Being Ofstedded at college has meant I've let a lot slip.  I performed at a gay literary event in Leicester, reading 'Men Are Rarely Killed Outright By Electric Shock' (always a winner), 'Smokers:  The New Queers', 'David Beckham' and 'Herm

There are many competing or variant versions of what's going on in the world, often versions which co-exist in one person's psyche and one person's experience.  For example a person can switch from BBC News to Al Jazeera News.  A person can

I'm happy with the first draft of Gilgamesh and will send it off tomorrow.  It begins and ends with Shamhat speaking directly to the reader and explaining events - taking on the role of the storyteller.  Apart from the last half-rhymed coup

Snappy dialogues.  The ghazal form has suggested dialogues - questions and answers, conversations, as in a theatrical song or Bollywood 'hit' where two lovers duet.  Which is a challenge - good for directly expressing emotion but not so goo

Noah 'waking up' in the 21st century is weak.  I should confidently swap the Old Testament for 21st century New Orleans and let the reader summise the whys and wherefores - deliberately force the reader to question the authenticity of the realit

Feel suddenly much more confident about Gilgamehs now I've sketched out the storyline.

6pm.  Bitten off more than I can chew?  Feeling a bit intimidated by the task I've set myself?  Yes, on both counts.  What's becoming obvious is that I shouldn't retell the Epic of Gilgamesh.  There's too much.  I've sum

Been told to produce a new substantial poem by the end of January.  Part of the process of convincing Greg and Catherine that we're ready to be bumped up to PhD level.  I've just read Stephen Mitchell's rendering of the Epic of Gilgamesh.&n

Saw Greg, Catherine and Carl last Friday.  I read out 'The Drunkenness of Noah' and was grilled about the split chronology and the geography - why is it New Orleans?  Isn't that a superficial appropriateion of a recent new story, given

Went to NAWE's Autumn conference at Lancaster University.  Calum Kerr told us how his PhD had become forced into the realms of theory because of it's hypertextual nature.  He seemed cynical about his whole experience.  Sheree Mack

Finally written the 'Auntie Calamine' poem which may be called 'Spotted'.  It's got a jaunty nursery rhyme quality to it which I quite like - anounced straightaway with the line 'she wasn't my aunt as many aunts aren't'.  The repetition of&

G's tutorial was good.  He seems to like 'Noah'.  Working on that again today.  Just read Edmund White's essay in Mapplethorpe's monograph 'Altars' and an interesting piece in 'Material Man - Masculinity, Sexuality and Style' ed. Giann

Least I've got lots of reading underway.  Now simulateneously reading Stephen Fry's 'The Ode Less Travelled, Unlocking The Poet Within' and 'Dirty Pictures - Tom of Finland, Masculinity and Homosexuality' by Micha Ramakers.  Last books fini

Haven't written for yonks and as usual have gone off the rails.

Wrote 'Marathon' in one day.  ('Noah' is, I feel, almost finished.  Maybe 'Serpent' needs an extra stanza.  But I needed to leave both of them for a while).  The whole thing grew from the first line 'tarmac'll make a man of me'.&n

Been reading Radmila Lazic's Bloodaxe collection 'A Wake For The Living'.  Her lines are usually clauses or sentences.  Not much enjambement.  Haven't got it with me but I recall poems like lists of zany phrases which jump from one met

What I've learnt from 'Serpent' is that I feel happier, more at home, if I take the register of my language 'down' a notch into more demotic, colloquial speech.  And that it's not adjectives or adverbs which make the poetry - I can pretty much d

This has been such a slow poem.  But a very important one.  The 'inching through the tunnel' I mentioned reflects the slow progress and also the choppiness and disjointedness of the whole poem, now that it's finished.  I'm going back,

I don't feel I speak directly.  It's hard to push toward this plainness and simplicity without the fear of losing what is poetic.  There seem to be mental barriers against me writing down anything which sounds too 'spoken'.  Must be my

Maybe the headaches of the last few days were the poem not being able to get out.  Today it got out and it's done.  I hesitate to say finished.  Always.  I feel exhausted now.  I like the discipline of the ten syllables. 

I'm pleased with the patterning into stanzas.  But I've reached an impasse, a logjam.  I've been headaching over it this last few days - and even now, as I write this, I'm starting to see what's wrong:  I'm not listening to the advice

Flying back from Bordeaux.  Soon to land in Birmingham. I think the tone/voice problem may be resolved if I (as the Serpent) address Adam directly.  This automatically makes any reader/listener an 'Adam', so I feel a radical rewrite coming

Been reading lots of poems from Mark Strand and Eavan Boland's 'The Making Of A Poem'.  Also lots from Seamus Heaney's 'Finders Keepers'.  Also finished Eco's 'Mouse or Rat: Translation as Negotiation'.  And the 'What Is Postmodernism?

Blistering heat here in Festalemps so not as productive as I thought I'd be.  But not complaining. I've read a few bits from Seamus Heaney's collection 'Finders Keepers'.  A few bits from Mark Strand's book on the forms of poetry.  Ju

I need to focus, with some urgency, because I have to make the most of the coming 'free' month.  I think I should reread 'Male Sexuality, Masculine Spirituality' and find another book on masculinity, with a view to writing a draft of the documen