In the increasingly troubled world in which we live, new potential dictators seem to be in office or waiting in the wings. This poem takes a sideways swipe at their attitudes and methods, but offers a shred of hope that some of them might come to a change of mind and adopt a better view of the world.

I discovered this article and was staggered to discover it was from 2014
“Salem Antez, 29, approached with a purple plastic bag and opened it, its contents terrible. "This is my son," he said and nothing else, tears tracking down his face.” Guardian, 18th July 2014.

This poem is for all the times we stayed, kept the door open, and imagined how we’d dance when what we desire most finally arrives. I wrote it for the moments when life doesn’t come on time, when help or recognition is late, or never comes, and you have to keep going anyway. It celebrates patience, resilience, and the quiet courage it takes to believe that even when everything seems too little or too late, life can still bring what matters most.

As a librarian I was trying to explain the origin of haunted libraries. As a human being living in a world of increasing conflict and cruelty, I was trying to draw a parallel between how books bound in parchment (animal skin) react with how human beings react. Then there's the spiritual aspect...

Moving from Trinidad and Tobago to Finland was a profound shift, and this poem emerged from that experience. I wrote it while walking the streets of Helsinki, embracing the role of a flâneur, observing my new surroundings but constantly drawn back to thoughts of home. The bougainvillea/"miracle vine" and my mother's absence speak to the deep roots I left behind.

This poem derives inspiration from memory, myth, and turmoil in Kashmir valley. It superimposes the concept of beauty and death. The word 'chinar' itself means 'what a fire', referring to the tree's vibrant autumn colours. But chinar in this poem represents more than it's physical beauty. It represents outliving the humans, wisdom, witnessing the turmoil in Kashmir and ironically it's ghastly appearance providing hope to the people, to survive.

The story behind this poem is less poetic and more spiteful, I suppose. There was an Egyptian tourist site that posted an article about Cleopatra with the title "Queen of the Nile River," and all I could think was, 'She wasn't even Egyptian!' Thus, this poem was born. For the footage, as I'm camera-shy, I paid homage, with my own filming, to old home videos and b-roll from 90s movies I grew up watching that featured the Nile.

Occasionally, a piece of art can irreversibly change one's outlook. Wilhelmina Barn-Graham's series of Orkney paintings, including 'August in Orkney' had that effect on me. Not only did it make me do a double-take, but it changed my way of understanding the landscape in which I live. Writing this poem has helped me recognise just how limited our natural resources are. This is very obviously the case on an island, but applies equally to our planet.

As a poet, I write with conscience, often with a dissident voice. This poem is inspired by human suffering arising from the conflicts of 2025 and the Year of Quantum Physics. I employ a form I created—Epistructural Poetics—drawing from such systems. In quantum theory, not all states are observable; only what survives is measurement. Yet suffering resists erasure, persisting even before witness.

This poem explores the eerie convergence of technology, surveillance, and identity in modern urban life. Inspired by the unsettling quiet beneath our hyper-connected world, it reimagines familiar cityscapes as sites of digital hauntings and coded resistance. It asks what it means to be seen, known, and remembered in an age where silence is no longer private.

The poem came pretty much as the opening lines suggest - walking to the shops in my local area - a not very becoming part of London with the rubbish left by the bins and the local pigeons enjoying what they can find there. But as so often happens, the mundane moment leads on to other thoughts: on this occasion passing a door to an apartment where two people used to live. In fact these were work colleagues from a few years ago.

This is a poem written in response to the tragic events in the Middle East. The poetic form ghazal is originally Arabic and the Hebrew version of name ‘Matthew’, which is referenced in the poem, means ‘gift of God’. Within linguistics, the term 'speech act' is used to describe a statement that doesn't just provide information but constitutes an action in and of itself.