Writing across art, culture and education, moving between criticism, fiction and review.
The work often returns to working-class culture, place and the creative lives that unfold beyond official spaces.
See all Reviews + Poetry + Short Stories/ Flash Fiction + Creative non-fiction
Writing on film, theatre and art, attentive to place, voice and the spaces where culture happens.
The Fine Art Degree Show: Lancaster University
A digital print of a fallen arm resting on a bedsheet, poised somewhere between surrender and death, bears the words ‘Shared Skin’ across the flesh. This was the first work I encountered in the LICA Building: Nico Sharma’s ‘I knew you under its touch, and it knew us (Mud poem)’ (2026). I noted the phrase […]
The complexity of class: artist Jamie Holman’s red glass and resistance
Driving into Blackburn in May, the election aftermath still spills from the airwaves, the tremors of the night before continuing to unfold as presenters attempt to narrate a country shifting beneath them. The language suddenly feels old again, full of talk of crowds, resistance, anger and nationhood, while the roads into town pass the very […]
Borrowed voices, open doors: Manchester Film Festival 2026
Manchester Film Festival closes with exactly the right kind of film. Not something inflated for the sake of a finale, but a work that catches hold of one of the festival’s deeper currents. California Schemin’ arrives at the end of 11 days of screenings, conversations, applause and immersion. In its story of borrowed voices and improvised […]
Creative Work
Fiction, poetry and experimental writing drawn from place, memory and lived experience.
Creative Match 2025 — Collaborative Letters Across Time
This work is part of the Creative Match 2025, an initiative by Manic World Magazine pairing writers in collaborative exchange. What follows is part of an ongoing epistolary project between myself and Canadian writer, Jess Logan — letters written across time, distance, and shared ground. Chapter I July 19th 1970. The sign says “The […]
The Hacienda Must be Grown
Dragging the canvas to the flyover when it was just plain and grey and flimsy was not the kind of drag that meant channels of mud. It never once touched the ground, it was always at least waist height and it blew around a bit and acted as a sail. The sense of being dragged was inside the body, of the walk harder usual because of this giant, empty thing.
Fragments – Three Stories at Haworth Art Gallery, Accrington
Fragments was a series of three short stories performed at Haworth Art Gallery in October 2024. Each story uses a short form, 200 words, to develop punchy images of life. This is the video taken during the event, live and direct! The stories as a book can be found on the website under ‘fragments’. Fragments […]
Essays and Criticism
A selection of earlier essays on art, culture and education.
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