Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. Actually, it's going to be a personal website with biographical and bibliographical information and some music too, and a blog attached. But it's still under construction. The blog currently on the Reality Street site will become a purely Reality Street blog and "my" page on that site will then feature only those of my books that happen to be published by Reality Street, and this thing here will be for everything else. More soon.

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Not The Jungle Book

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In preparation for the twice postponed (because of Covid) trip to India Elaine and I had long planned, I read Kipling's The Jungle Book (Vols 1 & 2). Never read Kipling before, I have to admit. My reading was prompted because the location of the Mowgli stories in the book is precisely where we were headed: the forests of Madhya Pradesh in central India. Actually Kipling had never been there; though born in India, he was shipped back to England by his parents at the age of six to go to school, then returned to Northern India in his early 20s. He relied heavily on folk tales repeated by his father. It has to be said that, for all its merits and demerits (it's quite uneven but has some wonderful writing in parts), it is not a particularly accurate guide to the flora and fauna of Madhya Pradesh. It is of course quite unlike the Disney film. If you've seen that, or dare I say read the book, which is quite out of fashion, you will recognise some names of species. Baloo the b
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from THE GREY AREA: The Old Dick

I've abandoned this blog for over a year, but ... My latest novel, The Grey Area , has been completed for a few months now. I'd hoped Unthank Books, the publishers of Country Life , would take it on, but it appears they are no longer commissioning new single-author books, although they have not said so publicly. Looks like the same story elsewhere in independent publishing. Very gloomy. Anyway, while I investigate other ways of publishing this book, which I'm very happy with, I'm going to post extracts here. This first one you can also find in the latest, terrific issue of Golden Handcuffs Review , which is my novel's first appearance of any sort in actual print on actual paper. But check out that issue also for the David Antin feature, for poems by Maurice Scully and Alice Notley, the latest instalment of Peter Quartermain's memoir, and, may I modestly add, my own appreciation of the late, great David Bromige. I am also honoured to be sharing page space wit
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My Collected Poems – an update

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  My Collected Poems 1975-2020 is due out from Shearsman Books – publication date April 2021, so the publisher tells me. Here's a link to its page on the Shearsman website . The details are slightly out of date – it will come out at 538 pages, rather than 520. A whopper, anyway. It's been proofread, and all is go. The cover image of the rings on a tree-trunk is from a photo by Elaine Edwards. More news soon! UPDATE: Out now....
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