Telling Time

This collection of poems appeared on my blog during the lockdown. They were written, in an attempt to tell, in all senses of that word, the time.  Like most people’s experience of those months, it’s a mixed lot, in both mood and measure.

All are still on the blog, along with audio tracks of readings and the original reflections, but I've collected them here in this small book. I'm selling it for £6, to include postage and packing in the UK, and everything will go to The Woodland Trust. You can get a preview by clicking the cover.

Telling Time

£6.00

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I haven’t yet figured out shipping overseas! But if you’re outside the UK and would like a copy, send me a message letting me know where you are and we’ll work something out.

A Christmas Abecedary

The Christmas Lists

 The verses in this Christmas Alphabet book originally appeared on a series of four Christmas cards from 2013 to 2016, and are published here as a complete sequence for the first time. 

A Christmas Abecedary

£5.00

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'An Advent Calendar' and
'Five Kinds of Christmas Card', originally appeared on Christmas cards in 2017 and 2018, and are published here together for the first time.

The Christmas Lists

£5.00

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OTHER POEMS

A pair from Christmas 2019

At the Turning of the Year
So long ago – that spring we woke to see
The blackening ash and furling chestnut leaves,
The hedges decked in early autumn weeds,
The empty nests, the still and solemn hives,

Poles cracked apart, and every ocean scoured,
Forest tears rain on scorching earth,
Each continent collapsed into an hour,
The screaming screened, a ready shrink-wrapped world.

Christmas cheer and bitter winter day
Came with berries red as any blood.
We’d stretched to stars beyond the milky way,
But still in crisis, nothing understood.

At the Turning of the Ear
So long ago – that year it seemed we stirred
To hear the strains of singing on the breeze,
The winging beat of one migrating bird,
Roots that murmur, trees communed with trees,

Winds and waves obeyed, wild places won,
Hand by handful seeds so softly sown,
Slowly quelling engines, groundswell hum,
The footsteps of a child gone forth alone.

Hark herald angels at the Christmas cradle,
Remember now the moment when it seemed
That through the steady eye of a needle, 
Amazingly, some other song was streamed.