barely containing excitement here! i have been invited to read at 3 poetry events in Ireland in june & july this year alongside the incredible Anne Casey Eleanor Hooker Nat O’Reilly massive thanks to Eleanor Hooker at Rowan Tree Readings for organising. thrilled, honoured and delighted. can’t wait!  will post more details on dates and venues soon!  

So the alarm goes off and I’m not proud but I do that thing everyone does now, as their eyelids slide open like slow shutters on shop windows – I grab my iPhone, check the time, check the weather, check emails then sit bolt upright on reading the email from the incredible online literary journal, ‘ink sweat and tears’ advising they were taking my poem, ‘the cumquats of christmas past’ for publication in their ‘Twelve Days of Christmas Feature.’  So honoured to be in such fine company as the other poets who made this list.  Poems will start to appear on http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk from 22 Dec 2017 – 2 Jan 2018.  My ‘cumquat’ poem will appear on December 26.  This calls for a pre-christmas eggnog.  And just to get us all in the mood, here’s a photograph of a glasgow white christmas, courtesy of my brother andrew whitelock’s incredible eye and well, his camera, obviously. 

spent the day fiddling around with photo booth, trying to record poems for my youtube channel.  not known for my technical skills, it was a daunting task to say the least.  held nose.  jumped in.  ended up with this recording.  it’s a start. 

what could be better than a sunday afternoon of listening to some of the most incredible poetry in sydney?  okay, apart from winning say, twenty milllion dollars, buying a castle in the remote scottish highlands and writing in one of the turrets with a tam o’shanter pulled down over your ears for the rest of your natural life?  okay, so that’s not entirely everyone’s cup of tea.  but it is mine.  with milk and two sugars and a custard cream for dooking.   here are a few pics of some of the poets who read on sunday including, yours truly, anne casey, michelle seminara, anne walsh, eileen chong and anna forsyth.

please raise your babychams and join me in my astonishment, as i celebrate having two of my poems published in the forthcoming edition of The American Journal of Poetry January 2018.   woohoo!

http://www.theamericanjournalofpoetry.com/a-forthcoming.html