I’m a poet, teacher, retired army major, qualified accountant (winner of the 1976 RAPC Apprentice College Accounting Prize), Randy Newman fan and photographer; but mostly a poet and this website is about that.  I am married to the poet and artist Helen Ivory.

My two most recent books were published in 2016:  Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine with Cinnamon Press and Shed with Gatehouse Press.  A new edition of Whistle Cinnamon Press in 2018.     Details of all my books can be found on the books page.

I’ve been performing the show Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine with Arts Council funding since 2016 including at London Roundhouse, STAnza International Poetry Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival and Norwich Arts Centre.  I The show is a very different beast to the book and there’s more about it  here.  It received two major Arts Council Lottery Fund Awards in 2010, was shortlisted for  the Saboteur Best Spoken Word Show. Dr Zeeman the show is (loosely speaking) a sequel to from my previous show Whistle.

Whistle received two major Arts Council Lottery Fund Award, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Prize for New Work in Poetry and won the 2013 Saboteur Best Spoken Word Show Award.  The poem Victor from the book and show won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize in 201.    I performed over sixty times, including a weeks run at the London Roundhouse, a full Edinburgh Fringe run and a British Council tour of India. Reviews are here.  It had a renaissance in 2018, when I performed it 3 times, including as a one night double bill with Dr Zeeman.

I’ve taught poetry & photography (sometimes both at once) and performance to students from reception classes, MA Groups, support groups, prisoners, excluded pupils and all sorts of other people.  In 2016 I started work on a project in North Norfolk with people with mental health conditions – it is a truly inspiring transformative project and you can check it out here  Change Minds Here is a little film of me working with veterans.

A few years back I bagged an MA, with Distinction, in ‘Writing the Visual’ from the then Norwich School of Art & Design, studying under Andrea Holland and George Szirtes.

I could go on……