Hello, and thanks for visiting my page. Most people call me Bernie, which is fine; please feel free to do the same. I was born in a small village in the south of England in 1957. It was a fairly sheltered childhood and it was some years before I left the comfort of home and finally moved around the country; eventually settling in the north east of Scotland with my wife and two sons. I've been writing for about forty years; mainly poetry but some short stories as well. I write about anything that I think will provoke an emotional reaction of some type; on the whole it's love, relationships (with the people, the enviroment around me and with myself) that inspires me the most. Some poems are quite abstract in their personality, which gives them the ability to mould themselves to the readers own thoughts and emotions. Over the years though my style has changed and hopefully as a result the poems have become more accessible. I write more about contemporary issues these days as well. In a collaboration with Liz Alderdice; a local photographic artist, I wrote poetry inspired by some of her images and took part in a joint exhibition. Visit Liz's website! Following on from this I have written and conducted some poetry workshops in Scotland and England. More recent collaborations involved an artist from the East Neuk of Fife who invited poetry inspired by found items on a beach to be installed in an exhibition. On August 12th 2010 I was fortunate to perform within a Poetry Cafe, with five other fellow Poets as part of the Pittenweem Art's Festival. The venue was an excellent little shop and cafe called The Cocoa Tree. See photo's on the Facebook page of North East Writers or Blue Salt Collective. In October 2010 I was co-opted onto Poetry selection panel for Pushing Out The Boat, an annual arts publication in the North East of Scotland. I have three collections of poetry: 'Love Cry and Wonder Why (2007). 'A Hatching of Ghosts' (2011) and 'Headlines' (2013) 'Headlines', my most recent collection, was initially an attempt to write a poem a day for a whole year, based on news items at the time. After three months, I had to admit defeat, but it did result in a core of ninety poems which formed the basis of the collection.  I am available through the Scottish Book Trust's Live Literature scheme to run workshops, and creative writing sessions within North East Scotland.

In December 2007, my first collection of poems was published by Aberdeen based Cauliay publishing. Its title, 'Love, Cry and Wonder Why'; hopefully illustrates the diversity of poetry within. Check out the great reviews on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Waterstones.co.uk The second collection entitled 'A Hatching of Ghosts' was published in December 2011. A third collection - 'Headlines' was published in April 2013.