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| I
was born in
Oxford
in 1956. My mother was born in the
Claddach,
Galway
– an impoverished fishing community
without electricity, running water or sewers, situated outside the city
proper. My father’s people came from Redhill, in Surrey. I went to local
comprehensive schools and, for a while, to Sunday school at the convent. I
had a couple of years doing a range of disparate jobs (milkman, stagehand,
hiring out boats, gardening, landscaping, playing guitar in a bar,
building, house renovation) and travelling in Europe - before going to
Cheltenham Art College.
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spent a year in the Isles of Scilly – reading, growing daffs and spuds
and shooting rabbits with a Czech shotgun. I did a degree in English, from
1978 to 1981, at what was then the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and
Technology. It was in that period that I came across the poets who have
influenced me most. These included Americans such as Ashbery and O’Hara;
contemporary European poets; and writers closer to home including Roy
Fisher, John James, Barry MacSweeney, Doug Oliver, Peter Riley and John
Welch. And countless more, of course. I particularly liked Pasolini and
his description of himself as a Catholic Marxist. After doing an M.Litt.
in Modern Poetry at
Stirling
, I moved to
Italy
in the autumn of 1983. I lived and worked
there until 1991, mainly in Rome. The painters who I loved most were the
great European Modernists: Kandinsky, Miró, Klee.
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John Welch published
my first poems as The Interior
Designer’s Late Morning in 1983. His Many Press also did Bar Magenta (1986) : half of the poems were mine; half were by Simon
Marsh (who has been based in
Milan
for over 20 years now). Peter Riley
brought out my Odes on St.
Cecilia’s Day as one of
his Poetical Histories in 1990. Then the Many Press published The
Metro Poems in 1992 – one poem for each of the stations of the
Rome
metro. Rod Mengham did two Equipage
booklets in 1995: Psyche in the
Gargano and Paul Klee’s Diary.
Andy Brown published Keith Tippet
Plays Tonight as a Maquette chapbook in 1999. Salt did Blueroads:
Selected Poems in 2003. There were two chapbooks in 2006: Minor
Yours, from Oystercatcher Press, and Sound
Signals Advising of Presence from infernal
methods.
I’ve been lucky
enough to be involved in some memorable readings over the years: with
David Chaloner, Helen MacDonald and Roger Langley at Cambridge
Conferences of Contemporary Poetry; with bass player Simon Fell at
SubVoicive; with guitarist Ron McElroy at the Diorama Gallery; with John
Welch, Simon Marsh, Nigel Wheale and Peter Riley on several occasions, in
various locations.
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My paintings have been
exhibited quite frequently over the last ten years or so and have often
been used as cover illustrations for poetry books.
Music, painting and writing have been equally important to me but
since spring 2006 I have
dedicated myself almost exclusively to the writing.
The results have included The Pistol Tree Poems (a collaboration with Simon Marsh which is
ongoing and unfolding on the Great Works website);
Berlioz (serialised on
Intercapillary Space); Italia (published by Liminal Pleasures); The Sardine Tree (a life of Miró); From the Green Hill (based on the work of veteran
jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stanko); and the Shearsman book Nistanimera.
I live on the
Norfolk
coast, with my wife Lynn, in a coastguard
cottage which is creeping ever closer to the cliff edge. The views are
increasingly breathtaking.
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