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I was lucky enough to be included in this small and perfectly formed Valentine  collection from the brilliant Candlestick Press.  They picked my sonnet ‘Punctuation’ from ‘A Bench for Billie Holiday’ [Valley Press, 2018] and along with poets like Elizabeth Barret Browning and newcomer William Shakespeare [very promising],  I’m in great company.

Last Friday I made one of my favourite journeys from Leeds to Bridlington. It is a fabulous train-ride where I marvel at the buildings and structures I see out the window, never feeling I want to read, always worried I might miss something. Selby Abbey, Wressle Castle, the Humber Bridge, Hull Paragon Station, Beverley Minster … Read more

I often find the transition from one year to the other slightly difficult to negotiate. The recognition of another year gone, and counting the losses of twelve months, recognising the approach of another birthday, all conspire to make me feel slightly uneasy. To be sure it is a symbolic gateway but a powerful one. Last … Read more

Earlier this week I found myself at the Leeds University Chaplaincy building for a lunchtime Quaker Meeting. It’s a meeting I often try to get to because it gives me thirty minutes of silence and thought in a hectic schedule. My own religious beliefs are not fixed or based on miraculous happenings; I tend to … Read more

Apollo the Greek god came with me to work in a primary school, the wonderful Ireland Wood Primary, this week. I went on the bus and I wish I could say that he did too, but he was so heavy, a very large plaster bust, that I had him delivered to the school the day … Read more

This weekend we were able to take in some early autumn sea air walking our puppy along the dunes at Wilsthorpe, just outside Bridlington. For me it was the last chance to catch my breath before some of my annual regular work tasks occupy a more central position in my life.   So this morning I … Read more

I don’t think a year goes by without me trying to write poems about spring and autumn, for me they are seasons that are constantly inspiring in their changes, they are frameworks to hang ideas upon, ideas about being human, about the beginnings and endings of our own lives. This poem was written at least … Read more

Famously unamused, she sits and staresAcross Woodhouse Lane to a distant hill,Her plinth so high, I wonder how she fares,Her present location a bitter pill;She once sat outside Leeds Town Hall and reignedOver the city-centre, and then came the moveTo the park, her expression slightly strainedWatching youngsters experiment with love.For me she’s where she has … Read more

Two weeks ago I did one of the things I enjoy the most; I interviewed a writer as part of a special summer event for the Ilkley Literature Festival. It was a magical, chatty occasion made even more wondrous by the fact that my writer Matson Taylor had written a follow up novel to his … Read more

The promise of primroses fills each line,Overflows in iambic flowering,While wild garlic and bluebells defineThe yellow of their petals, the showeringOf the woods and trees with pools of sun,Where we walk the dogs and welcome inThis season, now at last that winter’s done,Our hearts can fill themselves with hope again.Let us breathe in a while … Read more