poems

Days Like These in North America

News

At last! I’m delighted to announce that my most recent book Days Like These is finally available for pre-order in North America. It will officially publish there in hardcover on 5th December and is available through all good bookstores and also Amazon.

It contains a poem for every day of the year, each one inspired by an event associated with that day – from the invention of television to World Bee Day; from the first appearance of Barbie to the banning of flirting in New York; from Independence Day to the first transatlantic phone call.

Subjects I’ve written about along the way include: quarks, morse code, Wittgenstein, bananas, unicorns, the unification of Italy, the Rubik’s Cube, water, Waiting for Godot, the moon, Jane Austen, Esperanto, beer, Doris Day, Lego, kindness, Pluto (the ex-planet not the dog) and Elvis.

Days Like These joins You Took the Last Bus Home, Alexa, what is there to know about love? and Refugees in being available in North America.

Sorry to mention the C word but my book of Christmas poems– And So This is Christmas –  which publishes in the UK in October won’t be available in print in North America until next year (presumably to prevent too much excitement happening in any one year).

And for those of you outside of North America, Days Like These publishes in paperback on 9th November: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/295/9781035001668

Autumn tour

News

I’m very excited to announce details of a series of new shows (aka ‘a tour’) taking place this autumn, in which I’ll be reading poems and making shrewd observations about the human condition and/or bin day.

There are around 30 dates and tickets are on sale now. Details & links are here …

Events and Shows

Tickets are now available for:
Banbury; Belfast; Bellaghy; Bridport; Brighton; Buxton; Cheltenham; Chippenham; Chorley; Clevedon; Colchester; Crickhowell; Frome; Kendal; Liverpool; Lytham St Annes; Milton Keynes; Norwich; Otley; Painswick; Pocklington; Sale; Selby; Sheffield; Stamford; Sudbury; Swindon; Worcester.

Caerphilly and Deal will be on sale soon.

I’ll also be at various festivals from the late Spring onwards. More on that, when I have all the details.

Finally, this month I’ll be at the Laugharne Weekend in Carmarthenshire, (24-26th March) and then in Newcastle on 28th. Tickets are still available for both.

Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Love

Assorted Poems, Some poems

I convened an academic symposium
and gathered together the great and the good
from a wide variety of disciplines
to consider the question, ‘What is love?’

The philosophers said we must first start with Plato.
The historians showed how it had changed over time.
The chemists spoke of oxytocin and dopamine.
The psychologists thought it was all in the mind.

The political scientists declared it undemocratic.
The sociologists deemed it a social construct.
The economists said that nothing else mattered
except for how little there was, or how much.

The linguists explained the word came from Old English.
The theologians claimed it came straight from God.
The media studies professors weren’t present
but they said they’d send their thoughts in a vlog.

The anthropologists spoke of love across cultures.
The mathematicians tried to work out its square root.
The neuroscientists pointed at MRI scans.
The musicologists played its song on a lute.

The art historians said it was all about perspective.
The geologists believed it from molten rock hewn.
The classicists read extracts from Sappho and Ovid.
The astrophysicists thought it to do with the moon.

The geographers tried to map all its contours.
The literature scholars quoted Auden and Keats.
At the end we were no nearer an answer;
we reconvene on Wednesday next week.

Hold my hand while we jump off this cliff

Assorted Poems, Some poems

‘Let’s jump off this cliff – it’ll be fun! A right laugh!’
urged all the people (well, I mean just over half
of those who had bothered to speak up at all).
I peered down at the rocks; it was a long way to fall.

I said, ‘This cliff’s more than three hundred feet high
and my doctor tells me if I jump I will die.’
‘Cliff-jumping’s fine!’ they said. ‘Don’t trust doctors, trust us!
We read all about it on the side of a bus.’

Worried, I met up with my local MP.
I shared my concerns. He was forced to agree:
‘Why the rocks below would smash you to bits!
Where did you get this idea of jumping off cliffs?’

‘It was the will of some of the people,’ I said
and his expression changed to another instead.
‘I think,’ he revised, ‘you’re being melodramatic.
The problem is you. You’re undemocratic.’

On the clifftop, we waited. In silence we stood.
Then a voice: ‘Remind me, why is cliff-jumping good?’
But we looked down at our shoes, baffled and stumped.
Then, out of embarrassment, we held hands and jumped.

Your 2017 Haiku Horoscopes

Assorted Poems, Some poems

Capricorn

Trousers start to sag
as your pockets bulge with coins.
A year of much change.

Aquarius

You join the circus.
Retrain as tightrope walker.
Good work-life balance.

Pisces

You leave the city
to become a sheep shearer.
New year, a new ewe.

Aries

On Twitter you find
your new haiku horoscope.
It tells you little.

Taurus

You hate your star sign.
Disgruntled, you convert to
Capricornism.

Gemini

Mars enters the sphere
of concupiscent Venus.
Not sure what that means.

Cancer

The year drifts past you
in TV shows and hot food.
Netflix and chilli.

Leo

You date all your cheques
with the year twenty sixteen
until November.

Virgo

You stare at your phone,
look up briefly in July,
then stare at your phone

Libra

At last you make it!
That flat pack IKEA desk
from their Croydon store.

Scorpio

You decide to stop
thinking about anagrams
and sort out your file.

Sagittarius

Year of good fortune.
Not once do you encounter
Jeremy Clarkson.