Working from home

About 25 years ago, with paternal leave looming, I set myself up to work from home, remotely logging in using a modem that shared the line with the phone. If the phone was used while I was connected, I got logged out.

That was pre-Web. Now many more facilities are available without having to use command lines and Terminal windows. A browser's all you need. Video links have added a new dimension - I've used whatsapp, MS Teams and Zoom in the last week alone. Now that files and whiteboards can be shared, online seminars are easier.

But really, I've only dabbled with home-working up to now. I'm beginning to experience the problems that people who work full-time from home complain about - finding a place to work, separating work from family life, isolation, etc. I still can't bring myself to use Facebook and Twitter for small talk, though I wouldn't rule it out.

The writing groups I'm involved with can't meet physically. We tried to organise a Zoom session but there weren't enough takers so we're exchanging files by e-mail. As coordinator I'm trying to collate the comments to the anonymised texts, which is interesting. Ten poets are bound to disagree on a piece. However, several of them might decide that the same lines require comment.

The movie of the book

These movies of poems in "Moving Parts" and elsewhere hark back to 2005 when I first owned a digital camera. File sizes and speeds were still worth worrying about then, and I used only free software, so the results don't compare at all well with many more recent YouTube offerings. The audio is especially bad, so I suggest you buy the booklet

• Crows Nest
• Paradox
• In the soul's darkroom
• Formal Dance
• Still life
• Escape
• Misreading the signs
• urspache
• a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA14lIi9yGo">8x8
• e^iπ+1=0

For comparison, see Tony William's far classier "Video-poem of The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street"

Or Matthew Stewart's - Tasting Notes or Nine Arches Press on Youtube.

Time for some ego-boosting

I've had a wave of rejections. Time to remind myself that there's hope yet.

Literary firsts

First competition win

First time I was offered a book contract

First entry in British Library catalogue

My first book launch

First time I wrote a blurb

First time I saw a book of mine in a bookshop

Review extracts

• "A very satisfying collection"
• "A fine intelligent collection"
• "remarkable for their freight of experience, assured grasp of line, and a poetic sensibility as confident as it is unusual"
• "unmistakeable authority of experience"
• "precision and tactile immediacy"
• "a wonderful ear"
• "an intense and rewarding read"
• "he writes exceptionally well about children"
• "What’s most winning, for me, is his really human touch"
• "The strength of the personae in the pamphlet is the thing that attracts attention"
• "The language is deceptively plain but is deftly spiced with originality"
• "skilled metre is matched by a deep understanding of the measured world"