A garden enclosed is my body, my wildwater Lesbos, my part of the main – my poetica of the gripe, another-part-of-the-island, my ceaseless watertight fireworking witness

I am a British poet and critic, currently living in the Cotswolds. Due to profound disability, I’m seldom able to attend public events, but I welcome emails here. You can read some of my slightly older work online at the White Review, Poem, and Tender, and my most recent anthology publication appears in Ten Poets Get to the Bottom of Some Grisly Crimes (Sidekick, 2024).

At my body’s behest, I have become a poetica of atomisation, of dependency, of humiliation, of engirlment, of shaky rhapsody

I was born in London, and am of mixed Polish and English heritage. My education spanned a number of schools, with long periods at home due to ill health, followed by time at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, where I specialised in sixteenth-century poetry. I won an Eric Gregory Award and the University of Oxford’s English Poem on a Sacred Subject Prize during this time, in addition to editing the Mays Anthology and serving as president of Oxford University Poetry Society. I increasingly blogged about access issues in education and the arts world, eventually withdrawing from my graduate work when I became too unwell to live independently.

Poetry of animalia, of flashing lights; poetry of sillage, of disturbance, of chypre made fearsome, of purple and pall like the old song

My pamphlet, White Hills (Clinic, 2016) – reviewed here and here – was the LRB Bookshop’s pamphlet of the year, and one of the Poetry School’s books of the year. Poems and translations have also appeared in a range of journals, including Ambit, Magma, Poetry London, Envoi, Poem, Oxford Poetry, and Eborakon, and in anthologies (Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam, The Poet’s Quest for God: 21st Century Poems of Faith, Doubt and Wonder, Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History). As a reviewer, I have also enjoyed contributing to publications as diverse as Asymptote, Poetry London, Mslexia, and Poetry Review.

My hair-shirt poetica, my always-with-me, my heartblood, ickle bothering thing – hand in glove with my end and yet I make so bold

Some of my most fulfilling work has been collaborative participation with composers and other artists. I worked with contemporary composers Daniel Saleeb, Alison Willis and Myron Silberstein, contributing the lyrics for several new musical works – This Blue Dark (Myron Silberstein) can be heard here, and extracts from Psalm (Daniel Saleeb) were aired on BBC Radio 3. I also contributed much of the poetic script for 2sidesofthemoon, a multimedia tribute to the women historically linked to King’s College in Cambridge, which was performed in King’s College Chapel to celebrate the 500th anniversary of its completion. I would love to do more work of this sort so please contact me if you are interested in working with me as a librettist.