Category: 2013

1 | 2   Poetry Masterclass at the Embassy Theatre   The woman who arrived late and sat beside me did not have a copy of the poems but accepted an offer to share mine. And so it began.   She referred to the presiding poet as Bill and, before he’d begun to address himself …

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1 | 2   As if I should care   I met your old girlfriend from years ago today, at an awards ceremony.   I was a little dressed up, she was a little dressed down   in jeans and sneakers but still wearing the wide smile I remembered.   I’ve done a Masters in …

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1 | 2   The spirit wrestling gallery   In the spirit wrestling gallery there are no doors or windows, only wind, rustling and wrestling with itself.   A bird has escaped inside. It flies on the back of the wind. It drops and circles but it doesn’t land. There is a receding wall. The bird …

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1 | 2   Horizon   In 600 BC, the Greek philosopher Thales knew that you could chart an ocean course by laying your fingers one above the next to measure the space from the far horizon to one constant star. That mix of commonplace and mystical – a small stack of fingers, and a star …

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1 | 2   Excerpt from The Lie That Settles ARRIVAL 2   There was a black wind-up phone in the ticket office. The operator chattered away as she connected me to the prison number. I got the impression she had not had a call to deal with all night. There was an unfamiliar lilt to her …

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1 | 2   Excerpt from The Lie That Settles PROLOGUE   1947: Near Maidstone, Kent, England    The seasons in the countryside could be measured by the hop vines as they crept up the wires. It was autumn now, and the vines were full. The air outside the cone-shaped oast houses shimmered with the heat from …

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1 | 2   Sigourney Weaver Knows Me in Another Life Where I Am a Drummer   You should see my thighs. In this life I am always doing a double kick. Heel down. Heel down.  I’ve been lifting weights and the definition in my forearms is off the charts. I used to be a bass player, but now …

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1 | 2   Sigourney Weaver and I Visit Iwamizawa in My Dreams   It’s February and it’s the coldest it ever gets in Iwamizawa. 4 a.m. and sunrise is hours off. In four months the sun will have been up for 7 minutes and thirty seconds. But there is snow. And it is snowing. Sigourney …

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BRRM! BRRRM!   Mum’s washing and I’m drying. Mum’s talking to me and I’m not answering – well I am, but in a grumpy sort of way. So okay, I’m being rude and surly (that’s one of Dad’s favourites: ‘Take that surly look off your face!’) but my brother’s outside messing around with his motorbike …

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Going to visit Mom’s sister, two states over   Sister pinches me in the leg and I turn to punch her, but she shows me two Pall Malls she stole from Mom’s purse before we left, clamps my mouth with her hand. We are in the back-back of the station wagon lying on our stomachs …

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