Part of my Last Hurrah project this new 'apostrophe combe Mk 2'has no photos this time but does have new material.
What I have come to realise 'apostrophe combe Mk2' has been of a part with my obsession with the Bristol Channel and its phenomenal tides. Covering all genres the books go from 'apostrophe combe' to the thriller 'Porlock Counterpoint' and on to historical fiction like 'The Secret Report of Friar Otto' and 'The Friendship of Dagdà and Tinker Howth.' This Bristol Channel obsession even includes the science fiction 'Futuricity' and, at a stretch, my early angst-driven 'Two Bridgwater Days.'
Excerpt
Apostrophe Combe
Slant-stacked, unquarried, these slate cliffs are a wafered ice cake that has been snapped, then pushed together, refrozen and snapped again. Within stratas of slate are stratas of slate where water can penetrate. Through other stratas of black slate white and pink quartz has been dribbled and veined. On beach stumps this quartz is last to be eroded, becomes a globular warty mass, a dirty icing, no more picturesque than fire-melted plastic.
Above the lustrous blue
of a shale-silted sea,
over path-scarred heathland,
goes the flame-flicker rotation
of three brown butterflies.
Could as easily hate this place as love it. Arrive on a wet day, gusts from every which way flicking rain into your face, walk over/through drain surge and gurgle; and it will feel relentless, this ever-blowing wind, the wet that gets into everything. All that you will see of the grey sea is it roiling white around black rocks, misshapen balls of its khaki spume flying over the gulls sitting out the storm on the putting green. A sustained blast of wind will seem to hold down any house you are in. Only, on its cessation, for the house to balloon out as if to explode. Except that this time it doesn’t. And you await the next blast.
Professional Reviews
North Devon Journal
Unassailable talent.
Peter Cox: The John Clare Society
“…a most attractively produced book of poems and prose… create a sense of place and time, the place being North Devon, round Ilfracombe. Those who like Clare’s poetry will find much to enjoy in this high quality work.”
My book of poetry is being redone by me, I have a beautiful cover designed and the book will have a few more than 200 poems in it. I am going to have it printed on demand here in Canada. When it is done I will let you know when it is done and if anyo
