I've got two books of poems not too far from completion at present. One is called Accompanying and is about people alive or dead, known or unknown, who I feel go along with me through life, the main focus being on family, but also others. It contains a sonnet sequence in memory of my mother which won an Arvon Prize, and a companion sequence of differently shaped sonnets in memory of my father, making use of the theme of piano playing, his profession. I'm also working on ballades about my daughter and memories of Nigeria, and hope also to include some poems written to fit into the form of popular songs and be singable.
The other book is called You and started as a poem within Accompanying but grew to be a book in itself. It is a love poem about a crossed cultural relationship and the role of limitations of empathy here, taking into account the different conceptions of love the two people have, drawn the place or love in their different cultures.
Quite a few extracts from these books have appeared in the magazines -
Ambit, Acumen, The Rialto, Poetry Wales, the Poetry Review, Stand, Ambit, Times Literary Supplement, Criticial Survey, Wasafiri, Kunapipi, Magma
Some recordings of in progress poems are linked on the right.
As preparation for the Poetry Studio courses I'm thinking through ideas about versification, and going back to the question I studied in my PhD about free verse: what is a verse line?