Three Poems by Paul Connolly

 

Millennial 

 

The train arcs into the station,

the platform roof is bronzed

with a morning lick of rare sun,

the arc makes sunshine flame

and spark the bronze

like a forger’s sword work.

 

Shall I savour these announcements,

salute fellow passengers with ave atque vale

or tear my coat off into the forecourt winds?

 

Sky was red

but now above us all it lowers

bonfire powder and grit.

Avoiding each other’s looks

we walk down separate paths

to Münster.

 

A rutting pig, bloat in his bed,

speaking in tongues,

a new House of Atreus:

he will fertilise the earth

with death, quicken it with fire.

 

Our downward faces in puddles

discern the sky’s face

 

and some discern the signs

 

whiffs of morning assail, meat perfumes

and the sour patience of passengers

boarding a bus across the river.

Cold embraces, more intimate than a lover:

the river should warp,

crack upwards in a glacial thrust,

shatter the glass exoskeletons of City sentinels

and make flinders of blue and dirty sky

tinkle down on crystalline juts of wave

as all the temples tumble.

 

A tree burns

in a sudden plate-glassed sun storm.

 

Who is this other one of me

who sometimes beckons,

sometimes edges in beside me

and delicately touching my shoulder

whispers something? I smile,

nod and chant along.

 

6000 years is long enough.

 

We’d looked up into dawn’s remains

and the stars had fled before we reached them

even Venus

which held longer in the smallest ember

was soon away

and battered and terrified the moon has fled.

The river is high.

The preacher’s muted tuba rumbles on Jesus.

A bus brake screams like an eagle.

                                   

New scavengers may comb abundance,

rummage unsullied through filth and char

and make our refuse beautiful. In assurance

 

let them build upon the fathers of death

 

there will be something else, for now

already, newness now and strangeness

fumble for the land a moment,

grasp the land then moor securely, and look

 

look everywhere,

the new possessors are here already,

birthed easily, tall,

their steps earthed and purposeful.

 

Give way.

 

I am blind in the day’s night-time

or see night more clearly in the day

 

I can’t belong

 

I am a former thing

 

ignite me, make me fire

blacken the sky with me

 

I reach for your hand and yours

but you are gone into the blank

or into the freshness. I foresee it all

and fall into nothing now

and fade.

 

I won’t await another call

even if a call could come

 

and hailing the receptionist

across an acid gaze

that shows agreement or else

shows nothing and that’s agreement,

I mock the acts required,

Mr Wolf in every office smile,

what’s the time,

but populate the risk register,

what’s the time,

with new information,

stats marked red,

the time,

it’s late, it’s dinner time,

but everyone is calm and I am calm

 

and awaiting the broad finality, or mine

presaged by a rot-deep shade

my outline in the plasma screen

 

I know with sandwich-board precision

there’s been enough of this 

 

The Mark 

 

They bristled near him in the settlement as they bristled

at rats in the granary and coughed recognition at him

as he walked in silence to the fields and threshing.

He shivered them out from him, and they reformed

in milling circles of ungainly reverence

then fell back towards routine’s stockades.

Some whispered doubts: that eggy stain,

a finger of smut on his face for days.

Few gave him fellowship’s straight looks,

while he never reached for fellowship,

lived alone, venerated outcast,

and shared only cautious necessary words

with the other hands.

The Old Smith,

shoulders aslant, wave-steed in storm,

purblind, was the last who’d been there, apart

from him.

     The seeress danced a spell

a-jig many moments on a table-top.

She wailed conjurations, recalled the Smith,

fell words of warding from lips

cracked and frothy, her eyes asleep.

Then with a surprise bound into the bodies

she dismounted, her eyes blazed open

and she walked among them. She muttered and snarled

in the old tongue, hands clasped,

the left-hand forefinger pointing upwards

a cupped candle sharp and long,

then stopped before him. Six he was,

seven maybe, waiting at table,

a visiting chieftain’s ward, offspring

of a favoured slave freed near death.

The chieftain died a fortnight later.

The seeress stretched and exhaled at the heavens,

breathed all over the boy to mark him,

grovelled before him, motioned everyone

to grovel before him, then rose and left

in silence. ‘We never saw her again,

some said she walked into the sea,

others the wind.’ The Old Smith

spat and goggled warnings, then slept.

Smoke rose from the solitary hut,

the listeners shuffled a moment in fathomless

embarrassment, then dispersed.

                  For twenty summers

after the seeress danced and disappeared,     

more perhaps, princes of the blood,

drunks and children had brought their speculations

to ringed assemblies – rule and judgement,

perhaps, foresight for seafaring, battle,

or planting and the harvest, plucking out

diseased innards and sickening souls

with hands and glares and sorcery. He’d flailed,

grunted his resistance then hurled himself

before and across thresholds of trial

then back and through the jambs of failure,

sprawling in blood as each door slammed.

The public shows grew rarer as he aged.

He quashed the sights that rose on his wandering,

quashed the night-sweat promises, silenced

his solitary chants in mindlessness, and thought

he’d wait for better dreams, improve them

or better lose them all and dream

no more.

                Sometimes, visiting headmen

would stay him, stare demands, voice them,

even mock, ‘Tell us, fellow,

your secret purpose,’ then draw abashment

and mystery from the man’s mumbles at the dirt.

His acts wore away at belief,

the drool-tongue and grunts in the grinding house,

but fear rekindled in the wariness of virgins

or dogs, in sky fires and birdsong,

in the Old Smith’s stare, and the headmen

craving advantage, renewed the taboo,

watched and left.

                              Mist cracked

above them. Isolated handfuls of hail

scattered around. Their new chieftain

chuckled at their wonder and drove them on

in the season of egg foraging on the clifftops.

He ran his fingers in his beard, shaped it

with morning’s delicious dew then turned

and saw him, aquiver, at parley with the ground.

He walked towards him, hesitated,

then felt his own mark, abashed a moment,

swell again, felt it spread across his chest

and shoulders into his hands and gaze.

He stared at him and thought, ‘He blasphemes

worthiness and hope by standing useless,

or is he a trial of fidelity?’ A riddling

sanction or a moment’s worthwhile sacrilege

to quell the idiot shakes and muttering.

Fearing soil on his hands or nothing,

fearing flight or ghost returns

like foes or forefathers in dreams,

then fearing no man and no prophesy,

he snatched the slight, unprotesting trunk,

nothing he’d find a use for, watery,

irresolute, which juddered him yet with its slightness.

He wrestled it crossways and athwart his chest,

pinched it almost to the bones, and saw

the chewing mouth, an empty eyeball,

then hurled it at the wave-swept rocks below.

 

Worlds’ Ends

 

Frontiers are endings.

 

At Dunstanburgh Castle, rocks

pool with satanic green

while beyond them a pod of monsters

dolphins the waves. The cliff-face

riots with nursery keening,

the kittiwakes’ hell-child scream

of forbiddance. Basalt causeways

are stained sulphurous. A giant

has trodden on a rock plate,

almost capsized it slips away

endlessly towards its brink.

Sandstone walls are scraped

with salt fingernails

into ribs and veiny organism.

Remnant alcoves in the wells

of hollowed out towers

flensed of floorboard flesh

jut inwards and loom,

a soiled Nabatean necropolis.

 

There’s no one here:

the Harrying, the Thirties, endless

apologetic then relieved migrations

to hordes of clamouring southern

opportunity.

 

A lone rider

sauntered a Bamburgh strand

vast as sky.

 

In the sparsity

God’s voice echoes throughout

like waves,

he hopes for nothing

but fading of concern, consequence

 

But endings are frontiers

 

the stupidity of a globe is endings

are frontiers

 

Hadrian’s labourers left villages

and broad skies in low Tungria,

in flood-lashed low Batavia, then built

and climbed the Housesteads walls

and watched, grumbling that

eternity’s end was more eternity,

their limit one of many limits

where they stood and narrowed

across the boundless threat

 

Alone, high above desolate coastline

beyond the marshland on Lindisfarne –

unspared, despite the chantry –

he quivered and looked about,

fearful someone else would come

with ruinous chatter. His reveries

collapse in the same thought

at lonely rockpools. That couple

stalked him on the deserted beach.

In Lindisfarne’s barren carpark

a campervan had hugged in snug

beside his isolated Fiat, like someone

shuffling towards his adjacent seat

on an empty bus.

 

Later in the town, hikers loitered

for ages near the poo-bin

beside the Priory field

in shuffles of backpack,

alpenstock clatter, map consultation,

as he lunched on the bench opposite

and tried to recover

the morning’s composition of spectres,

before the sun’s democratic cathode

had bombarded dawn’s filminess

springing colour, weed and

adventive sprays of people.

 

Standing still in the haze

against the abbey ruin,

in front of the church,

on the skirts of a sloping field

checked and billowed by crows,

a solitary horse had poised a striped nose

and looked beyond him

through air watered grey

at St Cuthbert’s Island,

across scavengers on the low-tide causeway

towards a horse oblivion.

 

Now he looked for the horse again but now

or long since it had turned aside.

As he watched, it shook itself out

and wandered away.

 

Did Cuthbert need separation,

huge draughts of God,

to gird for ministry, temper healing,

like Wordsworth’s Wanderer?

 

Taciturn sorts are alone

even in workplaces,

or at the Christmas table

like his long-dead uncle Pete.

True cenobites are alone

despite their fellows, despite

the bartering world’s racket

at the abbey threshold. But craving

eremite annihilation

he carries crowds to the wilderness,

a vacuum, he sucks throngs

towards him

 

No escaping its tedious roll

he thinks on the castle ramparts

as he looks across the sea

for nothingness but almost spies

the hilly descent of sea beyond

 

then flattens the world.

Paul Connolly’s first poetry collection will be published by Broken Sleep Books in Spring 2027. Nominated for the Forward Prize and Best of the Net, shortlisted twice for the Bridport poetry prize, longlisted for the Orwell Prize in the blog category and for the Bridport novel prize, he has had poems published previously in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, as well as Agenda, The Warwick Review, Poetry Salzburg, Stand Magazine, The Reader, Scintilla, The Manchester Review, Chiron Review (USA), Dawntreader, takahē (New Zealand), Dream Catcher, Orbis, The Journal, FourXFour, The Seventh Quarry, Sarasvati, Envoi, Obsessed with Pipework, The Bombay Review, The Cannon’s Mouth, Southlight, Foxtrot Uniform, Guttural, The High Window, Nine Muses, Eunoia Review (Singapore), The Honest Ulsterman, Canada Quarterly, Unwhispered Legacy, The Book Bag, Cable Street, Ink Sweat and Tears, Littoral Magazine, Northampton Poetry Review, London Grip, The Saltbeck Orion, Wildfire Words, Sixty Odd Poets, The Courtship of Winds, and Quadrant (Australia). Shortlisted for the Charles Causley Prize and a finalist in the Walk:Listen:Create Walking at Night competition, he was highly commended in the Sentinel Quarterly and third in the Magna Carta Competition.

 

 

 

One Poem by Chisom Okoronkwo

 

CONVERSATION WITH LUCK

 

dawn & luck struts past my door in burnished boots    head high   shoulders puffed with good news    he does not stop to say hi so i run after him, my voice scattering along the street like broken glass, screaming    those things in your hands belong to me    but luck is a minute hand ticking across abandoned clocks   he quickens his steps    pretending not to hear    his memory slurring    he forgets his people     those who wail at his feet with palms upturned    he forgets the ones who chant his name until their mouths bled    luck wears that faux grin   bright like sunflowers rinsed in morning light   the grin he wore when our fathers sank into the Atlantic    when war bit into the flesh of my country and chewed without shame    when things at home began unravelling like loose thread    he stood there smiling    teeth too white to taste our grief     today i catch him   grip his ankles just like Jacob   he fights    but i watch his breath shorten    why is your face always shiny    i ask    my face only reflects my duty to make others smile    he responds    panting    then why do your clients carry hunger in their eyes   i demand    his pupils widen    his knees buckle and luck collapses    sometimes greater forces pin me down just like you’re doing now    and whip my hands until i wilt   I swear    not every misfortune is my fault   he dips his index finger into dust   presses it to his tongue   swears on his life    your country    that’s not me    that was men in suits and boots and oil-slicked tongues    i tell him    trade your last burden for freedom   he opens his bag    hands me a bundle of cracked smiles    says it’s all he’s got    says he fights daily battles too   that the ones who win look lucky but are mostly just greedy.

 

 

Chisom Okoronkwo is a Nigerian-Scottish writer and spoken word artist. She is the recipient of the 2024 African Excellence Award from the University of Glasgow, where she earned an MLitt in Creative Writing (Distinction).

Her work has appeared in Brittle Paper, Isele Magazine, Ake Review, Blue Marble Review, and Lunar Journal, among others. She is the winner of the 2023 Shuzia Journey of the Soul Poetry Contest, and has been shortlisted for the Isele Short Story Prize and the Glasgow Women’s Library Bold Types Competition, as well as longlisted for the Bournemouth Writing Prize and The Writers’ Prize.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FISHING WITH JACOB - Short Story By Gary Bills

 

FISHING WITH JACOB

Short Story

By Gary Bills

Snapper Nark is the gamekeeper, and the lives of honest poachers have been made a misery, ever since his Lordship presented him with a Box Brownie camera. That’s why I call him Snapper; that was not his given name, of course, when he was a bawling baby at the font; and to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know his Christian name, although I can think of one or two suggestions that might be suitable. These, however, could never be spoken in the presence of ladies, or indeed, within earshot of a clergyman.

   Like most bullies, Snapper prides himself on being fair. He delights in presenting his victims with a photograph, by way of a final warning. Ignore that warning, and you are up in front of the Magistrates, cap in hand. The images Snapper takes are many and varied. He took one of a poacher’s bike, concealed in a hedgerow. He even took one of a courting couple, as they rose from flattened grass on private land. (I ask you, how can flattened grass be ‘criminal damage’?)

   In my case, he handed me the photograph of a uniformed soldier.

   That lad is fishing where he shouldn’t be fishing, among the private reeds, surrounded by the private mud. That spot is on his Lordship’s pool. It is right next to the boathouse, and I should know.  Snapper reckoned the culprit was my son, Jacob.

   Well, it was no use explaining that Jacob had been posted to Korea, some three weeks before that picture was developed.

   Nark didn’t believe me, and if I loathed the man before, I hated him even more after that. Nobody jabs me in the chest and shouts into my face at point-blank range. One day there will be consequences, you mark my words. There’s doing your job and there’s being a git. Despite my protestations, Nark warned me - and mine - to stay away from his Lordship’s pool; and to be fair, although that figure is both distant and slightly blurred, it does look like Jacob.

   I told Nark that it must be another young chap on National Service, just casting a line at dawn. It couldn’t have been a picture of my son. 

   No, there was no need for me to keep that photograph; but I keep it in my inside jacket pocket all the same. It’s been there for two years now because, you see, I love that pool. If only I could, I’d be there night and day. If I couldn’t fish it, I’d sit there, if only for the peace and quiet.

   I often fish that very spot, and usually Jacob joins me. In fact, we’ll be risking the wrath of Snapper Nark this evening, because there is a certain big carp we’d love to see on the bank.

   Jacob and I will be fishing throughout the night, as usual, next to the boathouse.

   To my mind, we are not poachers. If we catch that massive old wild carp, we’ll admire it, weigh it and return it. The thrill is in the pursuit and the joy is in the contemplation. But we’ll have to be stealthy, as always. In any case, what right does his Lordship have when it comes to that pool? He’s only passing through, waving his wallet and his title. That pool was formed when the glaciers retreated, about 10,000 years ago, and I reckon my family has lived around these parts for about that long. We Owstons are a part of this landscape. We’ve drunk the waters and imbibed the soil, and I do think such things matter. 

   Wordsworth’s my man, if I had to choose any poet, and he put it rather well – this sense of belonging -

 

No outcast he, bewildered and depressed:

Along his infant veins are interfused

The gravitation and the filial bond

Of nature that connect him with the world.

 

   Yes, belonging was my birthright. After all, a solitary raindrop suggests the possibility of a lake or an ocean. It is only water, when all is said and done; but water can both diminish and increase. Like time – like the hours, minutes and seconds, it passes through the gills of a fish, while that creature breathes and swims, where it has always stirred; while it dreams through all the secrets it has filtered. It’s just the same with people, and with families also, if they remain long enough in one place. The fish embodies the pool and we Owstons embody the valley. It’s as plain and simple as that.  

   Of course, those carp were stocked as fasting food for Tudor monks. They only go back so far, to the waning days of painted Dooms and ill-lit chapels; and this is even true of the carp we call Leviathan, after that great big bugger in the Bible. It’s the monarch of the pool and at least three feet in length. If other species of fish are swimming there, from earlier times - perhaps a coiling eel or a monstrous tench, as rotund as a beach ball – well, they must be very strange by now, those fish. Perhaps they can still recite their Pater Nosters, or else recall a song of passion, heard from passing minstrels.

   I have to stop and smile at myself at times. I have such strange notions! But little makes me smile these days. For every glimmer there’s a shadow, as my father used to say. Needless to add, he did not live or die a happy man.

   Tonight, - well, tonight I’ll be bringing my shotgun again, even though Jacob says I shouldn’t. But I know that if Nark finds us, he’ll probably level his gun and I will certainly level mine, and only one of us will walk away.

   Jacob and I must have poached the pool on eight occasions since my little altercation, and it’s down to Nark’s good fortune that he hasn’t come across me during that time. It’s not that I want trouble, but the man humiliated me once, and it won’t be happening again. I don’t really care if he has a wife and child. I suppose I am an angry man. I know that, really; and Nark should know it too.

   This said, I’d rather fish than shoot, even though I keep my rod and my shotgun together, in the same leather holdall. The gun is wrapped in an oiled canvas rag, in the front pocket, to keep it functional and dry.

   There’s a wooded slope that leads down to the boathouse, and that makes it a prime spot for any poacher. At night, looking down from the path from the ridge, you are effectively staring into darkness. Looking up, especially if there is a moon, you can see the silhouettes going by. I’ve seen badger silhouettes and deer silhouettes and even the odd fox or two, but I’ve yet to see Nark’s silhouette, looming above me; and if I ever do, I’ll be tempted to respond with two barrels. Even now, as I settle in for another try, my shotgun is out and beside me, still wrapped in its oily canvas rag.

   Yes, there would be one almighty fuss and the police would be extra busy for a while. But I would leave no clues behind, only a little local mystery, soon forgotten.

   This said, it’s the fishing we’ve come for, mainly.

   If I close my eyes, I can see a blue-grey shape, like a flexible torpedo, sliding through the glimmer and the ripples. Most carp look blue-grey like that, when you glimpse them in the water; but get one on the bank – their flanks are burnished bronze, edged with silver, at least in my pool. It’s as if they’re wearing armour, and they might be, for they swam through the age of jousts and pageantry. They also heard the cries of homeless monks when old King Henry turfed the buggers out. Some say this place is haunted and you can still hear them crying out, those monks. I never have. It’s just a lovely, eerie, secluded place.

   Jacob was already set up when I arrived. His favourite spot is just behind a screen of reeds, so Leviathan can’t see him. I’ve never known a young man with so much patience. He’s unmoving on his basket, like a statue being Jacob! But it really is the only way. I try to be still and quiet too, because we wouldn’t want to scare the carp we’re after. 

   It’s really getting dark now! I can barely see Jacob’s silhouette, just three yards away. Even in daylight he’s hard to spot, mainly because he’s wearing his battle fatigues, and he blends almost perfectly into the background. 

   We are both fishing floating crust, as the weak light fades. It’s a grand technique, because it’s just a MK IV carp rod and a fixed-spool reel, a line, a hook and a big hunk of crust. The bait is drifting on the surface, below the rod tip. There’s no line on the surface, none at all, because that would be a give-away. It’s a cunning, subtle method. But will it ever fool Leviathan? Sometimes, I have my doubts.

   Do you know, time drags more slowly when you’re out at night, while sound travels exceptionally well. I’ve just heard the village bell chiming for eleven. I would have thought it was closer to twelve; but at least there is more time to enjoy the settling calm. The June night is overcast, clammy and oppressive. I’d love to light my pipe and keep the midges at bay with my smoke, but I dare not show a light in case Leviathan is drawing near. I must be still - as still as Jacob. 

   Now and then, a crescent moon breaks through and you can see a shimmer on the water. There’s a curious rocking motion on the surface by the reeds, straight in front of us, and I know it is caused by a fish. I can sense it through my bones! But the moment passes and the pool goes flat calm. That’s often the way when you’re after big carp, and I suppose that the excitement of such a moment makes up for not catching a thing! 

   But now I’m alert for a different reason. Footsteps! Footsteps crunching over last year’s beech leaves! It must be Snapper Nark. Who else would it be, at this hour?

   I reach for my shotgun. Now, I’m unwrapping the canvas, as silently as I can...

   I can see him! Nark’s silhouette is on the little ridge. The moon’s breaking through again, and there’s no mistake! I’m raising the gun and I’m eager to cock the two hammers... But I’m stopped by a hand on my hand. Jacob must have crept up without me noticing him. I can’t see his face properly, but I can make out that he’s shaking his head, vigorously. 

   I lower my gun, but now we are in a proper pickle! If I could stop breathing, then I would, because Nark is standing there, listening and looking. Why doesn’t he do something – say something? But now Nark is moving on at last... tramping away in his Harris tweeds and heavy boots. He couldn’t see us and he didn’t want to come down the slope to investigate, even if he had his strong suspicions. Perhaps the man is afraid of dark places? Now, that would be an amusing tale to tell!    

   It’s less amusing that I have to pack up early, well before dawn. I can’t risk the chance of Nark returning, perhaps with his bloody mastiff dog.

   Back home, I find that Louisa is waiting up for me. She’s in her pink nightdress by the kitchen stove; a mug of Ovaltine is in her hands.

   “No good then, Maurice?” she says. Her eyes are red-rimmed.

    I shake my head. “No good, Louisa,” I say.

   Then she asks me, quietly - “You had your gun with you, again?” 

   “I did, Louisa,” I say, “and I had a clear bead on Nark, but I let it go... only because Jacob stopped me, just in time.”

   I hear a big sigh that I’m supposed hear. She clears her throat.

   “Maurice,” she says, “don’t you think it’s time you should see Doctor Arthur, about all of this? A private word, that’s all I mean...”

   “Never! Never!” I say. “Nark will get what Nark deserves...!”

   “But Maurice! Maurice! - when that man brought the photograph here – the one that upset you so much – how could he have known? How could he have known that Jacob... Well, - how could the man have known that?”

    I’m shouting. I’m shouting at Louisa -.

   “One day after we had the bad news... when I was grieving like I hardly know how! One day after the telegram came! - and Nark comes here, - he comes here with his fucking photograph, and the bloody man won’t have it! He just wouldn’t have it!”

   “But he soon calmed down, Maurice, didn’t he? - after I explained? And afterwards, his wife sent us a card, and flowers. They’re decent people, really...” 

   “But I’m still angry, Louisa! I can’t bear to think of Jacob being there – in his grave, in Korea! It’s a place we’ll never see... but at least Jacob is still fishing the pool, with or without Nark’s permission!”

   Louisa has set her mug down, on the stove. She is crying and wiping her eyes -

   “Oh, dear me! - Oh, dear me...!”

   “I am sorry, Louisa.”

   “Maurice, you listen to me, carefully. You’re not to go to that pool again. It isn’t good for you. It isn’t good for us, you understand? I don’t know how much more I can stand of this. It is time – it is high time to re-join the real world, and to set all this aside.”

   I’m shaking my head. “That I can’t do, Louisa. You see – you see, if the real world is a place without Jacob, then I want to be in the world I’m in, thank you very much!”

  There’s a long silence. I’m scared. I’m really scared that Louisa will leave me. But she has another suggestion.

   “Very well, Maurice Owston,” she says. “Go fish your pool, if and when you want to, and then come back to me; but only if you’ve left that gun at home. You are not to take it! Not anymore! You understand me?”

   I nod my head. “I promise, Louisa,” I say.

   I suppose I am still angry, and I always will be angry – with Nark and with the world; but a promise given is a promise made, and I will surely keep it.

   As Wordsworth expressed it, better than I ever could -

 

There is a comfort in the strength of love;

'Twill make a thing endurable,

Which else would overset the brain, or break the heart.

  

   If I still have Louisa, I will be all right. Everything will be as fine as it can be, in the end.

  Yes, - true enough, I know there will be days when the pool will be calling me back, even while I’m ploughing the fields and I cannot get away. But at least I’ll have this photograph to look at, whenever I need to see it.

   It’s a blurry, haunting image, when all is said and done; but what it shows is clear enough, I’d say.

Gary Bills was born at Wordsley, near Stourbridge. He took his first degree at Durham University, where he studied English, and he has subsequently worked as a journalist. He is fiction editor for Poetry on the Lake.

Gary gained his MA in Creative Writing at BCU, with a distinction.

He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his post-modernist epic poem, “Bredbeddle's Well”, which was published in Lothlorien in 2022, and he has been nominated for the Best of the Net awards, for his short story, “Country Burr”.

Gary's poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, Magma, HQ and Acumen, and he has had three full collections published, – “The Echo and the Breath” (Peterloo Poets, 2001); “The Ridiculous Nests of the Heart” (bluechrome, 2003); and “Laws for Honey” (erbacce 2020). In 2005, he edited “The Review of Contemporary Poetry”, for bluechrome.

His work has been translated in to German, Romanian and Italian. A US-based indie publisher, The Little French, published his first novel, “A Letter for Alice” in 2019, and a collection of stories, “Bizarre Fables”, in 2021. His second novel, "Sleep not my Wanton", came out in January 2022, and it is due out shortly as a Spanish language version.