Thanks to Alan Buckley for placing my poem We Play The Music of Food in the Highly Commended category for the Charm Poetry Prize. He writes, “This poem, with its intricate scheme of end and internal rhymes, contains some of my favourite lines from the whole competition. I don’t know why ‘the District Line loves Kew much more than Ealing’ but this poem convinced me it must be true.” You can read the competition report here.
I’ve spent a lot of May driving around Ireland in my campervan in unfeasibly good weather. I’d planned to do some editing, but I’ve written some new material instead.
Thanks to Stuart and Hayley at Verve for shortlisting my poem The Next Song on the Radio for their first ever Poem of the Month (April 2025).
You can read the winning poem and all the shortlisted poems on Verve’s Substack.
2024 was a great year for me creatively. This was largely down to other people, but it was dependent on being motivated to develop my writing, music, and voice skills. My writing mantra for 2025 is ‘Up the weirdness’, which doesn’t apply to life in general. Here is a map produced in Venice in 1776.
As part of a Winchester Poetry Festival fringe event, a few local poets have been reading poetry on a moving bus. The technique of holding the microphone with an arm wrapped around a pole prevents the poet from falling over – most of the time!
A trip to Edinburgh Fringe busking as Panda-monium, Hampshire’s leading panda harmonium duo, with Damian. We set up HQ at Mortonhall for the week. Near William McGonagall’s memorial in Greyfriars Kirkyard we spotted a notice which could easily have been penned by McGonagall himself.
I visited Apothecary at its new venue, the former skittle alley of the Tiger Inn in Bridport. Before the event I caught up with organiser Carolyn for a chips and editing in my mobile office.
I’ve been on an excellent poetry retreat at the National Writing Centre for Wales, where the tutors were Vanessa Lampert and Vicky Morris. I’ve definitely found a new Happy Place!
It was great to take part in Sound Winchester, a one-day festival at Arc with music and poetry from local performers and community groups. Here we see Hampshire Poet Damian Kelly-Basher accompanied by an audience member on a toy piano (photo by Amy Brown).