I wrote a poem a while back. Ash Akhtar read it and decided to do something with it. He got the miraculous Christopher Fairbank to read it (yes, that one), wrote some beautiful music and made this short film. It’s a privilege to have been involved.
See more of Ash’s fantastic work, and some of our other collaborations over at the Fervent Arts YouTube channel.
I’ve wangled my way into the Winter volume of this set of lovely anthologies – edited by the fabulous Melissa Harrison and out on Eliott and Thompson books. It’s off the back of some stuff I’ve been doing over at Some Small Corner and I couldn’t be happier. It’s only short, and it’s weird being alongside Coleridge, Gilbert White and Kathleen Jamie, but damn I’ll take it! Buy ten copies. Or one.
It’s been a while. Quite a year, in fact. I’ve been learning to teach, and it turns out teaching is really hard. No matter. I’ve been posting the odd thing at somesmallcorner.co.uk, but not much. It’s a lot like unconscious babble, the mind fetching back what has happened in the world while I’ve been looking elsewhere.
One of those things has today been posted at Caught by the River. I went for a walk and met an old fella who made my heart leap. I’ve not been able to shake him. Hope that door is still open, Mike – I’ll be by at some point.
I feel a poem needs not to assume it will be read. It has to have the energy to create its own necessity. Poems shouldn’t operate within an expectation of poems being passed around. So I get very stuck on the question: why should a poem begin?
Mountain*7 
