For almost a millennium, when all their deeds that would be done were done, the island brought its people here to bury them. Now, fifty years since mourners sang their final sorrows, the chapel’s wooden roof has fallen in on generations of loss. In the graveyard, bones bed shallowly on carboniferous rocks and, above, flat […]
Category: Poems (Page 1 of 2)
They appeared by our kitchen window, some sombrely on foot, others in more cars, we thought, than were on the island. At the front, a green van had been repurposed as an adequate hearse. At the rear, hurried two mopeds and a bike. Give or take, the whole island was there. With my hands in […]
How do you speak to me?
With what occult science and hidden roses
do you address the crystals in my heart?
On Brighton’s pebble beach, patrolled by seagulls,
two women sat in white linen.
Father and son play Gnaoua music
In what was once a palace.
The clue is in the title
A reflection on…
…well read it and decide
This poem describes my travels during the summer of 2024. At some point towards the end, when we were staying in Hartland, North Devon, I realised that there was an unexpected connection in the poems I had written about each stage of my journey. I felt they worked best as a single piece and this […]
This is one of a few poems I have written in the Scots tongue – it just flows so much better. Maya Angelou said this: “My name is Maya Angelou. I grew up on dirt roads… I was a mute. I was poor and black and female. The only key I had which would open […]
This poem comes out of an evening in Cambridge organised by Palestinians, Jews and others, where we shared music and dance and discussed the terrible events in the Middle East. At it Rowena and I sang words from Seamus Heaney’s poem The Cure at Troy which I had put to music. We sang ‘believe in […]