I’m getting closer to finalising at least the end section of my book, which deals with just as difficult themes as the chapbook, un(in)formed, but includes more free verse. If the last one wasn’t suitable for a primary school library, this one definitely isn’t.

So many of the poems are clinging on to the list, despite my best efforts to ignore them.

My computer is currently playing ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ by the Spice Girls, just to add to the vibe.

Here’s a contents page of sorts:

Current collection – May 2025

Air is a Luxury (displayed in Ilkon art gallery and currently up in Fleet Arts’ Create Space in Belper)

Cromford Mills (new May 2025)

Queen of Cakes (half blogged)

DH Lawrence’s Horn (blogged etc)

Markeaton Brook (sent to Bad Betty)

This Poem is not Plastic Free (1 min – published in the Blue Bird Anthology)

Bud (blogged etc)

As the Sea Rises (1 min – unpublished)

Not Waving but Driving (on blog, 2015, edited)

Ode to Derby Assembly Rooms (on Radio Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Lincolnshire)

The day the music died (45 seconds – Radio Derby – unpublished)

Not Strictly (35 seconds – published in Fig Tree 7)                                               

The Bless (rejected by Rialto)

The Deep Benk (1 min – published Fig Tree/Crooked Spire Press)

One Straw (1 min 5, part of the Poet-Trees exhibition 2024 but not the book, Radio Derby on National Poetry Day 2024)

Trauma (sent to Bad Betty)

Raft (part of the Poet-Trees exhibition in Belper in 2023)

Guzzle (sent to a poetry prize once – inspired by Red Sky Sessions)

Meditation on the A38 (Radio Derby – recorded and on this blog)

Sandpit (35 seconds – unpublished – Radio Derby, World Haiku Day)

Anyway, feeling so very privileged to be alive at the moment and to be living in a place and time when I can sit and think.

As seen in the Ilkon Gallery, Ilkeston, in April 2025, with thanks to Fleet Arts and Claire Simpson