After a discussion with my dear friend Miggle, I have decided to start blogging again. Having posted 365 blogs in my sixtieth year I lost the impetus a little but I miss the discipline of writing it. This will not be a daily event, perhaps once a week or so, nevertheless I will try to make it interesting. In some ways its been quite an exceptional year and lots has happened and writing has played a big part in that. For a start, I have written and recorded (playing all the instruments myself) an album called Palace Pier Blues, which has been loads of fun (not all of the 21 songs written could get onto it - but 13 managed). I have also written and published (previously unheard of) a number of prose poems, thanks to IPSI, the International Poetry Studies Institute. A new academic book, Old and New, Tried and Untried, co-edited with Jen Webb and Jeri Kroll was published, along with a chapter and three articles. I was commissioned to write a song (Your Mama's Music Box) for an exhibition in Canberra, called The Tampa (with Jen Webb and Paul Hetherington) pictured - The Tampa is a famous refugee cause in Australia) and that was a hugely rewarding collaboration. And Most recently I was also involved in another exhibition called Blanche and Henry by Jeb Webb as part of Material Poetics at the Australian National Capital Artists Inc Gallery. But my even bigger news is the artist, Stephanie Morris and I have been given an ACE - Arts Council England grant for our project The Boat, also about refugees and that is hugely rewarding. We have been nursing it along for some time but are now ready to begin pushing it forward. Its strange how a year just slips away and yet so much has been going on, without me really stopping to take it in. But that's partly why I will start blogging again just to say what's happening as it happens rather than writing a brag list like this - which is a little braggadocios - to steal a trumped up euphemism (excuse the pun). 2016 has been a good year, I have enjoyed it tremendously, long may the good years continue - with boots of Spanish leather:
After a discussion with my dear friend Miggle, I have decided to start blogging again. Having posted 365 blogs in my sixtieth year I lost the impetus a little but I miss the discipline of writing it. This will not be a daily event, perhaps once a week or so, nevertheless I will try to make it interesting. In some ways its been quite an exceptional year and lots has happened and writing has played a big part in that. For a start, I have written and recorded (playing all the instruments myself) an album called Palace Pier Blues, which has been loads of fun (not all of the 21 songs written could get onto it - but 13 managed). I have also written and published (previously unheard of) a number of prose poems, thanks to IPSI, the International Poetry Studies Institute. A new academic book, Old and New, Tried and Untried, co-edited with Jen Webb and Jeri Kroll was published, along with a chapter and three articles. I was commissioned to write a song (Your Mama's Music Box) for an exhibition in Canberra, called The Tampa (with Jen Webb and Paul Hetherington) pictured - The Tampa is a famous refugee cause in Australia) and that was a hugely rewarding collaboration. And Most recently I was also involved in another exhibition called Blanche and Henry by Jeb Webb as part of Material Poetics at the Australian National Capital Artists Inc Gallery. But my even bigger news is the artist, Stephanie Morris and I have been given an ACE - Arts Council England grant for our project The Boat, also about refugees and that is hugely rewarding. We have been nursing it along for some time but are now ready to begin pushing it forward. Its strange how a year just slips away and yet so much has been going on, without me really stopping to take it in. But that's partly why I will start blogging again just to say what's happening as it happens rather than writing a brag list like this - which is a little braggadocios - to steal a trumped up euphemism (excuse the pun). 2016 has been a good year, I have enjoyed it tremendously, long may the good years continue - with boots of Spanish leather:
