The Party Jar

You started on the day that she left Downing Street, a penny for the Poll Tax, a penny for the miners, and carried on throughout the Blairite decade, a penny for Hillsborough, a penny for Privatisation, when such barbed thoughts of her became passé, a penny for the Chilean disappeared, a penny for the Belgrano, [...]

A Late Poem to Commemorate Yesterday’s Great Event

For Frank Auerbach on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday It is not the same day as yesterday, but you live it the same anyway strolling through often-sketched North London avenues, street lamps lean over like familiar drunks with some ribald tales to tell, though their loud aftershave of grit, rust and benzine has altered [...]

Video: Keats House gig, November 2010

This gig was recorded at Keats House on the 7th November 2010. Introduced by Raymond Antrobus. Featuring many sonnets that I had professionally memorised that morning. Was a lovely experience soaking up the vibes in Keats’ bedroom before doing my set. You can watch it in 720p here. 1. Route 68 Walworth Road 2. by [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Thirty

The Finish Line I’m not that rippling superman ahead, the one who bounds like some extinct gazelle that lorded over pre-historic fells, his names and works are lost and yet he leads: the one to whom we’re all in greatest debt, including Petrarch, spurred on by the call of Laura from the distant, eternal horizon [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-nine

Pissing in the City at Night I do so knowing none shall make their bed in this grey corner of the square mile the rent-a-pigs won’t let the walking dead lay down amongst the suits and cramp their style nor will they try and halt me while mid-stream without my speckles splashing their toe-claps though [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-eight

…but then again, who does? This moment can happen to anyone, when in the midst of the dull day-to-day, they spot upon the floor of their hallway the dull glint of the tin-foil unicorn. They clench it hard as slowly the truth dawns, they’ve been sleeping as days have slipped away, blinded by neon, hunched [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-seven

The Poet Says Goodbye to his Old, Worn-out Winter Coat Thread-bare, moth ravaged, you’ve worn me well, five years of rain-trudge, pocket bulge, I clomped through London’s back alleys (not hills and dales) my early thirties skin, hefty and plump and more than a match for the winter winds, weighed down with paperbacks and Guinness [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-six

The Poet Reflects on his Many Failures as a Musician I should have learned during that walk of shame on being dropped from the recorder class to never pipe Frère Jacques again nor torment hangovers at Sunday Mass. Guitar followed, those few three-fingered chords helped me play Cobain’s About a Girl, my young voice trembled [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-five

To Commemorate the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the 1985 Brixton Riot No moral pang can halt the bullet’s path once the cortex sends the message down the whole process is strictly aftermath before the trigger squeeze, the deed is done. You cannot stop the brick once it is thrown, physics overrules sudden remorse, the deal is [...]

Sonnet Hack – Day Twenty-four

Advice to Novice Poets Concerning Tough Crowds The crowd could be a clutch of art school bores, where coolness guilds their vapid, sterile minds— or pissed up pseudo punks with axes to grind the schmuck on stage is a target, nothing more. Or wine and cheese cabals at the Troubadour who’ll hum in recognition, if [...]