Category Archives: Writing Prompt

Sleight of Mind

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Image via Pixabay, courtesy Gregory Delaunay

It is a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet David Bingham. We first met many years ago through the British Haiku Society. David was President of the Society from 2020-2022, and in 2020 he was the winner of the British Haiku Society International Haibun Prize. His poetry appears regularly in a wide variety of magazines. See below for further details.

The haiku have all been previously published: in Presence, Blithe Spirit, or Time Haiku. The tanka first appeared in Blithe Spirit and the BHS Tanka Anthology 2022, while the haibun was the winner of the British Haiku Society International Ken and Noragh Jones Haibun Award, 2017. I hope you enjoy the selection.

Haiku

a lifetime
overcoming gravity –
still it gets me down

Private Keep Out
molehills on both sides
of the fence

clear night sky –
lights from both the living
and the dead

away
in the wind …
the word-filled air

is there a word for it?
the sound swans make
when they fly

late spring meadow…
within the yellow
the blue of summer

storming
the old hill fort – bluebells  
and celandine

inland sea
the wash from our boat
moves the border

stream through sunlight through stream

closing over
trails in algae where
the ducks have been

I turn
to call the dog …
then remember

Euston Station –
my skin ripples
in the hand drier

an apology…
the predictive text writes
it for me

Tanka

sun shine
and motorway spray –
I drive through
rainbows
to be with you

silently together
after all that talk
watching swallows
hawk for flies over
the meadow

on waking
I turn my dreams
inside out
letting the seams show
for the rest of the day

doors left
wide open revealing
an unlit space
nothing here to steal
but the darkness

Haibun

Sleight of Mind 
 
Some people need to know how he pulls the shining light bulbs from his mouth, levitates above the stage or escapes from a straightjacket.
 
Me, I like the mystery of it; the explanations are always so mundane. True magic lies in the imagination. Switching off the rational mind. Letting yourself go and trusting the conjuror.
 
I do it with words. Like how I brought you here. Even if you asked me, I couldn’t tell you how it’s done.
 
snowdrops …
mistaking ‘what is’
for ‘what isn’t’
 

 
Biography

David Bingham’s debut poetry collection The Chatter of Crows was published by Offa’s Press in October 2014 and in 2020 he was the winner of the British Haiku Society International Haibun Prize.

His poetry appears regularly in a wide variety of magazines, including Blithe Spirit, Time Haiku and Presence and in anthologies, including: the Wenlock Poetry Festival anthologies for 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016; Beyond Words, 2018 and where silence becomes song, 2019, the International Haiku Conference Anthology, published by the British Haiku Society; In the Sticks, 2021 and Away with the Birds, published by Offa’s Press; In Snow and Rain, 2022, an anthology of tanka published by the British Haiku Society; and Festival in a Book, published by the Wenlock Poetry Festival, 2023.

At different times, he was editor of both Borderlines and Blithe Spirit magazines and joint editor of the haiku and related genres anthologies Ripening Cherries, published by Offa’s Press, 2019 and Shining Wind published by the British Haiku Society, 2024.

He has read his work in arts centres, pubs, theatres, on local radio and poetry and literature festivals. He has read at City Voices in Wolverhampton, Country Voices in Shropshire and as a member of Green Wood Haiku at the BHS International Haiku Conference in St Albans in June 2019.
 
As part of the humorous poetry double act, Bingham and Woodall, he has performed at the Wolverhampton Lit Fest and Comedy Festivals in 2017 and 2018, and at the Ironbridge Festival in 2019.

 


 

An altogether different place

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Cover photo by Ben Robinson


Rachel Davies and Hilary Robinson have been friends for over 20 years. Friends call them the ‘poetry twins’. They are both accomplished poets and you can find their biography below.


An altogether different place, published by Beautiful Dragons Squared, is a joint project. In 2022 Hilary’s husband was diagnosed with vascular dementia; in 2023 Rachel’s partner with dementia and Lewy bodies. In the introduction they write ‘dementia is a catalogue of cruel diseases’. Living with and caring for someone with dementia ‘you come to know grief by slow degrees’. Through poetry Hilary and Rachel ‘found a joint space to laugh, cry, find context and write out their experiences’.


The collection is sold to raise essential research funds for dementia charities in the UK. It is a privilege to share a selection of the poems here: Brainworm and Seven ways of looking at a husband are by Hilary. Rachel wrote Degrees of Challenge and This is not a poem about dementia which was awarded 2nd place in the Hippocrates Prize 2024.

Brainworm


There are many crap poems online for those who care for loved ones with dementia. Dementia has a symbolic flower – the unimaginative forget-me-not. I’ll have none of that shit. I want the gristle of it, the offal, brain-spatter, white matter of it. Show me the MRI with extensive vascular changes, let me count the dead parts of the brain so I can explain, daily, what ails my love. I watch Dirty Great Machines, find Big Bertha in Seattle, tunnelling machine on steroids moving at thirty five feet a day. Something has wormed its way into the tiny vessels inside his head over years and now whole sections of his once-sharp brain have died. It’s our Golden Wedding Anniversary this year. I don’t know who I’ll be celebrating with.

Seven ways of looking at a husband

1
Straight on. Taking in his 2-day grey beard,
his nostril hair and ear fuzz. His smile.

2
Side profile. Noticing his cute nose,
the same shape as our daughter’s.

3
From the bedroom door. Noting
the cocoon he’s made of the duvet.

4
Across the kitchen. See, he’s forgotten
how to toast his fruit tea cake, make coffee.

5
From the driver’s seat. Clocking his wince
as you pull out safely onto the busy main road.

6
Across the care home corridor. Seeing his smile grow,
then his arm around you, his whiskery kiss.

7
On the care home terrace. Look, he can’t turn
his head to where you point. Misses the squirrel.

(L) Hilary with David (R) Rachel with Bill

Degrees of Challenge

I’m watching you struggle to break the seal
on an ice cream wrapper and I think of the time
you redesigned the roof of Piccadilly Station,
worked in millimetres to ensure each pane of glass

fitted exactly into the space you’d drawn for it.
I remember the night you clipped on a safety harness,
climbed onto the roof to inspect each perfect joint,
came home buzzing but satisfied at day break.

Tomorrow you’ll shuffle out to the Age UK minibus,
the driver watching you don’t slip on the wet steps;
but tonight you’re making a major task

of breaking into a Mini Magnum. I know better
than to offer help; eventually you’ll pass it to me,
say I’m sorry, I can’t seem to

This is not a poem about dementia

I am opening the windows and doors
letting in fresh air to blow dementia
down the lane like giant tumble weed

I am clearing out drawers and wardrobes
filling black bags with hallucinations
donating them all to the Age UK shop

I am having the Lewy bodies serviced
unblocking its pipes flushing confusion
down the drain with the incontinent waste

I am partying like there’s no dementia
raising a cake with bicarb of dementia
licking up the fluffy dementia crumbs

I am sleeping peacefully in the quiet night
dreaming a poem that has absolutely
nothing to do with dementia

Biographies


Rachel Davies is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and a retired primary school headteacher. Her poetry is widely published in journals and anthologies and has been a prize-winner in several poetry competitions, most recently, the Hippocrates Prize 2024. A selection of her work was published in Some Mothers Do… (Dragon Spawn Press 2018). Her debut pamphlet, Every Day I Promise Myself, was published by 4Word Press in December 2020. Since retiring she has achieved an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in contemporary poetry, both from Manchester Metropolitan University.


Hilary Robinson has lived in Saddleworth for most of her life. She met her husband, David, at secondary school. She gained a BA (Distinction) and a PGCE and became a primary school teacher. After a successful career, Hilary retired and started a Creative Writing (Poetry) MA at Manchester Metropolitan University and gained a distinction. Her poetry is published in print and online journals, and in several anthologies. Her poetry has also been set to music by RNCM students of composition. In 2018 some of her problems were published by Dragons Spawn as Some Mothers Do… and this was followed in June 2021 by her first solo pamphlet, Revelation, published by 4Word Press.

After the Rites and Sandwiches

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It is a privilege and a great pleasure to share three poems by Kathy Pimlott from her third pamphlet with The Emma Press, published this month. It is ‘an honest, lyrical and nuanced journey through the complexity of bereavement’. The poem What I do with you now you’re dead was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2023. Further down you’ll find Kathy’s biography and links to her website.

Death Admin I

Your demise constitutes a third off council tax;
the removal of a vote you seldom cast and then
only to be contrary; write-off of a modest overdraft;
the bill for an overpaid pension. Tell Us Once promises
it will be a doddle. It is not. I repeat time and again
in spoken and in written words to the indifferent
or distracted, He has died. What do I need to do?

What I do with you now you’re dead

The Queen is dead too and on her way to a proper tomb.
Everything’s shut and there’s nothing on tv, but the sun
comes out so I go to the mimosa tree where, months ago,
I dumped, in a laughing panic, dumped, about a quarter
of your ashes and ran away, the illicit thrill exactly what
you would have wanted. Today, with a flask, shortbread,

I’ve come because, while I don’t love the Queen, it seems
like a fitting thing to do. This royal park is empty, quiet,
allowing me to cry all through its splendid long borders
with their harmonious purple and blue planting until,
on a near-enough bench, I sit. By my feet, Lamb’s Ears
offer silky comfort, as does the pile of pistachio shells,

little coracles, showing someone sat here eating a bagful.
You kept your shells in the pockets of your gardening coat
which I emptied out before taking it to the charity shop
with your best shoes. The mimosa’s not out of course
but its ferny leaves show promise of the glory to come.
A robin perches closer than he should, inspects me,

then accepts a crumb or two. Your ashes have disappeared,
no longer so alarmingly burnt-bone visible, so very there.
They say the old Queen’s coffin is oak, lined with lead.
Three-quarters of you is still in the back of the wardrobe.
A crow chases off my robin. So much peril. It’s enough
to be sitting thumbing Lamb’s Ears, thinking about you.

The Passing Visit

A friend came by from Brussels and we talked of our dead
or rather about what they leave behind, the stuff in storage,

the binding strands. I told him more than I’d told most,
of how (and I said, then rejected, the word tumultuous),

how textured our long, long marriage had been and by textured
I meant bumpy, dropped stitches, amateur darning. I told him

how often you fell in and out of love and how I left and returned
more than once. Perhaps because I didn’t care enough, I said.

And perhaps I didn’t. There was something he wasn’t telling me
but the sun was out and we walked the courtyards and backways

of the neighbourhood, crossed the bridge, watching the sky whiten
and the coloured lamps in the trees come on. We spoke of cities,

their pleasures. The comfort I find in the river. How Brussels’ Senne
is covered over, subterranean. Of moving along and clearing out.

Biography

Kathy Pimlott has two previous pamphlets with The Emma Press: Goose Fair Night (2016) and Elastic Glue (2019). Her debut full collection, the small manoeuvres, was published by Verve Poetry Press (2022). Her work is widely published in magazines and anthologies, and she has been longlisted, placed and has won several poetry prizes.

Kathy’s website

The Friday Poem

Ambush Moments: Kathy Pimlott on writing After the Rites and Sandwiches

Breakfast

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Here in The Netherlands Kookboekenweek (Cookery Books Week) has just ended. A recent annual event, it’s designed to promote cookery books. Bookshops and libraries organise workshops, lectures, and tasting events. Of course, it’s all to encourage people to buy books as presents for December: St Nicolaas and Kerstmis.


Professionals shortlisted six books (Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, Italian (2), and baking skills). They’ve chosen Bloem Suiker Boter, by Nicola Lamb, translated into Dutch. I’m going with Breakfast, a poem celebrating poetry and friendship.

Breakfast

Bridie would be in the kitchen,
barking with Finn and Tara
in a metal cage under the table.
I’m in your backroom, sheepskin
on the seat of the wooden chair,
just gone 9 o’clock this Tuesday.

You’ve made the scrambled eggs
exactly as I like them, with enough
mustard and fresh chives.
Now you’re coming in with yours,
followed by your small dogs
who settle on the settee, by the fire.

We catch up over this monthly meal.
Soon we’ll sit silently behind our laptops,
typing up poems from old notebooks.
Now eating toast with ginger preserve,
I look out of the window; the smiling
Buddha is lit up by the sun.

Slow Movement

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It is an immense pleasure to present this month’s guest poet Sarah Mnatzaganian. Poems from her award-winning pamphlet Lemonade in the Armenian Quarter were featured here before. Today’s poems were chosen from the dozen that were included in Slow Movement, an exquisite small journal designed, created and stitched by poet Maria Isakova Bennett. The photo of the cover doesn’t quite do it justice.

The sequence was one of four winners in the 2022/2023 Coast to Coast to Coast poetry prize. Maria wrote ‘Slow Movement is a sensuous sequence of love poems expressed through the colours, sounds, materials, and obsessions of cello making and sailing.’ The sequence is dedicated to Robin, the cello maker; poems were previously published (Poetry Wales, Magma, Poetry Salzburg).

Bogle

Two wedges of maple are ready for the vice.
The cello maker scans the silken surfaces for flaws
but the wood looks clean as buttermilk.

He leans and pushes translucent ribbons,
tissue paper thin, through the plane’s grey mouth.
Stops. A failed twig-hole, a dark finger of incipient rot

points from the joint accusingly. He groans,
grabs a back-arch template, offers it to the knot.
Smiles. He’ll outwit the bogle this time.

He heats hide-glue in the pot and rubs the joint
until it gels and bites, the halves aligned and left to dry.
Next week, he’ll flip the plate like a stranded tortoise

and hunt the blemish with his keenest gouge
until he holds a hollow brindled shell,
bogle-ridden wood chips snapping at his feet.

Laying up

Salt-bitten snap shackles slump down the forestay
and surrender to the pull of his thumbs.
He drags an impossibility of canvas over the guard rail
while I hug the rest free of the wire.

The sail crumples like a giant wedding dress,
crocodile-toothed with zigzag thread. It’s time
to climb down to the queasy buoyancy of the old
polystyrene pontoon, to stand fifteen feet from him

and guess where in this pale tangle of cloth to grip
with my left hand; how far to reach with my right.
We’ll tighten the white distances between us
and fold each crease over into a taut edge

until we make a concertina of the sail. He’ll nod
and fold his end towards me, two foot at a time.
I’ll do the same for him until our halves meet
and lie without stretch or slack,

my luff to his leech, head to his foot,
clew to his tack, throat to his peak.

Bridge

He’s in the kitchen, leaning over the hob,
dropping a bridge blank into the frying pan.

I start to speak but know he can’t reply.
He’s counting down the seconds till it’s time to flip

the steaming bridge, to press and count again.
Twenty, twenty, ten, ten, five, five. Done.

He stands the bridge to cool. Takes the next.
I’ll kiss him then, to pass annealing time.

Twenty to please my tongue and lips. Twenty
more to tighten breasts and scalp. Ten, ten

to spice my skin. His free fingers stroke a slow
five, five around my willing ear.

Flying a kite

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My friend Kathleen Kummer recently had her 95th birthday. We have had a weekly telephone call since the start of the first lockdown in March 2020. Kathleen’s poems from her collection Living below sea level have featured here before.


Flying a kite refers to the ‘90s, as the grandson is now in his thirties. He lives abroad, but regularly visits. A variation on the villanelle form, the poem successfully blends the personal and the universal.

Flying a kite

My grandson and I are flying his kite.
Though we stand on the earth’s green rim in spring,
there’ll be talk of wars on the news tonight.

We have climbed the steep meadow, have not taken fright
at the notice, Beware of the Bull. Larks sing
as my grandson and I are flying his kite.

We have coaxed it upwards, where wind and light
give life to what was a limp, gaudy thing.
Time enough for reports of the fighting tonight.

Its streamers rippling, the wind just right,
it rides the skies, a jocular king.
My grandson and I are flying his kite.

These skies are empty, but for the flight
of buzzards and invisible larks on the wing.
The skies they will show on the news tonight

will be apocalyptic, eerily bright
with the clever ways of destroying and killing
to which the whole world claims the right.
I am watching my grandson wind in his kite.

Boxes

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It’s good to get an acceptance and even better when it’s prompt! Thanks to Paul Brookes for accepting this poem and two others for his online poetry journal The Starbeck Orion. You’ll find it here: the 880.substack.com. Issue 4 is themed. Current contributions are open themed.


You will be asked what your favourite constellation is. I bought the domain name acaciapublications in the early 90s, so you won’t be surprised that Camelopardalis is mine. It is a large but faint constellation of the northern sky representing a giraffe.


The poem was written from a prompt on the Boxes workshop with Graham Mort. WordPress wanted to make it a list, which messed up the numbers the lines had. We like a non-sequitur…

Boxes

I declined it. The man in black nodded, walked back to the horse.

Boy, am I glad I can feel my legs.

There must always be doors for the pleasure of opening them. Cats know this.

Boardroom brown, expensive pens, hand-rolled cigars, promises on parchment.

On display in the glass case: the motorbike, black-and-white photos, three bullets.

Groundswell – so little land, so much water.

Was I not meant to see the deep scarlet lining?

Past Tense Future Imperfect

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It’s a pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Jon Miller. We met some years ago on a poetry workshop. His biography is at the end of the post.

Jon was winner of The Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Award 2022 and his latest pamphlet Past Tense Future Imperfect (2023) is published by Smith|Doorstop from which these three poems are taken.

They Made A Crime Series Here

We are miles off Hringvegur, American satnav garbling
‘Fjardarheidi’: a high pass, a blizzard shreds the windscreen,

then down to Seydisfjordur, where the road stubs itself out
against the fjord; like us, it has given up fighting the inevitable.

Past the fish factory, its yellow flag cracking the wind.
Corrugated sheds, oil tanks. Houses stare into themselves.

This town has let out all its breath, waits to take another
next century. For the lonely, binoculars stand on windowsills.

A thought bubble: Stay low. The world is not your lobster.
Tie everything down. Run for port. A beard hides a lot of guilt.

Picnic benches crouch like crabs at car parks and supermarkets;
husbands keep engines running in case wives make a break for it.

A camper van – rented – drifts by, turns down the wrong road,
bikes shrouded in grey, a child’s face at the window.

Beside the filling station three farmers lean into a trailer,
debate the efficacy of bladed implements. One looks up.

Nothing connects until everything does. We have tickets,
drive into the ferry, its belly, its deep machine hum, extras no longer.

Lost Child

Not the brazen trumpeters
or the flittering sailboats
or in the minds of mariners
with their white-washed eyes
is there a button of hope.

Neither in the small boys roaming
the fogged avenues
called home for tea
returning with birds’ nests
and the ruins of puberty.

You become a twitch
in the fingertips of newscasters
or out here where it happened
the midnight click of the latch
the song in the five-barred gate.

This Way to the Observation Lounge

Out through the placid archipelagos they go
at ease in their daylit aquarium
moving over water at the pace of a slow car.

The sea is flat on its back. The flag barely mutters
at the mast. All are hypnotised by empty sea and sky,
by the line where nothing meets.

They have left the world to turn without them.
and sit with hands clasped in laps
as if listening to a sermon on vacancy.

Asleep, they twitch to escape their clothes.
They know themselves the way the blind
feel what they cannot see.

I could tuck in chins, settle a head on its neck,
retrieve dropped novels, while their eyes read dreams
the way an unborn child pushes against its mother’s belly.

They are at rest. Someone is on the bridge.
Over the horizon is harbour. Weather is busy somewhere else.
Who they are has fallen away like rain over islands.

Biography

Jon Miller lives near Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands and has had poetry published in a wide range of literary magazines as well as being a contributor of book and exhibition reviews and literary journalism. He formerly editor of Northwords Now, a magazine featuring writing from the north of Scotland. He was short-listed for the Wigtown Poetry Prize in 2021 and awarded joint First Place in the Neil Gunn Poetry Competition 2022.

A Coalition of Cheetahs

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It’s a great pleasure to introduce our April guest poet Doreen Gurrey. We met on a writing workshop some years ago and belong to a group that meets regularly online. You can find Doreen’s biography at the end of the post. I have chosen three poems from her new pamphlet A Coalition of Cheetahs, just out with smith/doorstop. It was a winner of the 2023 Poetry Business International Book & Pamphlet Prize.

Zoo

From the lit hall, I slide back the hardboard panel
to find you under the stairs, crouched like an Indian street seller
in front of the toy animals you’ve fumbled into a ring.

Hands and knees on chipped linoleum, I crawl in,
smell the turps and boot polish, the must of apples
separated until next year.

You’re listening to the slow clicks of the electric meter,
your heart monitor, sharing the sound with the broom
which shoulders the corner like your guardian angel.

I haul you out, pick up the polar bear, giraffe,
the big elephant and the little elephant, then soothe
the smouldering print, reddening on your thigh.

Yarn

I was learning to knit when you left me,
decoding the language; stocking stitch, moss,
knit2tog., twist; the wool a filigree

snaking through my fingers across
the floor. The note was cold: In Italy –
don’t write or ring. Needles knit up my loss,

a pink anaconda down to my knees.
I learned to pick up stitches I’d dropped,
then all my friends said pink suited me,

asked would I carry on or had I stopped?
I said I’d started another in green,
that casting off was easier than casting on.

Guest

You came with all you needed,
your car a metal suitcase,

the boot full of booze
the back seat housing a portable grill.

Temporary you said, but I forgot
how little you need to live.

You kept mostly to the garage,
the beer stacked next to the tool box,

the radio tuned in to the French news;
you smoked your roll ups and grilled

your côtes de porc.
My washing took on a Gallic smell.

Now you’re gone, I’ve got the garage back,
but sometimes mistake

the growl of the tumble drier
for your phlegmy cough,

the washing machine’s whine
for your whistling.

Biography

Doreen Gurrey trained as an English and drama teacher and for several years ran her own Youth Theatre Company. She went on to become an Adult Literacy Tutor writing and delivering Family Learning courses for the local council. Latterly she has worked as a Creative Writing tutor at York University. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, The North and The Yorkshire Anthology. She has won prizes in The McClellan, Bridport and Troubadour poetry competitions. Doreen lives in York and has five grown up children.

Wendsday

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It’s a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Matthew Stewart, with three poems from his collection Whatever you do, just don’t. It was published by HappenStance Press to their usual high standards in 2023. The background of the jacket is an old map of Extremadura, Spain. The poem Gostrey Meadow was published in Stand. See below the poems for Matthew’s biography. I admire the attention to detail, precision, and economy of his poems: so much between the lines…

Banana

Come to think of it, she didn’t tell us
who’d got hold of the banana, or how,
and we forgot to ask, stunned by the news
that at ten years old she’d never seen one.

She was still proud her class had raffled it
for the war effort, still slightly mournful
at it turning black on her teacher’s desk
long before they drew the winning ticket.

She wouldn’t talk about gas masks, the Blitz,
the doodlebugs (how they changed to V2s) —
but she always recalled her fury
at the waste of bloody good food.

Wendsday

Halfway through the word and the week,
my pen used to pause and stumble,
tripped up by my eight-year-old tongue

and even now I still delight
in having learned at last to swap
the n and d and add the e.

I stumbled, too, after coming
to Spain. Shook off routines and rules.
Let a new language soak through me.

Two more hassle-packed, tensed-up days
till vino tinto y queso
instead of cod and chips.

Gostrey Meadow

Showing my son round, I notice
a father taking a picture
of his wife and son who’s melted
half an ice cream on his fingers
and the other half on his face.

It’s a copy of a photo
in our album. Same river.
Same heat-laden sky. Same roles.
Same spot on the bank. Same pose.
Our trees were ten feet shorter.

Biography

Matthew Stewart lives between Extremadura in Spain and West Sussex in the South of England. He works in the Spanish wine trade as a blender and exporter. His blog site ‘Rogue Strands’ is a respected source for poetry lovers, and he reviews widely for a range of publications. His first full collection was The Knives of Villalejo (Eyewear, 2017). Before that, there were two pamphlets from HappenStance:
Tasting Notes (2012) and Inventing Truth (2011).