About the writer 

PIC: Self with Laddie, an early poetic subject

I just obey the voices

It's not really rhyming poetry, is it even verse? Is it rhetoric, a falling out of inspired thoughts, or a metalangue for the indescribable? I try for realism, or credibility at least - even in flights of fancy.

To me, introductions are sometimes merely justifications or rationales. The application of such to any text might suggest it needs to have been better written. Yet I subsequently find from real living readers that it helps explain aspects they might not ordinarily have understood.

Here, I simply try to be informative. I try to write notes about that sometimes, even while some of what I propose as rationale only seems to perplex (both reader and self). Most of you have your own agendas anyway, and perhaps the application of such is what gives you interest, even I hope pleasure, in what you read.

Many influences have touched my thinking. Originally it was more an infantile career decision. I was pre-school, and would take a feather (I fashioned my own 'quill' from pigeon feathers - how grown-up, to be allowed to use a pen knife) and mum's stationery that was watermarked 'vellum' into the garden. Under a row of birches that stood in for a cloister, I wrote about a dog (see pic above) whom I regularly walked and other nonsense. I planned to become a monk (see also pic above - mum, why THAT hair?). Why that never happened is an interesting tale in itself, but besides music, writing was all I was ever good at in school. In my early teens, I had apparently begun writing verse, and my elder sister gave me the works of John Keats.

I found bits of Keats massively inspiring, but hadn't realised poetry required so much academic foreknowledge. The school library only had things like 'Janet and John' books... It's hard to stick with influences, I want to include other incidentals, but next it was Edward Lear. By now I was able to get to the library in town and found Stanley Unwin and John Lennon. Without realising it, Pete Brown via his lyrics for rock band Cream and Marc Bolan via Tyranasaurus Rex were also feeding me very palatable materials.

In between such discoveries, I was very much waffling away, ignoring rhyme as it seemed babyish - a view I still maintain while some academes are vice versa. I argue that the point of poetry is beautiful imagery, not clever literary or verbal tricks (why reduce yourself to performing dog status?). Meanwhile, travel and occasional bouts of poetic muse began weaving and wending into my pysche. Having foud myself stranded on Spaghetti Junction one dark and stormy night whilst hitch-hiking, a kind stranger who on reflection was a gay bloke hoping to score, took me back to his shared house. Several stories emerge as I tell you this, but most singularly he gave me a copy of Lawrence Ferlighetti's "Coney Island of the Mind" to read.

Frankly I didn't quite get on with it at the time - and was oblivious to the poor bloke's intentions, though I thought the photo of him in his underpants and a balaclava were dodgy. It was not until the muse awoke in me more recently that I obtained a copy of Coney Island and enjoyed it uproariously. Not until I read it somewhere did I have the faintest inkling he was gay. And if he was, so what? Prior to the Spag Junction time, in my teens I'd written with no cognisant influences - except I might point out I had bought several old poetry books. Scott, Browning (EB), Whitman - about twenty or so, just because it was poetry. But they were all just as dense as Keats. I  had however indulged my love of fusty old shops, dusty old books and literature.

As they say up north, writing isn't a proper job and my staying off the poverty line meant little time for the muse. And despite other proper job advice I tried for decades to put a rock band together. Despite my head being full of ideas, I've never been as prolific with songs or music as I am verse. Not that there's vast volumes. Meanwhile, I would drive my partner to and from work every day. Waiting for her in the car, I'd idly scan radio stations. On BBC Radio 4, Mariela Frostrup presented a book review/interview show on Thursdays. This got me into reading fiction - previously, fact was all I'd read. I enjoyed Lolly Willows, Star of The Sea and suddenly remembered being given Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar at Grammar school. A grammar school once attended by laureate Ted Hughes - whom I met there - yet no bells rang even though I was writing poetry back then.

I read the Bell Jar with great relish, then remembered stuff like Titus Groan - I'd read Tolkein, naturally, but thought his songs and verse soppy if in keeping with the Rings. Back to the recent past, and I wondered, since I'd begun my latest phase, did Sylvia write poetry? Oh what a joyous realisation! I even obtained a symposium on her work. In that ex-railway station-cum-bookshop up near York somewhere, I found Peake's 'selected verse'. Another beauty, for at this point, I was finding what I call my voice - and- typical me, had not noticed how dark my verse was becoming. An item title "Wharncliffe Chase" was perhaps the turning point, but I only realised it as I entered a competition run by The Dark Poetry Club.

Even so I think there's some deep joy and celebration in my verse too - I can't be a one trick pony as I never really know what I'll write next...

In the greater meanwhile, the passing of a friend (well, my ex partners ex who came back to live with her actually) resulted in my inheriting much useful literature. Ian Thomas had been at Cambridge studying literature, and my ex gave me his study books. John Donne, that sort of thing. Most influential in all that is "Classical Literary Criticism" - Aristotle, Horace and Longinus. Many things I had discovered for myself in recent years were here given names and rational explanations. 

I had fancied reading Mary Oliver on poetry recently, however her instruction on rhyme for example isn't what I seek. Having stumbled on Plato's remarks on poetry via a Greek website presented on social media, I googled for books by him and Aristotle on poetry. Ari' is in the post, Plato is reserved at my local library.

So that is where I'm up to, and am trying to make this website presentable as I enjoy a moment of quiet in my head. Perhaps only stilled by the anger and frustration with the local council, who put profit before environment (to build on green belt against government directives in place to prevent sprawl becoming urban saturation. Sh*t, I was in such a good mood up to this point...