It’s that conversation over a cup of coffee when the ideas are flowing and you are struggling to keep up taking notes of them so that they don’t vanish. Collaborating with others can be a real spark to create new ideas and open up to diverse creative approaches that might not have otherwise come to … Read more
After two days of posts about beauty, that made me curious to see if I could find a poem which would keep the theme going. The poem I chose is from “the alice conversations” which I wrote back in 2004. It is a collection of poems about the archetype of the anima (the inner feminine … Read more
I first became interested in Jung when a friend at university, Helen Scholes (now Chatterton – a textile maker living in Liverpool), bought me “Memories, Dreams and Reflections” for my birthday. This was Jung’s memoir written towards the end of his life. I was instantly captivated by the things he wrote about. Many years later … Read more
As promised then, without pause or hesitation. Here is a poem from the third sequence of poems about Blue. In fact, going even further than that, here are two poems. These are the final two poems in the collection. So, it is from this point that I spring forward to the new collection. The indulgence … Read more
As promised in the previous post, here is a poem from the second sequence of poems about Blue. This time it was a sequence of sonnets which were developed using fragments taken from magazines, books and newspapers. I called it ‘foundlings’. The fragments used generated storyline and diverse ideas to push the writing forwards into … Read more
I wrote about plans for a new sequence of poems here. Over the next three posts I will be sharing a poem from each of the first three sequences about Blue. This one is from the first sequence ‘sharp blue / breath’. The title, ‘calling card’, is an oblique reference to a line from … Read more
I can point to a specific time at which my poetry writing shifted from early nonsense to something that I was proud of. I was working as a Community Artist at the time and the workshops we were delivering were inspiring my work into new areas. I was also experimenting with making small hand-made booklets. … Read more
Here is some early thinking on plans for the next iteration of BlueWater Books. In 2004 I set up a small publishing press called BlueWater Books. The title was taken from two of my earliest poetry collections – ‘Sharp Blue Breath’ and ‘Edge of Water’. I set out to produce hand-crafted booklets of my own … Read more
In the next few weeks my working patterns will change significantly. I am seeing this as an amazing opportunity to free up time to write more. This blog has been really quiet for the last few months as a lot of my energy has gone into getting into the space for this to happen. There … Read more
The picture is a detail from a painting produced with my son in half term. A case of the process really being more important than the outcome. I love it because of the bold colours. Below is a poem taken from the forthcoming collection of poems with the working title of “It Begins Like This” … Read more