A Wild Inhabitation

Published July 2007
A5, 24pp, stapled, card cover
ISBN 978-1-905465-07-1
£4.00

“These poems, written in my late teens and early twenties, are largely autobiograhpical, about the country I left and the metropolis that took me in, about loss and desire in youth.”

From ‘A Wild Inhabitation’

II.Gosforth Cross

They grounded their beast- and bird-headed craft
on Braystones’ milling pebbles, at Silecroft
overlooked by dunes, on a beach of suave
slick mud up an inlet at Ravenglass.

A summer day. Standing on a green grave
watching a breeze slowly heave and then pass,
stifled among yews, looking at their cross –
carved rust-red sandstone honed on hot blue sky.

The fells mount up, Atlantic pitch and toss
and swell of rock. Their mark is the long I,
five yards tall and ten centuries across.

They made land in ships of dust. When the heart
describes itself, its pride is raised in art
and stands by lies though all of time’s denial.