The latest reading from my poetry book, Up in the Air. This is from the Love poetry section and it’s called Muse. I wrote it for my wife on our wedding day.
Why not order a copy of Up in the Air for a friend or loved one this Christmas?
Here’s Diaspora of Light, the latest in my series of readings from my poetry collection, Up in the Air. It’s about the real reason light travels so long and far across the universe.
Wearing a British Sea Power T-shirt, a group I’ve loved ever since seeing them at the first Latitude Festival.
Here’s the latest in my series of Poems on Video from my collection Up in the Air.
An alembic is a distilling tool that combines different elements to create something new. It’s used in philosophy for a process of refinement, or transmutation. This poem, written about a summer evening in my grandmother’s garden in Eastbourne, is my first video request. Let me know if there’s a poem from Up in the Air that you’d like me to read on video.
And of course this poem is dedicated to my grandma, Pamela Isobel Lilian Korn.
You can buy a copy of Up in the Air here:
This poem was written during a time when I did a lot of volunteering for wildlife trusts and other environmental groups. Amongst other things, I learned how to build a drystone wall, coppice woodland, and lay hedges, in some beautiful parts of the country. There was always something magical about being outside, working with a group of like-minded people, whatever the weather.
Hedgelayer
A man, a man I could have loved
starts to shade, to shade the morning mist.
He is beating stakes, stakes into the clay
forcing them past stones, stones and steady roots,
the things weak within the earth
and the things that hate to move.
As I approach he takes his shape assuredly
from the frail and wet white air,
a seamster weaving hazel whips through the hedge,
outwitting the final challenge of scratch and rip.
In defeat the hawthorn rests its useless claws
uneasily against itself, uncertain how to act.
Then feels the sap rise, rise again in its veins,
and knows that it is elect.
Hedgelayer features in my poetry collection Up in the Air, available here: