It’s UK publication day for ‘A Poem for Every Question’, my new collection of poems for children, illustrated by the brilliant Joe Berger. Inside there are poems to answer all sorts of interesting questions: how many stars in the universe exploded today?; who had the first holiday?; how many times a day do we laugh?;…
poetry
Roger’s Thesaurus In order to grow, expand, widenhis lexicological corpus,Roger bought, acquired, purchaseda synonymopedia, a thesaurus. Soon, presently, without delay,he no longer ran out of things to say,speak, utter, express, articulate,give voice to, pronounce, communicate. This was all very well, fine, great,wonderful, super, terrificbut his friends, mates, pals found himboring, tedious, dull, soporific. So let…
It’s publication day for the new edition of my first poetry collection, You Took the Last Bus Home. It’s been unavailable for nine months, following the demise of its original publisher, Unbound. I’m so delighted that Picador stepped into the breach to bring out this shiny new edition. Hopefully it will now be back on…
To make poems rhyme can sometimes be toughas words can seem to be from the same bough,yet each line’s ending sounds different, though,best covered up with a hiccough or cough. Was this upsetting to Byron or Yeats?Dickinson, Wordsworth, Larkin or Keats?Did they see these words as auditory threats?Could they write their lines without caveats? What…
There now follows a short public information film containing particulars of Brian Bilston and The Catenary Wires’ autumn tour. You can find more particulars here, in particular: https://brianbilston.com/events/
O do not askif I am beach body ready. Observe how the folds of my stomach ripplelike the wind-pulled waves. Rub your hands over these pale buttocks,sand-smoothed by time. Note my milk-white limbs like washed up whalebones,stranded and useless. Consider these tufts of hair on my back and shoulderssprouting wildly like sea-grass. And listen to…
The mathematician John Venn was born on this day in 1834. To commemorate the occasion, here’s a poem in the form of a Venn diagram.
I took delivery yesterday of some advance copies of the gorgeous new edition of ‘You Took the Last Bus Home’. In celebration of that, here’s the title poem … You Took the Last Bus Home you tookthe last bus homedon’t know howyou got it through the door you’re always doing amazing stuff like the time…