I grew up enthralled by the joy of listening to my mother reading me stories and making up strange little tales that I inflicted on related to my family, the family cats in particular, as a toddler. That love of crafting with words has never left me.

For most of my life, I’ve pretty much written straight prose in one form or another. I tend to write short stories, although there is something much longer in the pipeline at the moment if I can just put aside some time to give it the attention it deserves.

The writing of poetry is a rather new development, but one I am enjoying immensely. My first proper attempts at poetry were explorations of playing with imagery but more and more I’m playing with poetic forms just as much. I perform at open mic poetry nights, mostly in nearby Wroughton although I also go along to one in Southampton and have been to London too (hopefully I’ll be going to those two on a more regular basis). I have tried the ‘poetry slam competition’ format but I’m not entirely sure my style is suited to those events – I may give it another go just to make sure.

I sometimes get the feeling that I’m the muses’ plaything, especially as I regularly get woken up ‘poem-pounces’ at 3am. Still, I won’t complain (too much) because few things give me more pleasure than creating something beautiful with words.

Very recently, thanks to my wonderful friend, Talis Kimberley, I’m also getting ‘song-pounced’ (although not, so far, at 3am). I haven’t got anything decent recorded at the moment but at some point I hope to add a few musical creations to the site as well.

I hope you enjoy my pencrafting; feel free to leave a comment on the various pages because I love having feedback (criticism is fine as long as it’s constructive and not just ‘this sucks’).