clothes that speak, an indoor forest: autumn flurries.

The Listening Forest is to take root in Covent Garden, at the Poetry Cafe.

Please saunter under its inky boughs, as they spread into the wintery world of a London November.

I’ll be showing original work from the residency/ project undertaken with Fermynwoods Contemporary as well as new screen prints I’ve developed. Drawings and prints will be for sale, as will the book in both A5 and A3 concertina incarnations. I’ll also be running some events alongside the show, so watch this space.

Private view:  Thursday 4th November with readings, drawing, cake and wine.

If you want to experiment and make a book where image and text cohabit, however cosily or haughtily, there are still places left on my course at Morley College, starting on September 21st for nine weeks: BOOK IMAGE TEXT and also in the spring and summer terms.

Here’s an example of sheer image text mastery by a small citizen of Brent, from a holiday session in Willesden library.

A page inspired by each item in this sunlit window would make a nice fancy poem sequence!

Talking of which, I have three visual poems featured in a lovely online journal called wardrobe, find them and wear them straightway, they are in drawer five, and are written from the point of views of a skirt, a mans jumper and a slip.

Also in textile mode, my screen printed cotton Disaster hankie appeared in the glorious new volume from Hayward Gallery Publications THE NEW CONCRETE, where I’m proud to be in company with poets and artists I’ve long admired, like John Furnival and Edwin Morgan.

The launch at The Whitechapel was epic, with brilliant readings from many contributors.

Last week also saw the launch of another genre-busting book. Over the Line has over 70 pages of brand new poetry comics, including a collaborative spread by me and Chris McCabe, called The Practical Application of Colour. It was fun reading the piece which has very few words in it, (unlike this palaver.)

A good place to buy the book is at Free Verse book fair which takes place at Conway Hall on 26th September, and is a great treat for those interested in alternative publishing and new poetry.

Or at launch number 2, coming up at Gosh Comics!

Some unLondon things coming up: I’ll have a couple of works in 50 artist strong new show: a wide interpretation of still life, this autumn at The Art Stable, Dorset. I took this still life at the farm adjacent to the gallery on a visit, but my actual pieces are painted and feature words again.

I’m also excited to be reading at the famously fabulous Swindon Poetry Festival on Sunday 4th October. There will be all kinds of top poetry and related capers going on in town for a few days, so have a look at the programme and come along.

For the remainder of October I’ll be in residence in Venice at the Scuola Grafica Venezia. One of eight invited artists, I’ll be working in their beautiful printmaking studio, on a project to make a new and contemporary Haggadah to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the worlds first ghetto, set up there in 1516. Fascinating stuff.

Any quality work that comes from this will be added to the forest show forthwith.

Looking forward to plenty of real tea under imaginary trees at the Poetry Cafe, see you up there.

the sea’s breath and the cat’s snow: literacy made human!

For a recent project, I was asked to join forces with a teacher and librarian at The Charter School in Southwark, to help energise the students engagement with literacy.

They had set in motion a great scheme called ‘own a poem’ .

The idea being that everyone in the school, students and staff, could find a poem they liked or related to, learn it by heart, and recite it at rolling performances over lunch times in the library, or in class, or assemblies.

I’ve heard a few and they have been wonderful! The listening and the performing equally impressive.

On National Poetry Day I was one of three poets (the others were Ebele and Chimene Suleyman) to perform there to school assemblies. As part of this I whisked from my pocket my screen printed hankie poem Disaster, and read it, proof that poems can be portable and handy.

This set staff thinking about texts on textiles, and I was invited back to make ‘literary bunting’ that could wrap around a pop up trolley to rove around school bringing the wonder of books to those less keen to visit the library!

my screen printed cotton handkerchief featuring a poem that only uses letters from the word Disaster.

I worked with year 7s in their DT/textiles lessons. I was thrilled with how at home they felt with rhythm, colour and texture in both words and cloth. Everyone settled on a juicy quote and we worked out ways to put these on our triangles of rag: forging a whole new image text epic from scraps!