Poems

My poetry has been widely published and anthologised and has won prizes in many different competitions. My collection House of water, published in May 2019, features 25 pairings of my poems and images.

​
​Catching fire

​You said
  from behind your book of shapes
If a fire got in
that would be it            whoosh
   and I nodded abstractedly
not thinking it through
  the patient touch paper
            the incendiary itch
              the virgin tongue that licks
            along the heartlines on each palm    
                twists in
                               through an undefended edge
                and then
            the blood orange bristle of indoor fire
  my fingers burning holes in everything
curtains
   soft furnishings
            pelts
  the bone dry roses of that bouquet
             that bunch of old pursed mouths
                gone              whoosh
            in a tangerine flash
     the tendons in their carping throats
  turned sparks that fountain up
to singe the cooling skin of last night’s moon
   rain down to feed a fire that eats
            the parquet floor for breakfast
               blows open doors with a BOOMBOOMBOOM
             makes every window sing a cracked tune
            houses without chimneys 
    should not huff and puff
fetches us out of our little cold stoves
      to fill us with a roman candle rush
             that boils my blood like jubilee jam
                        and I am
            in love with the act of making fire
   my cape of smoke
this newborn burn
       the tinder
  and flint
of each
      next
            word
​
Published in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual 2018

​Reconsecrated 

A taste of you slipped into me 
like moonlight in a locked church.
The flesh at first left me cold:
respectful fingers, diffident lips 
spilling awkward mumbles in 
The Angel’s fug. We hunted down 
politeness with iced vodka 
and flew outside, where the night 
took your tongue and gave it to mine, 
igniting a flame that swallowed
Soho’s oxygen whole to shape 
the way I kissed you back:
adoration of seventeen again, 
ablaze with the lost conviction 
that this can be a state of grace, 
this immaculate need to fuck in the street.

Published in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual 2017
​

Micro found poem, 'Dirt Sprite', exhibited at the world's first ever Instragram poetry exhibition

​Mapping Hi-Zex Island

On the first day
we viewed the island from above:
a lightning flower flung across the skin of the sea
under the burning eye of the sun. 

On the second day, we approached it from the water,
observing aspects of permanence – 
three years and four months an island now,
its shape shifting between evening and morning.

On the third day we walked it, measured its synthetic 
drumlins, its rope beaches, its tightly woven coves,
weighed the miles of clouded water beneath our feet. 
Earth of a kind. Sea of a kind.

On the fourth day we went down to meet 
this land mass in its own twilight. Ghost nets reached out 
to finger our hair, calling us to the mausoleum 
of the island’s rusted underbelly.

On the fifth day, we saw the ocean swarm – 
angelfish and rainbow runners twisting through drifts
of polymer confetti that playact as food, 
feeding the very body of our island.

The sixth day we spent logging life. 
A shore crab. Clams. An albatross in flight 
off the western peninsular. We collected old eel traps, 
scraps like pastel coloured sharks’ teeth 

with which to make a necklace for the children. 
We bowed our heads under the weight of that night’s stars. 
And when the seventh dawn came, 
we saw our work was done.

Discovered by Charles Moore, Hi-Zex Island is made up of fishing debris, plastics and other trash
Third prize winner, Bristol International Poetry Prize 2016

Space junk

‘And do you think people are talking 
about you on the TV?’ I croak ‘No’, 
throat stripped by the grey snake they sent 
down to suck the deathwish out of me. 
He could be a newsreader, this ironic doctor 
shielded by a desk; frost moustache aligned 
with postbox mouth. Red when shut, 
black when open. Reflecting my spectrum. 
A gnarled part of me wants to ram 
something too big in that black hole 
​and watch it fill with red. But more of me 
is carried on Valium contrails, ghosted out 
against a veil of dead stars that still shine.
‘And do you think the washing machine 
is a spaceship?’ I wish I did think that. 
I think I could be one myself – 
a metal vessel spun across the universe, 
burning up on this re-entry.

Published in the 2015 Templar anthology

​Last night we were undressed by the wind

It took our shoes first;
we watched them rise like odd dense birds
into the indigo sky.

It undid buttons, habits, words;
twirled away the shadows on your face,
the lines engraved on mine.

It freed the magpie in your ribcage,
unzipped each one of my muttering scars,
opened our heads to the blazing dark.

And then there was only 
bright skin. And then
we were just air

Last night we were undressed
by the wind. This morning
we woke in our clothes.

Published in the Milestones Anthology, selected by Brian Patten