Written in the aftermath of the EU referendum vote and the subsequent increase in race hate crimes.
You don’t like those human rights – well now you can just end ‘em
New poems
She No Longer Writes Love Songs / Elle N’écrit plus les chansons d’Amour
My homage to French singer, Françoise Hardy, an important part of the soundtrack of my youth – and beyond. Diagnosed with cancer, she said in a recent interview that she couldn’t write love songs any more. When she first started making records, she also recorded English-language versions of her French songs. So I wrote this poem in French but then translated it into English for live performances with two voices. You can read the original French version in the ‘Poésie’ section of the ‘Pages françaises’ section on this site.
Sécheresse
This poem, is part of a projected series of poems about the concept of ‘terroir’ in France. ‘Sécheresse’ is published in ‘Diverse City 2017’, Austin International Poetry Festival, 2017.
To A Sonnet
(Written at a sonnet workshop at the Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival, 2016. This is in the Shakespearean form: 14 lines of iambic pentameters in 3 quatrains with an abab rhyming scheme and a final rhyming couplet containing the ‘volta’ or turnaround.)
I Shall Vote Trump
The US has had presidents before who were racist or misogynist or xenophobic or crass or bullying or ignorant or homophobic or abusive or greedy or narcissistic or mentally unstable or sexual predators or philistines, but never until now with all these characteristics in the same person. Shame on you 25% of the electorate who voted for him and shame on you 50% who could have stopped this but chose instead to stay at home.
I am indebted to Christopher Logue from whose 1966 poem ‘I Shall Vote Labour’ I have borrowed the structure for this poem.
