I recently wrote that I have a propensity to think of myself as outcast. This self casting as the sore thumb or the ‘other’ doesn’t just arrive from nowhere. I grew up raised by aging hippie parents who did things their own way. My mother had very specific thoughts on god and good and love…

I came across the writing of Talia Marshall very recently. Her rebutting of Paul Moon and Scott Hamilton’s takes on Ans Westra to be exact. The piece is sharp, humorous, withering and persuasive. I summarise but in essence it starts with ‘the dog had a stroke and now I am here dealing with you boof…

Paw and hoof and foot pock marks extend towards a grey haze of horizon. Each one the scar of this morning’s moment of happy free abandon. They swirl and knot and zig and zag and finally lead back to the dunes. They die as happiness gives way to indelible terra firma. The day matures and…

It’s in my bones, the old country.The first hour in blighty and I stepped into Heathrow,no heath no row just so you know,  into the carpark building, whose walls I will call bones,the building’s skeleton, holding cars in the sky,  they were made of concrete, which is made of bones,I’m no geologist but trust me…

In the beginning there was no fracture between land and sky. The stars hugged the earth like it was a newborn, and so it was, and so it was. The forces of the earth knelt in the hinterland, the air hummed a warm analogue feedback, power surged and hissed, the show was about to go…

With definite inspiration from Bill Manhire’s Hotel Emergency a dodgy Facebook translation from Swedish to English turned into a poem on the state of the nation. I hereby explain mushroom season in New Zealand has begun. A little dry, but they are going. I hereby explain corporate season in New Zealand has begun. Operationalised, strategically…

My body represents the coming together of a billion individual decisions , the collision of trillions of happenstance acts ,without any one I would not be me. I would not be here. For better or for worse I am the culmination of my line . From boat builders and sailors, tavern keepers and brewery workers…

St Cuthbert’s stood strong and fortified on a raised piece of ground. Its walls were thick concrete, ramparts for God.  Elysian defences. From its vantage one could gaze out at the Slaves of Satan across the street. Perhaps it was all the more reason for the thickness of the walls. When the stout church was…

Larkin subverted. Dedicated to my dad Paul and my grandmother Joan, both of whom slipped away . They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   They don’t mean to, but they do.   They slip away through nights and days  And take along some special bits of you. But they were fucked up in their turn…