Chris participated in a zoom reading with a couple of friends the other night to mark National Poetry day. It was a lovely evening, full of those tender moments that only poetry can bring. It was recorded, so if you fancy dipping in to some poetry, I’ve posted them here.

Chris was reading poems (mostly) from hie new book, which can now be ordered directly from here (as well as the usual Amazon behemoth and the like).

Those who kindly pre-ordered their copies will be getting them soon too – we are waiting for a batch to arrive here.

Here are the two recordings.

Words from Chris:

It has been a long time coming. Five years in fact. It started out when Si Smith (more of him later) asked me to do a kind of poet-in-residence thing at an art exhibition he was curating entitled ‘World upside down’ back in 2017.

This exhibition was inspired (if that is the right word) by Donald Trump’s use of the Beatitudes in his inauguration speech. For me, this began a long period of writing words of resistance against an increasingly right wing world ignoring the crises of climate change and widening inequality.

A lot has happened over the last five years. Trump came and almost went. His trusty side-kick Boris Johnson the same. Oh, and we had this thing called a pandemic.

Writing protest poems is a kind of sickness – I found myself being sucked inside a vortex of negativity. I could still see compassion and goodness but it seemed stilted, fleeting and fragile. Then the Great Silence caused us all to STOP.

What next? Where do we see hope? What have we learned and where do we find inspiration for the journey to come?

These three periods – before, during and after the apocalypse give shape to this book which will be out very soon!

I am so grateful to Si for his incredible images. He did them at a time when he was desperately trying to work on another big project (which I hope to be able to shout about in the future.)

If you have never seen his work before, he is an artist, illustrator, print maker and graphic novelist based in Leeds. Some of his work includes 40 which we collaborated on and the beautiful How to disappear completely.

 

After a few months of making for shops, commissions and fairs, I decided to have a week of playing with clay – here’s one of the sculptures I created. It’s a reflection on a poem by Chris about how we sometimes need to be low down, near the curve of the earth, seeing the world from a seated position, in order to look upwards and to know that we are held.

I enjoyed the process, the letting go, the thinking bigger.

Today, I was back to some orders, but with a fresh eye and a renewed spirit.

It can be so real. The imposter syndrome. It’s more than false humility. When we got into Art in Clay, our first fair in the south of England  and a large and well attended one that I have followed on social media for some time. The acceptance email came through and after thirty seconds of elation , the doubt struck and I kept checking my emails expecting them to say, sorry we just emailed the wrong person. That feeling hasn’t quite left until the publicity began in earnest more recently. I read a little while ago that imposter syndrome only occurs when you know and understand the standard expected of you – and that allows you to work up to that. So I am taking that on board and aim to mark work we’re proud of. Stay tuned!