Poet, teacher, essayist ...

born in the country now called Zambia in 1945 and moved to England in 1958, where I have lived ever since, mostly in Devon, in the south west.

First poems to meet the attention of other writers appeared in The English Intelligencer in 1966. First collection, Between the Cities, was published by Grosseteste in 1968. A number of other collections appeared between then and 1981.

A period of 'not writing', discussed in a 1992 article, 'Writing and Not Writing', followed. During this time, particularly from the mid 1990, the 'writing' took the form of visual poems. The last section of Else Here: Selected Poems in 1999 marked a return to page-based poems.

After five years as a school teacher (1971 -1976) I worked at Dartington College of Arts, where I have been ever since, in different capacities, some of which have been more helpful for writing than others. In the early years I was closely involved in the development of the Art and Social Context degree. Between 1990 and 2002 I was Vice Principal Academic and led the group that planned the Performance Writing degree for a 1994 start. In 2002 I took early retirement, to be re-employed half-time as Associate Director of Research.

Since about 1996 I have given a number of talks and published over twenty articles, exploring literary aspects of poetics, reading, performance writing and the work of specific contemporary poets. There are also articles that may be of interest to those involved in designing teaching or research programmes in the practical arts, very much including writing.