*NEWS UPDATE*
- A new book - "Faith" - is now available from Shadowtrain.
- ..and there's more: one million elephants couldn't begin to understand is alive here from January 1st, 2009 -- (or it was until the Chinese government blocked access to blogspot sites and so it kinda stopped abruptly. And it was going so well, too.....)
- Well, here's the latest update, today, July 31st. One million elephants have, or has, been moved to here and will be active again shortly.... well, maybe later in the summer.... ironically, Typepad sites are now blocked too, but at the moment I can get there using devious means, so let's see what happens....
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I hate to write about myself, but here goes: I hope there is enough room.
I think my poems are sometimes acts of explicit design and at other times products of chance and a subconscious activity I rarely understand. More usually they come from somewhere between these polarities. When asked to explain my poems I usually resort to taking on a puzzled or pained expression, and say I can’t speak at the moment because I have to wash my hair. When I have to explain my poems because there is a gun at my head I admit they perhaps sum up my life, in part or in whole, which is either as it should be or very sad. And I have no idea if it’s true, to be honest. I don’t think about things like themes. Themes are for others to find, but if the poems are my life then that’s the theme, I suppose. Or one of them. If I understood it all I’d be very afraid, and I wouldn’t write poems.
But what of life outside poetry world? After ten highly amusing years working as a telephone operator, in 2005 I went to China to teach English to university students. In 2007 I returned to the UK to be the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Nottingham Trent University. Then, in 2008, I again fled the bald thugs and their women (sic) who have taken over our English cities’ market squares to hurl lovingly hand-crafted spit-soaked insults at passers-by of an evening, and returned to China, which is a long way away.
Please click here to read my Autobiography.