“splendid worm!”
This is a collection of various books and anthologies I’ve been published in over the years. Clicking the Buy button will take you to the publishers’ websites where you will be able to learn more about the books, and purchase them if you wish.
black jam
My first poetry pamphlet, due to be published with Broken Sleep Books in February 2019. I’ve written hundreds of poems over the last decade and this pamphlet distills what I consider to be my best work to date into a nice slim volume. There’s no overall theme as such, but together the poems create a kind of oil-slick futurism, featuring poems on themes as varied as videogames, disability and Doctor Moreau.
Battalion
Another Sidekick Headbook, this one focused on the bat. I teamed up with my friend and artist, Alex Stevens, and we created a poetry comic - The Entirely Natural Adventures of Batbat. Think Batman, except both he and all the villains are literal representations (the Penguin is an actual penguin, Poison Ivy is just some poison ivy, Scarecrow is an inert scarecrow in a field). Approaching an entirely new medium to a deadline was a lot of hard work, but we are both extremely proud of the results!
no, robot, no!
Robots, artificial intelligence and the terrifying AM all collide in this visual poetry melting pot of a book. For this I collaborated with Alex Stevens. We wanted to create a mythical notebook from an indistinct point in the future - sort of like a cyborg-flavoured version of Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings. Alex produced some wonderfully intricate illustrations, while I provided the poetic notes.
Aquanauts
The first in the Headbooks series from Sidekick Books, celebrating ocean life in a cut + paste manual of visual, calligraphic and concrete poems. My contribution comprised of a poem shaped like an underwater city ala Bioshock, and an ode to the most feared of underwater bosses in videogame history - Emerald Weapon from Final Fantasy VII!
Coin Opera II
This is one of my favourite books to have appeared in - an entire anthology of poetry inspired by the medium of videogames. I contributed a poem about the PS2 classic Shadow of the Colossus. The book also features a collaboration between myself and the poet John Clegg.
Bird Book III
An illustrated glossary of birds found among farmland, heathland, mountain and moorland. I contributed two poems, and I wanted them to feel like entries written in some old almanac, in which the birds might be written of in more fantastical, legendary terms.
The Emma Press anthology of aunts
I wrote a poem for this anthology, looking at grief through the lens of simulated reality in the classic videogame The Sims. How does it feel when a loved one creates a whole world inside a game, only to leave it behind when they die?
falling out of the sky
My first published poem for children appears in this thrilling book from The Emma Press, inspired by myths and legends. I chose the Welsh myth of Ceridwen the witch for my poem, in which she and her slave-boy transform into a series of animals in a battle of wits. You may remember a version of this story taking place between the wizard Merlin and Madam Mim in the Disney classic The Sword in the Stone.