I am very pleased to be in such a ‘timely’ anthology, this post’s title qualifying that term. My individual poem is perhaps singular, expressing contempt for the pathetic ‘little englander’ narrative – the one voiced throughout Brexit, and the silliness of the tags experienced in a lifetime when having chosen to live in a country other than the place of your birth and nationality. I also mean my voice does not have to deal with the nastiness, misrepresentations, neglect, abuse and all the significant rest some others in this collection share from their experiences – though not forgetting the celebrations. I do like the line ‘welcoming arms of poetry’.

To read more and purchase, go here.

#24 – the final poem from this collection

(Images by artists and photographer Nick Dormand)

#23

Not an
elephant’s eye

or crack
in the cloud

on this full
bright day

but sunlight
dappled by the

nearer move
of bamboo in
a soft wind

Traffic on
the radio
a DJ intro’d

as ‘psychedelic’
its light and dark

dancing across
closed eyes

as reclining
on the couch

travelling and
starting to fall

As it says on the cover, our second collaboration: images found in Nick’s out and about; my words prompted by and found in response to them.

Please feel free to read and download: Undulations as Rhythm.

*

The Red Ceilings Press has a brand new web site and you can see it here.

Because my chapbook And I Used to Sail Barges is one of the relatively recent publications, I appear on the opening page. This will soon move on. My auto-fiction is still available, and that probably isn’t the correct description of its genre: to read more and perhaps purchase, you can check out further details here.

I was saddened to hear of Gerald Locklin’s passing yesterday, a poet whose writing I have always, always enjoyed reading. Having recently included the following in the autobiography I am writing, I post it here as a tribute to and in fond memory of him.

You can find further posts of mine about Locklin and his writing here.

Thankful to have a poem with International Times here today. With appreciation to Rupert and IT.

I am also particularly pleased with the illustration by Atlanta Wiggs, so huge thanks for that as well.