This monthly update continues to attract a good number of hits—so thank you for reading! Leeds Lit Fest is almost upon us. It’s the eighth LLF this year, run entirely by volunteers without any major external funding, so LLF needs your support! Please take a look at the events on the website—there are over fifty and many are low cost or PAYF. Printed programmes have also landed (as of the day of writing, 1st June) so look out for those, and please help spread the word.
As part of LLF this year, on Saturday 13th June at 2pm at the Leeds Library, I am giving a unique poetry performance. Or rather, Miss Bianca is: a series of poems exploring the remarkable history of gay life in London in the Eighteenth Century. Come and learn about the subculture: the slang, the secret ‘molly’ names, the danger…the gin.
I have also made some pamphlets, which will launch at the performance, of a poem sequence I wrote a couple of years ago, about molly life. If you can’t make the performance, copies of this hand-made, limited-edition (fifty copies) pamphlet will be available from my website on 14th June.
Some wonderful news came last month with the announcement of the winners and runners-up of the 2026 Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition, judge once again by Kim Moore (who you can also hear at Leeds Lit Fest!). My good friend Tom Weir co-won the competition with his pamphlet ‘Negativity Bias’. I’m completely delighted for Tom—look out for ‘Negativity Bias’ this coming October. Congratulations to co-winner Derval Tubridy for her pamphlet ‘I Will Say That’; runners-up Ellie Grant and David Hale; and Highly Commended poets Susannah Hart and Paul Stephenson.
Can it really be ten years since the first Poetry at the Parsonage? Well, it turns out it is, and in honour of the decade since, Mark and Gill Connors of Yaffle Press are hosting an equally if not more ambitious Poetry at the Old School Rooms on Saturday 11th July & Sunday 12th July. Tickets will be available from the Yaffle Website.
I have readings coming up later in the year - follow the blog for links when events are announced. Confirmed so far are Grand Plans in Linthwaite; Poetry at the Parsonage; Beehive Poets; Poetry at the Dusty Miller; and Soul Shed.
If I learned one lesson in Dublin (apart from don’t even think about trying to order food around Temple Bar unless you’re independently wealthy or on work expenses) it is: if you see an amazing book in a shop and you will only have one chance to own that book: buy it. On my first night in Dublin, I saw a copy of ‘Endsville’ by Paul Durcan in Hodges Figgis. First edition. Only edition. Signed by Paul and by Brian Lynch—it was a double pamphlet featuring both their work—durcan’s first. I didn’t buy it then and there, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, back in Leeds, I phoned Hodges & Figgis and crossed all the digits I had. ‘Endsville’ was still on the shelf, and the very kind and helpful bookseller arranged to post it to me.
The book came with a second history: a label on it, from the library of previous owners.
I hadn’t heard of David Gascoyne. He was a surrealist poet (born 1916) who knew Dylan Thomas, Kathleen Raine, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, among others. Sadly, he suffered from mental ill-health, and was sporadically admitted to mental health facilities.
It was in one such facility where David and Judy met. Judy was volunteering running a poetry group.
"You didn't know who anybody was, but I did notice a very sad, tall man who always sat next to me. One afternoon, instead of the very well-known poems I usually read from my Oxford Book of English Verse, I turned to a more recent poem that had always intrigued me called 'September Sun'. I said: 'This afternoon we're going to read a poem by David Gascoyne. It's quite complex so I'll read it slowly and then we'll see if we can understand what it means.' The tall, sad-looking man touched me on the arm and said quietly, 'I wrote that poem. I'm David Gascoyne.' I said, 'I'm sure you are, dear.' I didn't believe him for a moment. Some of them do have delusions of grandeur, you see. But he insisted: 'I wrote that poem.' I was nonplussed, so I just went on and read it. At the tea break, I asked him, 'Are you really David Gascoyne the poet?' and he said, 'Of course I am,' and signed his name under the poem. I've kept it to this day." To read the full interview with Judy, click here. And to read a poem sequence I wrote in memory of Durcan, head to my Instagram account.