Hi, here you'll find information about myself, my novels, my approach to writing and details about my teaching and mentoring roles.
EVENTS: Everything currently cancelled! Watch this space. Here's a link to a live Facebook book group on Blasted Things that I did for the University of St Andrews Alumni Association: https://youtu.be/5X9QmcG77E4
In Orkney now and very happy to be here. It wasn't looking likely a few weeks ago. And I seem to finding my way into my next novel, still very young, too early for it to have a name or a solid existence, but it is more than just a twinkle. I need to nurse it close and not speak about it any more. Sad new this year, our lovely Sadie died in May - she's the dog pictured above. We could not contemplate a dog-less existence so have a puppy called Eddie now, a cockapoo, who is carrying on the spirit of dog. Lovely six month old boy, such a different character, affable and cheeky, whereas Sadie was ... well, her completely own person. Underneath is the first poem from my Moreton Bay Fig sequence in 'Nub' published by Mariscat Press.
Meeting
Do you know the Moreton Bay Fig? Have you been introduced? The one that spreads hall-sized the one with buttress roots that stretch like walls, head high or more the one with little beads of figs inedible, with patent leather leaves the one that’s deeply littered underneath in rustling clefts?
A human can press her lips against that vegetable hulk can eye the O’s and eyes that stretch the bark rear back her head to gasp at massive boughs (how do they branch so far, bear all that weight?) the complex bulk: in wonderment, in worship – or in want?