Welcome to the Website of Poet, Translator and Educator
My Story, So Far
What would happen
if one's vision sought not the easel picture
but the straight-on, left and right, did away with
those cherished customs, landmarks, three dimensions?
'Homage to Isabel Rawsthorne'
​
I am a slow burner. Some poems come quickly while many take years, even decades. Since I am in my seventh decade, by now there’s quite a queue forming … The last collection of my own work before Keats’s Anchovy (2021) appeared thirty-two years ago. Has the wait on my part been worthwhile? It’s a question I hope new readers will wish to answer.
I live and work in London, as a writer, translator and educator. Back in the day I studied English at university and was taught by the critic F. R. Leavis, someone whose work I came back to, and wrote about, many years later. For over four decades I’ve earned a living in healthcare mostly. The day job continues to be a crucible in many ways, including for my writing.
Apart from a fascination with words, what pushes me to write, or read? The long pursuit of the ordinary real and what our bodies tell us about the world.
WHAT REVIEWERS SAY
Of verse included in Keats’s Anchovy
‘Certain lines beg to be memorised … and Cranfield shows signs of rivalling the creative power of our best modern imagist, Maxine Kumin’
GEORGE KLAWITTER,
The James White Review