I’ve recently had a new poem published in Adjacent Pineapple, Issue Two.  It’s a great looking issue with some fine poets represented, including Paul Hawkins, Jazzmine Linklater, Joey Frances, Robert Sheppard and Paula Claire.  My thanks to Colin Herd for inclusion in the issue.

You can read Guided Meditation: for Maggie O’Sullivan here.  I’m grateful to Harriet Tarlo and Scott Thurston who workshopped this poem with me on their brilliant Experimental Poetry course for Arvon in September, and especially to Maggie O’Sullivan.  Maggie was the guest speaker on the course and it was an absolute joy to meet her, chat over dinner, and hear her read from her extensive body of work in Lumb Bank’s converted barn.  It was the night of the new moon, and we followed Maggie’s reading with an improvised, collaborative, group performance of murmur from the scattered pages on the barn floor.  The murmur of multiple voices in spontaneous speech.

Guided Meditation was completed in Hebden Bridge’s new vegan cafe, Our Humblest of Pleasures, which Maggie had heartily recommended to me.  I sat there with a look of intense concentration, frantically working and re-working the drafts for three hours over coffee and lunch before it was time to catch the first of many trains home.

An earlier version of the poem was posted on my blog here, and its origins are in an experimental sound piece I created here.