Buoying up what should only be anchored on a seabed, launching horizon thoughts from a beachy head, polishing off planks running red in gallons on bloody Mary galleons, mutinying off bilious dream decks into wavy waters off Albion; a pirate seagull takes a selfie from a cliff ledge.
Out-of-breath knee-rug centenarians in their Sunday best blowing out as many candles as possible to show who’s the eldest, sudden street-sleepers rolling out nicotine-rolled mattresses, metal-detector treasure-hunting wanderers wondering where it’s at is; a hypochondriac pigeon twigs it and drops down dead on its chest.
Shuddering scaredy-cats fidgety-pecking bread-crumbs, cry-baby pram-pushing toddlers make-believing their mums perfect perchers on rain-dropping bunting over wet pavement stones, nesty fledgling prodigies playground-beaking on xylophones; an Olympic swift breaks the all-time record at 32 metres per second.
Up-in-the-branches and away-with-the-fairies for whatever it takes. a modest million-strong division of camouflaged ambushers awakes, budget-totting scrimpers’n’savers blowing it all in one fell swoop, flashy film producing flashers put away for a long time in a chicken coop; a skylarking starling in mirror-sunglasses sweepstakes.
I was born in Oxford but grew up in Devon. Then I moved to Italy at 28 where, to cut a long story short, I've been teaching English. I've lived in Cagliari, Sardinia since 1995.
For writing, I've been influenced by poets such as Phillip Larkin and WB Yeats and lately by Simon Armatage. However my first love is music and I’ve always paid particular attention to lyrics. I got a book of illustrated Beatles lyrics at 18 and that got me thinking about illustrating every poem I would write. I liked that extra ingredient of something visual and have, by and large, illustrated any poem I’ve ever written since.
I don't consider myself an artist so doing collages with paper, scissors and glue was a great way to cheat a bit! Sometimes I illustrate poems with photos, or drawings and watercolours, and recently a few oil paintings which is very dfficult!
I've had exhibitions of my collages which has been an added bonus. These have been put together with poetry readings. I have read my poems and there are examples here, either just audio, or video with my cat, Moony, named after Keith Moon, in tow. Cat's full name is Moony Gainsbourg Taylor, Telemachus Peter George after other influences! A great influence has been Johnny Morris and his renditions of my poetry. There are examples of his readings here.
I have written songs with Chicco Fresu which appear on this blog. He comes up with the music and then I fit the words and melody to it. I’m not a singer but we’ve recorded the songs because otherwise we would have forgotten how they went! I have also written songs by myself, and there are a few examples here too.
First and foremost, I like writing. Everything comes from that. The main idea is that poetry always goes together with visuals, music and performance.
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A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 