I live in an old butcher’s shop in Norwich with my wife the poet Helen Ivory, and sciatica.

My photography has been widely published and exhibited, including at the National Portrait Gallery. This Man’s Army (Dewi Lewis Publishing) was published in 1998.

My poetry ranges from biting satire – “Figura was a revelation – funny, sharp and on top form.” Robert McCrum, The Observer – to the dark material of Whistle – “His subject matter is so challenging it makes the audience gasp. In spite of this, he engages the listener with warmth and humour.” Patience Agbabi. Also some daft stuff!

Performing is what I like best, and what I’ve been doing for a while now – from Toronto to Alicante to Fakenham to Maastricht to New Delhi to Athens to New York to Swaffham.

I cut my teeth as a writer and performer with poetry ensemble The Joy of Six.  I’ve gone on to publish several books.  My first two shows have been performed at leading UK Poetry Festivals StAnza and Ledbury, as well as at London Roundhouse and Edinburgh Book and Fringe Festivals.  They’ve also been performed in Holland and India. The Remaining Men came out with Cinnamon Press in Mar 2024.  Helen Ivory, who also has a new book, and I went on a crazy book tour all over England and dipped into Wales mostly in Autumn 2024. We covered over 3000 miles and are off all over the place again this Spring (2025).

Whistle was first performed in 2010 and won the Saboteur 2013 Best Spoken Word Show and was nominated for the Ted Hughes Award. A new edition of the book was published by Cinnamon Press in 2018. I won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize in 2010 for the poem Victor from the collection. The show was revived for selected performances in 2018 and 2019.  It has, fingers crossed, got another booking for 2021. Performances to date include: London Roundhouse, Stanza International Poetry Festival, Chester, Bristol, Chester, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Ledbury, India, Maastricht and Norfolk and Norwich Festivals.

Boring the Arse Off Young People (Nasty Little Press) was first published in 2010 and after several print runs, I’ve decided that it needs a new edition. I expect this to happen in 2026, with the title ‘Mortality, I Could Live Without It’.  The plan is to do a Bus Pass tour, where I travel entirely using my bus pass. This sounds brilliant – we’ll see how and if it works out in practice.

My second spoken word show Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine ‘toured’ from 2016 right up until lockdown. It received major Arts Council Funding and was shortlisted for the Saboteur 2018 Best Spoken Word Show. Performances to date include: London Roundhouse, Stanza International Poetry Festival, Chester, Bristol, Chester, Edinburgh Book Festival,Ledbury, Masstricht and Norfolk and Norwich Festivals.

My next show Shed, with Theatre Volière was to be premiered at Library Theatre, Canada Water as part of the Marchland 2020 Season and at Norwich Arts Centre, unfortunately Covid came along the same week, so it never happened. I performed it at  The Cockpit Theatre and Ink Festival in 2024 and Stanza International Poetry Festival in March 2025. It has already got a couple of bookings for late 2025 /Early 2026 and I mplan to build a short tour around those. Don’t watch this space (due to lazy updates), but it will pop up on Socail Media and the Gigs Page here.

In 2021 I was Poet-in-Residence for NHS Salisbury to write poems about the experience  of staff at Salisbury Hospital during Covid. A pamphlet has now been published by Fair Acre Press and Olivia Coleman was filmed reading Night Shift and The Fifth Season from the book. My reading of Night Shift was selected for the Poetry Archive’s Worldview 2021. Commissions from a consortium of Social Care charities and Salisbury Cathedral have followed. The Social Care project was for their Memorial event and another pamphlet, Sixteen Sonnets for Care, with Fair Acre Press. Writing to commission, has had a profound effect on my writing process.  

I’ve had poems published in numerous magazines and anthologies. I’ve been placed or commended in a number of competitions. I was runner up in the Rialto / RSPB 2017 Poetry Competition, won the Café Writers’ Poetry Prize too long ago to remember, had two poems shortlisted in the Ledbury Poetry Competition, another in the 2015 Rialto / RSPB Competition, won Third Prize in the 2021 Hungry Hill Poetry Meets Politics Prize and highly commended in previous year. Most recently a poem was commended in the Trio International Poetry Competition.