“Individuals who sat the most were roughly 50% more likely to die during the follow-up period than individuals who sat the least, even after controlling for age, smoking, and physical activity levels.” Scientific American. A poem about the dangers of sitting, dedicated to writers and all of those condemned to die in front of a computer (pretty much everyone, then).
Mushrooms can be magical in more ways than one. The Germans call them Hexenringe, we call them fairy rings. In spite of the rather twee name, they’re thought-provoking and powerful. There’s one in France that’s half-a-mile wide. The living edge of the underground mycelium sends out its silvery underground threads, secreting chemicals to digest organic matter in the ground ahead, releasing nutrients that feed the mycelium as it grows; a metaphor, if ever there was one.
Memories of an in-between, relics of things seen and unseen. Some imagery familiar from my short stories (gloves on graveyard railings), childhood (salt-blistered masts in the harbour and swans) and other fragments of the past. Originally written as a song lyric – perhaps reminiscent, in style at least, of David Sylvian – this poem comes to visit from time to time; like a European visitor.
A humble attempt at a tribute to the late jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius, in places imitating and paying homage to the bebop triplets, imagery and effects he used in his playing. His self-titled solo album made an enormous impression on me on its release in 1976 and has done ever since. Jaco even makes a cameo appearance in one of my stories.
Edward Hopper’s 1925 painting ‘House by the Railroad’ may have been one inspiration for film director Alfred Hitchcock in creating the Bates Motel for his film Psycho. Art critic Lloyd Goodrich described the painting as “one of the most poignant and desolating pieces of realism”. But there’s more to it than that; this is architecture at its most terrifying and, once seen, it’s impossible to un-think it.
“On day one / I stuck my neck out, / carved an ice swan / that melted before your eyes.” Seven days in the life of a spurned lover.
A poem partly inspired by reading about Jake Wilson‘s song cycle ‘All’s Well’, which was written from the point of view of the polar explorers who died on Captain Robert Scott’s 1912 Antarctic Expedition. But it is mainly a tribute to the anonymous explorers who have taken part in foolhardy ventures big and small since the beginning of time – we are all unsung heroes.
There’s already much to like about a documentary named after a Richard Brautigan poem. But after stumbling across part two of Adam Curtis’s thought-provoking if infuriating three-part film All watched over by machines of loving grace on BBC Knowledge recently, I’d have sympathised with Zoe Williams writing in the Guardian, “I kept thinking the dog was sitting on the remote”, had I known she’d said it; even though I don’t have a dog and she was on about something else altogether. This may have been a bit of a mind-fuck for an introductory paragraph but it’s nothing compared with what Curtis almost pulls off in these films.
A poem (work in progress) inspired by McCoy’s version of the Dizzy Gillespie composition ‘A Night In Tunisia’.
I’ve always wanted to write about the topography of dreams but never quite knew how to describe it. This poem is a work in progress.
