Colours of Love
Who can deny hubris when writing of love? Who can define its quality, its chemistry? Would some kind of litmus test explain elusive...
top of page
Welcome
Please enjoy the poetry I have written throughout my life. Just click on a theme or browse the full collection below.
Winter Words
for Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth The echoes of a gift thought lost haunt the approach of age as a forgotten page...
21 views
A Winter’s Tale
Veiled in fixity four minutes on a plinth, Hermione listens as Leontes and Paulina discuss her statuesque long silence. Time is...
10 views
Poets in Old Age
WB YEATS Men’s hearts of old were drops of flame, Who could have foretold the heart would die? Yeats wrote one day in his noon-tide...
18 views
Stage Faust
Faust again attempts some puny wonder, but a papier-maché church, set, cast and city wall, a plaster castle built on high, they all...
11 views
Salvadore Quasimodo
Translations by Terry Hodgson On the Branches of the Willow Trees And how could we sing With an alien foot set on our hearts Among the...
15 views
for Ingrid Bergman (August 1985)
In the Aux Trois Quartiers She fingered scarves and laces, Smiling at some secret joke As shoppers sidled past In the heat and boulevard...
17 views
Conrad
He sought meaning where a peaceful sea turned grey and a storm-swept brig leaned black against the sky. Two broken crewmen stooping,...
38 views
The Panther
(translation of Der Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke) No more can he take in, his hooded eyes tire of looking out through iron bars; he...
28 views
Idol Chatter
For William Golding Hunched behind a lectern This man in yellow shirt And bright blue tie Derides processional ants Who carry through the...
6 views
Kierkegaard
When the rupture came, Soren Kierkegaard found loss not absolute. Connection persevered. Regina was given back To that corkscrew mind, In...
4 views
Troilus and Cressida
The safety curtain creaks aloft A gradual hush descends The audience settles to enjoy The wars and loves of Troy, Interpreted by...
2 views
Cardenio
Imagine Fletcher, chatting with Shakespeare, ageing at fifty, saying: What about this Spanish bloke, Cervantes? Quixote’s made a stir at...
0 views
Petrarch
Pensive and alone I tread the empty strand, Measuring my slow and heavy paces, Searching while intent on human traces In footprints left...
6 views
Times of Day
Dawn knocking woke up Troilus, Time bundled up his Cressida, the leaving was not easy, yet to Time he had to leave her. No twin trumpets...
8 views
Otranto Cathedral
E vietato in Otranto calpestare l’erba but over the cathedral floor, from the great west door, feet trample the Serpent, limbs of the...
9 views
Tom Paine, Dec 31st 1785
A taper illumines the head of the man bowed over the table, scribbling and smiling as ever, claiming that smoke descended, through his...
8 views
Light Falling on King Lear
The lights cut out as dusk fell on rehearsal in the handsome room in the northern capital city. The king paused in his rant and we waited...
7 views
In Camera
for Jean-Paul Sartre Exits are entrances - so actors tell - To a space which they create To make the watchers feel The unseen is just as...
13 views
Dennis Potter’s Last Performance
Stand by! The countdown has begun. The cameras roll: I hold the floor, Balance my cocktail, block the pain, At my best time, for the last...
9 views
bottom of page