Ekphrastic poetry in response to big data? Yes, please. HSBC collected 16,000 verbatim responses to complete the statement, “Expat Life Is…”. They then commissioned me to write a poem addressing the eight major themes that emerged. The result is the poem sequence “Eightfold Expat“, which you can listen to and read on the HSBC Expat …
My contributor’s copy of Domestic Cherry 5 popped through the post today. I love this little annual. There’s not a dull poem in it. Mine, called “Patient Refused Dental Anaesthesia“, could only have been written in this conspiracy-mad US election year. You can see a snap of it here. Get your copy of Domestic Cherry …
Apropos of a US presidential election year, I have a brief meditation on the nature of binary decisions up at Queen Mob’s Teahouse. The poem is called “Free Will“. I love Queen Mob’s for their rapacious, eclectic inclusivity, dished with signature wit. You never know what their Twitter handle will get renamed next. So, do …
I receive my contributor’s copy of Acumen 86 this weekend, bearing my poem “Masters’ Palette”. I was pleased to recognise fellow former Highgate Poets member Anne Ballard in this issue, as well as Seán Street, who featured in a previous Transatlantic Poetry broadcast. I also enjoyed the interview with Wolfgang Görtschacher, tracing the origins of …
“All that a man knows, and needs to know, is found in Berkeley.” -W.B. Yeats, mispronounced by Jack Spicer Some things are worth waiting for. I submitted “Reading James Joyce at the Berkeley Marina” to Berkeley Poetry Review in January 2013, and it was accepted in August that year. However, due to the Editor-in-Chief’s struggle …
The Mary Evans Picture Library is an independent family-owned historical picture library started by Mary Evans in 1964 in Blackheath. She and her husband supplied clippings to publishers and news agencies for decades. The collection is now digitised and available online. Furthermore, the website’s Poems and Pictures blog features poems inspired by images from the …
