WOOL MAN

My superpower would be spotting
Z-twists from a hundred metres.
My costume, a thickly knitted scarf

(the one you won in a raffle); beanie hat;
cable knit jumper; woven blanket worn
like a skirt over trousers, tucked in

at the waist to secure; and those house
socks you bought me for Christmas.
What do you think? Sound good?

Or maybe more than one superpower?
Smoothing slub simply by staring at it,
dressing a loom in the blink of an eye?

Remember how I used to reconstruct
war zones in my breakfast bowl?
Sadly, Cereal Man didn’t gain traction.

And saving a pair of boots from a tree:
unspectacular, which is why they’re
still up there now, even after the storm.

Fabric Man was short-lived too,
swept away with those deft hands
that once grabbed valleys of viscose

from the bolt’s hobbling asymmetry,
the drape tumbling like in a spin dryer,
then measured out by a brass yardstick

set into the bench’s flatland, the silken territory
partitioned by chunky scissors (an inch-snip
then a slice up the compliant cloth’s grain).

I had the perfect childhood training:
swaying hands to keep mum’s yarn taught;
miming the clicking mechanics of knitting;

sliding a Silver Reed’s handle over hooks
and latches to magic up knits in minutes;
sizing jumpers against my back; gazing

hypnotised at the drop spindle’s twirl
as it spun a sackful of snagged fleece
foraged from fields and fences;

touring shelves to the fusty smell
of clothy boredom—the dreaded
threads and buttons still to come.

Oh, almost forgot: fingerless gloves!
These will guarantee my generously
swaddled body will enjoy a wholesale

thimbling while allowing ready access
to the spring-loaded pin that draws
fingertip blood on a daily basis.

DANSETTE

Fine motor skills deliver the stylus to the smooth lane—
a sweet wrapper surreptitiously undone in a hushed cinema;
tip of a fingernail scraping along the teeth of a miniature comb.

The planetary disc spins at my feet, its vibrations travelling
up the bones of my legs, into my pelvis, the ivories
of my ribs, backbone, shoulder blades, jaw and teeth.

Gloss is in fashion again: liquorice, resurfaced street tar.
The world rotates, and things shoot by, nothing stays put.
I grab the autochanger and dangle from it, allowing my feet

to drag through forests, oceans, deserts, gardens; over cracks
in pavements, along motorways, valleys and rivers, cemeteries,
roofs of buildings…then my shoes are torn off by scrub.

A chair is placed squarely in the way, and collisions ensue,
as my needled body—not loose now, but presented stiffly
to the groove—brushes the Earth’s many forms, transmitting

to my ear the grain of things; the seas, for instance, provide
a lengthy interlude of varied sloshing, the prairies an expanse
devoid of yippee guitars, but strung with the thresh and whip

of cornstalks and maize; snowflakes, flower petals and feathers,
all drawn earthwards; confetti fluttering, harp notes descending,
leaflets dropped from aeroplanes, shutters closing for the day.

Greek Key (Meander)

Homage to Etch a Sketch,
plotted in two dimensions
with pulleys and cables
operated by knobs;

master letterform for
rectilinear typographers;
philosophical field manual
(‘freedom through discipline’);

modest border font
for goddess couture;
quiet accomplice
to the invention of trousers;

eccentric algorithm
for robotic lawnmowers;
Pac-Man loser’s
route to oblivion.

Beyond trademarking,
this ancient logo first tagged
the people of Asia Minor
with its right-angled logic.

It then flowed Aegean-ward
to aid gov.gr in extemporising
wildfire prevention laws
that exposed trees to arson.

A labyrinth with no heart,
the route steers the unwary
pilgrim falsely, in eight-bit
sequesters that ape

the Menderes’ snaking improv:
a kind of aide-mémoire,
the trimmings of wisdom
bequeathed to interior design

(eBay has a hallway runner,
sewing tape by the metre,
drapery fabric, wallpaper,
decorative pillows).

It’s how our hands join too!
Not as wrestlers, but as lovers
in a carnal clench enacted
manually by digits mimicking

bodies woven into gapless
fabric interlocks, our wefted
fingers wound together
in a calligraphy of curlicues.

The key’s causal chain
invites a gentle pull to see
reason unravel in sinuous
curves and switchbacks

receding down a basin
of over-cultivated land,
which the clear-sighted
have now cottoned onto;

the agricultural runoff,
tannery chemicals,
alluvium build-up,
these all obey the helical

flow that first gave rise
to the River’s squiggles,
—now depleted and readable
(as was) only from the air,

or via a VR headset, tracking
southeast from Samos
towards the delta wetland
and the plain beyond.

Using basic palmistry
to navigate this corridor
yields a boundless affection
for a river that is defined

by wavering and sifting,
admiration too for advancing
like a child pretend-
swimming in a sandpit.

Clueless, beleaguered,
vulnerable, the liquid flâneur
nonetheless fulfils its nature,
creatively seeking an identity

while the supposedly Greek,
so-called key, for all its fringing,
unlocks little for this meanderer,
it being difficult to pick out.

Longlisted for the 2021 Live Canon International Poetry Prize

Commissioned by Festival of the North.

VIEW SCORE

Read the Poems

Fray is a body of work created in response to traditional textile manufacturing processes at the Ardanalish Mill, Isle of Mull. Fray interweaves digital and acoustic sound, projected video, poetic text and a ‘virtual orchestra’, in order to draw parallels between woven fabric and the social and natural environments. I initiated this research as part of my 2023 Associate Artist residency at An Tobar and Mull Theatre on the Isle of Mull.

“Fray captivated me with its sustained emphasis on metaphors of stitching and fabric as a means of investigating social and
historical hierarchies; it’s an intricately structured pamphlet
and the accuracy of its descriptions reminded me of Elizabeth Bishop.” —John McCullough

One of my aims was to achieve a closer integration between my poetic/written output and the musical/sonic dimensions of my work. This exploration was pursued under the auspices of an Arts Council DYCP grant, and involved experimenting with motion sensing technology, and also, more broadly, re-thinking my compositional process—conceiving of it less in terms of ‘exemplary works’, and more akin to a weaving practice, the routine production of humble pieces of cloth.

“These poems, filled so much with place, do exactly this — they trust to the exact description, to the plain music of the line. Yarns, wools — there is a wonderful tactility to the work.” —Niall Campbell

Fray Installation — stereo audio / video projection onto 100 year-old woven wool/cotton blanket (Dry Water Arts, Northumberland 25/10/25)

Experimenting with video projections, digital audio and live weaving with motion-sensing @ An Tobar and Mull Theatre (Isle of Mull).

FRAY — complete projection video (dur 40′)

FRAY_score_sketch (Handwoven Handmade Button)

“Piano Weave” — a snippet of one of my collaborative sessions with weavers & spinners at An Tobar & Mull Theatre, as part of my Associate Artist Residency.

Weaving and fabric-themed creative eco-writing workshop @ Dry Water Arts

Mohair Silk Iona Wool and Handwoven Handmade Button published in Porridge Magazine

Intermedial poem for BSL signer, ensemble, soundtrack and printed text.

READ Lockdown Lyric

SCORE 1 (A3 print)

SCORE 2 (A4 print)

Poem longlisted for the Live Canon International poetry prize.

Soprano Alison McNeill

Listen: *SANCTUARY_audio preview

(score in preparation)

Sanctuary is a bird-inspired work commissioned by Amble Development Trust.

Accessed via the bird trail app currently being developed by Animmersion, Sanctuary draws connections between the avian and the human by transforming people’s singing voices into ‘birdcalls’ and birdcalls into human-like vocalisations. The result is an audio work scored for a hybrid ensemble of singers, musical instruments, digital sounds and an unlikely chorus of people and birds.

Technically, the soundtrack element employs digital tools to alter the pitch and duration of audio material: bringing birdcalls into the human vocal range and sending human voices into the birdcall register. Sounds have been gathered from a variety of sources, including recordings of local people whose ‘birdified’ voices form part of the sonic texture.