Shores of Night

This is a poem I wrote in the wake of seeing David Morley talk last week. I don't think of myself as much of a poet, and the actual verse feels rough and ready to me so I may come back to edit it and polish later on but  I thought I'd put it up, along with a picture of its inspiration. She slumbers between my feet A crucible for a resting goddess Child of Bast, perfect in her niche No matter how she shirks it My hips, spread, do her worship Suffering, patient, to keep her snug Until pain forces movement; Revealing her, grudging, to the world Once awake her voice will rise To make her conversation dulcet Whichever mode she chooses Her song, roused, will shatter peace Her questing paw will seal her point To articulate urgent, pagan demands For sleep, play, food and other tributes She lets slip her shadow self, a wild princess Now she rests in sun’s warm light Dreams of hunts she’ll never make Her snore rumbles, engin...

I have a confession to make: I am a doubter, a nonbeliever. I don't mean this in the sense of not believing in God or in any other kind of deity. Its true that I doubt they exist but I also doubt that we're alone and much of atheism seems to be based on sophistry or the belief in something else, like science or money.  Ultimately we all seem to place our faith in something illogical as a cure all for the world's pain, label as it as you will. But that's beside the point. The point is I doubt and I doubt everything, especially myself and my own abilities. I can brave-face it, throw on a mask of confidence but underneath I'm a bubbling disaster area just waiting to melt down into a nervous mass of terror at the thought of having to do anything I'm not confident about; which is most things really. I'm 36 and have no idea what I'm good at, aside from procrastination and thinking too much. At some point I've managed to trap myself and belief is a fore...

Last week I found out that Hellblazer, one of the first mature comics I read way back in 1994, will end publication early next year with issue 300. The news provokes mixed feelings in me, to be honest. John Constantine parted company several years ago, at the end of Mike Carey's run; not because I hated the character but I felt that I'd travelled as far as I could with him. I was worn out and needed a change, especially with the downbeat ending of Carey's run. Nonetheless I have fond, strong memories of the book. At the point where I picked up (finding it in a newsagents in Ormskirk of all places), I had abandoned superheroes, in part because my sister had convinced me that nobody at university would be reading comics - how wrong she was - and in part because I was tired of superheroes and their stupid, pointless battles. My first issue was number 84, the chain smoking chimpanzee in drag, automatically drawing my eye because it was so distinctive.    It told a dark,...

Something very good and very strange started this September; I went back to university as a mature student.  I'd been thinking about studying for a while; in part because it's felt as if my life has been stuck in a place I don't particularly want to be for a while and I've been gnawed at by a sense of dissatisfaction for a long time. I applied to Birmingham City University, Warwick and erm, that ended up being about it to be honest. I had good intentions of applying to others but in the end I never completed the forms. In the end both institutions offered me places, but thanks to a snafu in my understanding of Warwick's procedures, BCU offered me a place first and by the time Warwick's offer came through I had already accepted the place at the more local university. I'm studying part time and I'll be honest that even with my book worm tendencies working and studying can be a strain, just as writing after work can be, but it's a wonderful feeling t...

Yelena looked up suddenly as an alarm erupted into life a few streets away, screeching panic into the dark sky. The piece of fried chicken between the vixen’s teeth slipped, forgotten, from her mouth, down to the ground and the chip paper she had wrestled it from. Dark shadows rushed down the street she was in, animals fleeing the sound, she supposed; but could not ask. The irritating thing about the form she was in was that, despite the folk tales, she was unable to speak with the other animals she encountered; there was no understanding that reached across species outside of the vagaries of tone and pitch that could suggest intention but not meaning. A cat, a heavy set tom with scars and puckered ears from dozens of fights, if not more, dashed past her, down to a garden gate and leapt up onto the wall and from there into the tree next door. Once ensconced in safety it stared down at her with gold green eyes so round they could have been marbles. “What’s going on?” Yelena...