Before I started publishing poetry I was a songwriter and performer, eventually releasing an album of original songs called Landscape and Liability in 1999 with small independent label Unreal Records. Since receiving an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 poetry has been my primary creative focus, but I’ve recently rediscovered my enjoyment of performing music live through playing at piers, pubs and publishing events in the South West with a six-piece folk-rock covers band called Lionel, Richie & the Wardrobe. And so, after a significant hiatus, I've come back to songwriting.

Photographs by Jane Briggs and Jane Clare

'The Last Bus': this is the opening track from Landscape and Liability. It was also used as the title music for a promotional film about The Arvon Foundation back in the early 2000s.


‘A Woman Homer Sung’, my musical setting for a poem by W B Yeats, is also from Landscape and Liability ​(Unreal Records, 1999)


'Love Will Tear Us Apart’: this Lionel, Richie & the Wardrobe cover version of a Joy Division song was inspired by June Tabor’s treatment of the same song, and was recorded during rehearsals on one rudimentary microphone in a room in Bristol. Dorinda: vox David: vox and dobro Linda: cello Roland: guitar Peter: bodhran Jan: violin
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‘Drink Your Fill’: this is a scratchy first draft of a new thing, made with guitar and voice and recorded on an iPad during winter 2018.




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