Selected Publications
“Snowball” and “Confidences”, Obsessed with Pipework 90, 2020.
A Beautiful Way to be Crazy, Verve Poetry Press, 2020
“Cayton Bay” in Waymaking: an Anthology of Women’s Adventure Writing & Art, edited by Helen Mort, Claire Carter and Heather Dawe: Vertebrae Publishing 2018.
“Thank You for Driving Carefully Through Hope” in Now Then Issue 121, April 2018
“Embrace”, The White Review
“If You Know What I Mean” and “Waltzes”, in Wordlife 10: An Anthology, edited by Joe Kriss: 2016.
READ HERE: "Waltzes", "If You Know What I Mean"
“Playa Zicatela” and “A Week Spent Leaving You”, The North Issue 56, August 2016
“Ravenglass for Eskdale”, Envoi Issue 169, February 2015
“Cider Pressing”, “Her Heart” and “The Writing on the Wall”, Iota Issue 94, July 2014
Poems
Confidences
When I was eleven my mother bought me a set of worry dolls;
six little listeners rendered in pink and green thread
from a market stall in town.
I told them about the names I was being called at school
and about my irrational fear of the dark
and about why I wasn’t actually so sure it was irrational
and about dying – yes, even then it was a concern
and later on I told them about my nose
being so embarrassingly the wrong shape
and about how I was going to Hell
but before then I’d have to sit through Purgatory
and the five of them just took it in – perhaps there were only ever five –
and they didn’t pass judgement so I told them some more things
like about the Yangtze River dolphin
and the man on our street who shouted fucking Thatcher
into the wheelie bins and wore Tesco carrier bags on his feet
and axe-murderers and rare tropical diseases
and how people didn’t like me because they didn’t take the time
to get to know me properly
and the four of them nodded their little cotton heads sympathetically.
I told them about the Global Climate Emergency and they didn’t even seem surprised
and when a politician who campaigned for peace was shot dead in her home town
they said we know, we know, we know and they gazed up at me
like the three magi in a knitted nativity gazing up at the sky.
We shared a bottle of Jim Beam and I began to talk
about losing bits of myself; sending vital parts off in packets
addressed to publishing houses and forgetting to include an S.A.E.
and about waking in the night to check if I could still use a pen
in case I found I’d been extinguished, like a firefly softly stifled
beneath the surface of a lake
and about advertisements for makeup and breakfast cereal
that are meant to make you worry about the lines in your face
and the overspill of your gut when really you should be worrying
about something useful like the housing crisis
but you are worrying about the lines in your face
and that means you’re going to Hell
and they both looked tired
and one said listen, I can’t take this anymore
and shuffled off right out the living room door
and the other one just stared at me and shrugged.
Cayton Bay
I’d argued with myself the whole way there
not joining in with the B-Movie script you all rehearsed
across me the hot car constricting my innards
I climbed out of the rear window
and strapped myself to the roof with the surfboards
the 1960s pastiche we couldn’t shake off
I stared up at the conflicted sky and waited for rain
to wash me onto the moss-tufted cliff
shrug me from its chalk-bald scalp and into
silk-grey tears as far as the eye can shed
feeling no more real than the bloodshot limestone wreck
squinting out over the gambling, sugar-scoffing town
the wellied walkers with their creatures pointless
pointlessly I stared up at the conflicted sky and waited
for waves to rip the sickness from the pit of me
the melodrama I couldn’t shake off
silk-grey tears as far as the eye can shed
I’d argued with myself the whole way there
and lost.
Waltzes
I wanted to tell you about how I like
waltzes. But something interrupted
us like a bleating phone or late for work and
I never finished what I was saying.
It’s really nothing
just that it must have been nice
to stop all that prancing about
and look someone in the eyes
for three whole minutes
and gently sway
as I say
doesn’t matter anyway.
One
two
three.
If You Know What I Mean
If you’re the sort
who nightmares every morning
if you’re the sort
who rabbits in the headlights
if you’re the sort
who thunders home, ungiving
won’t admit, not until
the cold light
of a bedside candle
in an old wine bottle
on a plastic table
in a caravan
on a coastline
in the weeping arms
of a giant.
If you’re the sort
who spaghetti-junctions to the bar again
gin-slings yet another unspent evening
cries
because forgetting what it felt like not to grip the brakes
forgetting what it felt like
to close your eyes and only darkness
close your eyes and only darkness
forgetting what it felt like
to o p e n your eyes and only world.
If you’re the sort
who awkwards in the hairdresser’s
because how can you be so trimmings of truth
and how can you be so sweepings on the floor
and how can you be so classless and masked.
If jealous eyes are waiting for you
at midnight in the hallway
if wife at home
is half-way down the bottle
is too tired to be drunk
is too tired to be drunk by you
the way you used to drink her
half-way down her bottle.
If vein in your temple
has been throbbing
for longer than memory
if you’re restless
if you’re scared
if you know what I mean
if you know what I mean.
A Week Spent Leaving You
You read a lot of books.
Or perhaps it's just the one book, but you read it a lot.
I go running, leave my high-horse in the garage, drinking salt water.
The coastline is being sick all over itself.
There are hairpin bends all across the bed.
The weather happens all at once.
Don’t you know it’s mathematically impossible
to photograph a rainbow. Physically, then.
Just like you can’t photograph someone’s face
while they are sleeping, or they die.
I try with yours, but you just keep on waking up and living
and now I’ll never remember the curve
between your eyelids and your nose.
The TV is being sick all over itself.
All those bright colours. In Spanish, too.
Foreigners bombing the shit out of each other.
I make bets with myself.
If Clinton wins the primaries then I’ll leave you.
I make bets with your life, but you just keep on reading.
We stand on the cliff and watch the rocks take a battering.
You look me up and down as if you’re trying to photograph
the slant of my neck, but you can’t.
Your eyes are made of glass.
We will always remember the angle
of the rocks reaching the sea, despite the battering.
Let’s have a cup of tea and talk about our future.
I make the tea with salt water.
Our conversation is sick all over itself.
We can’t leave Spain like this,
skid-marks all across the finish line.
Someone will have to clean up.
Ravenglass for Eskdale
Alight here for memories of grandparents,
mudflats, and sweat under Gore-Tex.
Strap on your walking boots, wrap up
the flapjacks in two layers of cling film,
take your laminated Ordinance Survey map
and follow the hachures until you reach the sky.
Go down to the beach, dip in a toe and gasp
then surrender yourself to the ocean,
let it wash you out and up again
from Corkickle to Seascale.
Forget the bullies at school,
they have been drowned in Selker Bay.
Get lost in Skalderskew woods and emerge
in Younghusband. Die among the leaves
and let your flesh become mulch.
Your funeral will be at St Bees
and the cathedral chasm will hum with bees
or monks or friends who will miss you.
Passengers from Manchester may wish
to hold on extra tight, there’s colours here
you’ve never even seen. Slow down,
or you’ll smudge the ink of the hills.
Take care to leave your personal belongings
on the train; you won’t be needing them anymore.