come to witness is a powerful one, and the final ambiguities of smiles that might be forced, serene, happy, sardonic, hypercritical or much more seemed rich with undercurrents of meaning to me."
Overplay its hand? Bloody cheek... But no, actually a birdwatcher like me gets no greater thrill than to come across an endangered species, and the biggest twitch I can conceive of is a poetry judge who appreciates how difficult it is to write competent formal poetry. He awarded first prize to a sonnet, goddammit! A sonnet!
You can read a prose account of the day in question in my journal of our Vietnamese holiday, Drongos and Dragons. It's February 9th. And you can read the full judge's report here.