Maritime

Added on 08 November 2016

For the past few weeks we have been on the boat most of the time, making the most of the back end of the sailing season. We grabbed the nice easterly wind and glorious autumn weather of October and sailed across the Minch, and based the boat on the pontoons in Stornoway Harbour. This wasn’t ju...

New woodland charity offer

Added on 01 November 2016

From now until the end of the year, for any copies of my poetry pamphlet A-B-Tree bought from this website I will give a donation to a woodland charity of your choice: either Culag Community Woods, or Reforesting Scotland, or your favourite woodland charity if you can persuade me it's a better c...

Birds

Added on 28 October 2016

The fieldfares have blown in at last! Flurries of leaves are being scattered from the birches and aspens and the loose, lively flocking of the fieldfares is similar in form, fluttering above the woods in gusts and bursts. I’ve been longing for them for weeks, watching the rowan berries startin...

A-B-Tree was launched into the world from Culag woods

Added on 06 October 2016

The day before National Poetry Day, Wednesday 5 October, saw a small group of people disappearing off into Culag Woods from Lochinver harbour, to scatter poems like leaves among the trees. We brewed up kelly kettles for tea, cooked marshmallows and read poems in the dappled, smoky sunlight. Trees wh...

No Throwaway Cups

Added on 29 September 2016

In my ‘day job’ I work for the Environmental Paper Network (EPN), a coalition of more than 140 civil society organisations that share a vision for a future where all paper is produced, used and disposed of ethically and sustainably. Given that paper accounts for more than 40% of world in...

Launch of A-B-Tree

Added on 29 September 2016

My new pamphlet of poems, A-B-Tree, celebrating the Gaelic Tree Alphabet, will be launched in Culag Woods, Lochinver on Wednesday 5 October. The launch will be part of an event to bring poems into the woods in preparation for National Poetry Day on Thursday. We will leave a trail of poems behind us,...