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Welcome to my website, a place for me to share my poems with anyone who fancies turning up or who stumbles in accidentally needing shelter. The photo above was taken by my friend Charlie at a river spot near where I live in the Cévennes mountains.

My latest poetry collections, The Last Woman Born on the Island (Vagabond Voices) and The Red House (Drunk Muse Press) are now out and I am chuffed to bits with the beautiful books both these presses have created. See the Publications page for more details.

Previous publications are a pamphlet, Rib, (Wayleave Press, 2021), and two full collections: The Art of Egg, (Two Ravens Press, 2015; reprinted Pindrop Press, 2019) and To Know Bedrock (Pindrop Press, 2011).

My next collection is due out with Vagabond Voices in Spring 2026.

 

News

* I am over the moon to have been awarded The Poetry Society's inaugural Tobias Hill Poetry Prize for my poem Baggies, first published in Poetry News in summer 2024.

* I'm also delighted to have won 1st place in both the Kent & Sussex Open Poetry Competition 2025 with my poem Oblivious and 1st prize in the Frogmore Poetry Prize 2025.

* Another, Lungs, was awarded 3rd prize in the Magma Poetry Competition 2025 (Editors Prize).

* Finally, my poem In the Garden of Fleeting Mutability, was highly commended in the Charles Causley Trust Poetry Competition 2025.

* The Last Woman Born on the Island was longlisted as one of 12 titles for the Highland Book Prize 2022. It was also named by publisher Vagabond Voices as their best-selling book of 2022, across all categories. Charlotte Gann, writing in The Frogmore Papers, describes the poems as "generous, full of atmosphere and sense of place".

* Reviews of The Red House have been very forthcoming, probably due to the niche-ness of the collection. Hilary Menos of The Friday Poem, says, "love of language underpins this new collection"; Clare Best, writing in The Frogmore Papers, describes it as, "rich in thought, language, memory, story and humanity", while Mandy Haggith calls it "deliciously vivid poetry" in the pages of in Northwords Now. Jennifer McGowan in Orbis says simply, "Read this book". Did my heart do a flutter? You bet it did.