A week’s residential Creative Writing Course

  • Hidden Voices
    My home for a week
    Born of a family feud
    Can you hear whispers?
  • Stoney visage
    Sir Thomas watches
    As cars approach his castle.
    ‘Penny for your thoughts’

  • Ephemeral vision
    Ghostly reflection
    In the Conservatory
    Appears – unbidden
  • Battle
    The Lionesses
    Valiant but defeated
    In this ancient barn
  • Now you see me, now you don’t
    Room-mate with eight legs
    Thinks that she’s invisible
    Think again, Spider!

Wangedrocht
Body of stone slate
Sixteen strong legs of sandstone
What goes through your head?


  • Orange LSD
    Tangerine poppies
    Open like clockwork at dawn
    Kaleidoscope eyes
  • A three point five million pound rebuild
    Fred built a glass house,
    installed electricity,
    Impressed the neighbours
  • Sun monument
    Weathered stones of sand
    Carve their own hieroglyphics
    In a Yorkshire wood
English perfection
Perfect symmetry
Pigeon netted portico
Eyes oblivious
  • ‘Scroll-crested top rail with bobbin finials to bars. ‘
    Iron curlicues
    Mimic the marshmallow clouds
    In caricature

  • In the library
    With wide wings outstretched
    White plaster eagles observe
    Laptops and iPads



  • Seat of learning
    I write at my desk
    Dwarfed by white marble columns
    Can we reach the sky?




  • The peace and quiet of the English countryside
    Heard from a distance
    The roar of the motorway
    Can sound like the sea
  • Snapdragon
    Dragon guards these stairs
    Atop the castle folly
    Who dares confront him?

  • The arch
    Lichen overwhelms
    And paints with master brush-stroke
    Stones from the seabed

  • Eighteenth century Disneyland
    Home is his castle
    Like a stage set, nothing more
    Actors! Bide your time

  • Lucy’s Walk
    I search for Lucy.
    Broken hearted she wanders,
    Barred from love – like me?

  • A composition decomposing
    Pillars divide us
    But they crumble and dissolve
    Let us reunite

  • Enter ye who dare
    This arch is Norman
    Could be Frederick or Cedric
    But Norman it is
  • Rock-like sea critters
    Fantastical stone
    Wind and water have sculpted
    Beautiful monsters
  • Ancient oak
    With unseeing eyes
    The dead tree looks down on me
    One branch yet living

  • For posterity
    Face at the window
    Barely there, ephemeral
    Capture that moment
  • Breakfast
    View and weather great
    Teacake on my patio
    What more could I ask?
  • Thoughts
    ‘Mine, all mine’ she said
    This fine house is her castle
    At least for this week


  • Selfie
    A moment for me.
    Deer dotted vista spreads wide
    From my rotunda
  • In the Serpentine
    Oak tree slowly drowns
    Reaching to the heavens for help.
    Answer came there none

  • Morning skies
    Clouds of beauty part.
    Indiscriminate sunshine
    Illuminates me
  • Afternoon
    Nobody near me
    Tea for one and one for tea
    Happy to be free

  • Spitting image
    ‘Look yonder,’ saist he
    I strain hard, but find life is
    Obscured by a frame


  • Master carver
    Entwined acanthus
    Ascend the ancient staircase
    Pursued by cherubs

  • The dining room
    Atop my salad
    Allegorical figures
    Of Fame and Plenty
  • Ten long years it took
    To restore former glory
    Many thousand hands.





  • Granted by myself.
    Permission to write is given,
    One word at a time.


  • USA v England
    M’lady in red
    Battle of the two passports
    One white and one red
  • Vandals in paradise
    Bridge the Serpentine
    Even today it remains
    A source of friction

  • Dear deer
    In the vast meadow
    Fallow deer play peekaboo
    Amid the long grass


  • Guests for dinner
    Once on the seabed
    Crinoidal limestone pillars
    Support the ‘sealing’

  • That lady in red
    Don’t let it go to your head
    She’s smiling at you.