Six years ago today I got to see Jeff Beck with Joss Stone at Mama Stones in Exeter. It was stunning, obviously, and seeing Beck so close-up [a small venue] was a treat.

The pictures I took that night were, to a shot, terrible in their blurriness. However, these two did seem to capture the far-out-ness of Beck’s playing, so here they are as a colourful, found tribute.

If you’ve never heard of and/or seen a Tom Phillips’ humument, you must. If you’ve never tried to create one yourself, you must. If an English teacher and you’ve never presented to your students and encouraged them to create their own, you must: it’s much more fun than teaching the magic three.

The above is a tribute I produced for a poetry magazine with a theme of ‘persona poems’, though it wasn’t accepted. I used a page from Phillips’ original resource The Human Document, and this can be found here [it just happens to be on page 150 – you can select…].

I am most pleased and thankful for the thoughtful review of my poetry chapbook Professions by Steve Spence at Litter magazine here.

He understands and appreciates my intention to entertain, and is empathetic to how I hoped they will be read and received. He also neatly describes their stylistic approach with ‘These are poems which play with cliché and are rich in puns and puzzling, twisted wordplay’ and I warm to that positive reception!

Thank you Steve and Litter magazine.

My book can be purchased here.

Pleased to have a poem here in this special edition of Rabid Oak, with thanks.

Another of my found prose poems, this was written to a theme/focus when most are the product of random findings. Issue 9 is a collection of poems written in response to films [in a nutshell] and mine was ‘found’ in my memories of having recently watched and other details about Hell or High Water.

Driving to the seaside it was as if the gods had taken a phenomenal scythe and sliced the horizon lower, all the tress and buildings and possible hills universally shorn so those of us looking skywards would see them and their work more clearly in the celestial wrap-around of December clouds.

Or it could be the new car’s surprising expanse of surrounding glass and panoramic exposures.

i.m. Jim

I am pleased to have my poem Dementia’s Mantra here in the latest edition of LossLit.

This journal has an aim to ‘explore the various influences of loss in literature’ and my found prose poem was written recently in response to visiting my father-in-law at the residential home where he was being cared for because of dementia [not complete, with drifting in and out of confusion and clarity] and other physical vulnerabilities. The poem’s mantra is his.

Jim sadly passed soon after. He was 91 and had a wonderful life, happily married for 66 years. In his many moments of clarity he was most appreciative of being visited while at the same time confused about where he was and why.

he borders
on tending
where someone
moves to mothers
down voluptuous walked sunways

the flowers like babies
shine by the street
in polished
grass

he thinks chrome

damp shine of green patch
on time for people summers
when children laughed heat
and
played on porches
in hollered doors
of a new
friendly closeness

each bike’s greetings with
revolving knees graceful
in ease

he’d Kool-Aid tomorrow
knelt from a world
surely
in a box
of comfort