I have been writing and sharing poems since I was a nipper. If you’re interested in what I wrote during the first twenty-ish years of my career, then I’d recommend my New and Selected poems, Werewolf of London (Flipped Eye, 2021)
Nowadays I post more poems online and no longer perform regularly. I have decided to post them all here as I write them but will also produce the odd combined digital pamphlet/audiobook which will be available on my itch.io page for purchase (and also given to my paid Rusty Niall subscribers).
You might notice that each poem has a status: seed, sapling, shrub or tree. This refers to how finished I consider the poem to be as well as which ones I think are my most accomplished. The rubric runs like this:
- 🌱 : not even a first draft, more a fragment or a rough sketch that might go on to become something bigger or more finished
- 🌿 : an early draft, not something I consider finished but relatively complete within itself
- 🪴 : a finished poem. Not necessarily one that I consider to be a cornerstone or benchmark, but complete and finished as far as I regard it.
- 🌳 : not only a finished poem but one I feel a bit smug about. It might also be something that marks a previous watershed if it’s an older one.
For now the poems will just appear as a list but when they get numerous enough I’ll probably find another way of organising them. I recommend just finding something that interests you and then following the links that are available from there.
a youtuber films themself waking up
count them!
heraclitus in south london
slow curve
the monk
there is no path from here to here
three pounds of flax
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