As I passed through adolescence and my curiosity grew, I became more interested in psychology and philosophy. I was given ‘Memories, Dreams and Reflections’ by C G Jung as a present by a good friend. This was Jung’s autobiography. In it I discovered that Jung had explored the religions of the world in his quest … Read more
For years now I have been a resistor of the Cult of iPod. Everyone I know has an iPod – most of them have large capacity iPod Classics. I bought an iriver H340 nearly 5 years ago. I struggled with it at first because it has an awful user interface. Then along came Rockbox, an … Read more
Just when everything is floating along, stuff happens. My father died on 24th November. In the weeks leading up to his death he was in heart failure and was in and out of hospital. I’ll be back posting here in the next week or so, but thought I should explain the gap….
I’m afraid I have had to change the default for posting comments to the blog. The site has been subject to a sustained spam attack for a few days now. As a result, I have had to stop open comments for each blog post. For at least the next couple of weeks, comments can only be made … Read more
I’m in the middle of an exercise to write a poem a day for November – the resulting collection, once edited, will be called ‘November Suite’. I am using various exercises to generate material. For example, I take the last line of the previous poem and google that phrase. Then I follow the links and … Read more
Back in the mid-70s when I was at school, a friend of mine (hi, Peter) gave me a tape which had on it an album by Jan Garbarek and one by Keith Jarrett. This was the beginning of an obsession with the music to be found on the ECM label. I have continued to be … Read more
I am looking at print-on-demand publishing services like Lulu.com and Createspace.com. Both of them offer services which mean that you can turn a pdf file into a book manuscript which can then be printed off as a book. These can be printed when required so rather than printing a thousand books and watching them gather dust … Read more
I am in the middle of a few hours working on the ‘Archetypes at Work’ manuscript. I have pushed the word count up to 18,000 words which is really encouraging. I have just used a quote from Bartok: “What is new and significant must always be connected with old roots, the truly vital roots that … Read more
I said in mid-September that I had nearly completed the latest poetry manuscript, ‘Scrapes against the Soul’. Well, I have been stuck on the last poem for a few weeks now. It is a long piece which captures my experiences of Liverpool in the late 70s and early 80s. I’m hoping to have it finished … Read more
Do you ever buy tickets for something, think it’s a good idea at the time, then have serious second thoughts as the date looms? I saw this event recently – the Poet Laureate for the UK appearing at a reading in the Wirral. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss. But on the night, I was … Read more