salt water

I’m an occasional poet. That’s a bit like being an occasional table, but arguably not as useful. In any case, I’ve written poetry for many years – and, in fact, the first piece of writing I ever got paid for was a poem. Which surprised me at the time. This was late last century. Since then I’ve occasionally produced new poetry – very often “literary” (whatever the fuck that means) in style, but sometimes fantastical or science fictional in subject matter too.

Poems are published and then, like ephemeroptera, disappear. Magazines come and go. So, I figured it was time to collect together all my published poems and put them out there in a single volume for posterity to ignore.

That collection is called salt water. I think it’s really good. It contains these poems:

‘
Walking the Himalaya
Unearthed
The Boy Who Climbed Trees
Blackberrying
Where The Water Rises
When We Were Giants
A Clock’s First Tick
Coalmining
Counting All The Bricks In Manchester
Replanting The Great Caledonian Forest
Autumnal
In the Peak Forest
Midwinter’s Day
Red Kite
A Buzzard, on Landing on Carrion
Safari Snaps
Standing Stones
The Botany Of The British Isles
Ephemeroptera
Crowhaunted
Sleeps Beneath The Streets
Dreadnought
Labbeastyrinth
Calliope On The Street Corner
Orpheus In The Underpass
Mid-Atlantic Depressions
Words Fail
The Bloody Coup
A Sudden Distance
A Bright Wind

If you’re interested in purchasing a copy, the page for the book is here. Meanwhile, here’s the first poem in it. Enjoy. It means a lot to me.

‘

Curled up asleep there
as seraphic as
the furled e in serene.
Crossed feet for
perfectly drawn serifs,
your soft body
a rune of tightly cuddled limbs
as you revert to
the bliss of the huddled womb.
A quiet quotation mark
at the start of a life’s long speech,
the hushed susurrus
of a slowly drawn breath