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.
Gods in the ring: punk theatre, working-class wrestling and Ragnarök
I should probably admit that my knowledge of wrestling is not contemporary. It lives somewhere back in the strange, televised world of the 1970s with characters like Catweazle and Kendo Nagasaki, looming out of World of Sport broadcasts with their beards, masks and half-mythical personas. Modern wrestling, for me at least, remains largely unexplored territory. As it […]
Savile Wigs, Droogs, and the Bone Temple
The Bone Temple: 28 Years Later is British Horror at Its Best Nia DaCosta’s The Bone Temple isn’t really about zombies. It’s about what survives when civilisation collapses: Savile, Burgess, children’s television, junkyard religion, and the strange, analogue beauty of a Britain patched together from memory and menace. Read the full article
Jim Cartwright’s Two pours a strong night in Prescot at Shakespeare North Playhouse
My first visit to Shakespeare North in Prescot felt oddly close to home. It’s not far from where I grew up, though Prescot itself always felt like another world. Jim Cartwright’s Two has also travelled a long road since its first staging in the 1980s, but for me and the artist I went with it was completely […]
Creative Work
Fiction, poetry and experimental writing drawn from place, memory and lived experience.
Slag Heap Critique
Slag Heap Critique I am walking on the slag heap nature reserve What was the Wigan Alps Now the Three Sisters named after the bottomless shafts they could not fill And the birds have it as their own Watery idyll And on a hillside of driven-in trees and new sown grasses to mask million […]
Improperly Vaccinated
Improperly Vaccinated When finding that you are unfairly hated The solution I found is to get yourself Improperly vaccinated History reeks Curated and discovered and sometimes From under rubble Emerges hidden knowledge Not the utilitarian and sanitised types found at, say a teacher training college Horseback history is all you’ll find there History sat […]
New York from Someone Who’s Never Been
New York From someone who’s never been New York has a king He’s tough too At least he was Looks like Christopher Walken But it’s not him Last time I saw Walken he was doing community service with Stephen Merchant in Reading Not the gaol which would be Wilde They have gangs too […]
Essays and Criticism
A selection of earlier essays on art, culture and education.
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