Writer     Speaker     Poet

PictureSecond prize at Liverpool Dead Good Poets Society's 'romantic' competition, March 2020

I'm a writer and speaker, a former BBC broadcaster and newspaper journalist, based in Liverpool, England. In 2021 I was honoured to be invited to become a judge at the annual Royal Television Society awards.

I give talks to community groups in the Merseyside area, usually with a sporting theme having spent most of my professional career as a sports writer and broadcaster. As chair of the Norman Nicholson Society I give talks about the work of the Society as well as chairing meetings and events. In 2020 I was honoured to be elected chair of the newly-formed Norman Nicholson House Community Interest Company.

I'm a published poet whose work has appeared in print and online. My poem Visibility is the latest to be selected for publication. It is included in A String of Pearls, a beautiful collection of poetry and prose celebrating the English Lake District, where I was born. The book, edited by Margaret Wilson with stunning photographs by Helen Shaw, was published by Merlin Unwin in May 2021. Copies are £20, available from the publishers. 
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Dunlin Press
My poem Visibility was selected for inclusion in 'This Place I Know', an anthology of contemporary Cumbrian poetry published by Handstand Press in 2018. I qualified because I was born and brought up in Cumbria (although my neck of the woods was called Westmorland then!). In July 2019 'This Place I Know' won the Bookends Prize for Literature and Poetry at the Lakeland Book of the Year Awards.

More information about my poetry HERE.
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Away from poetry, my book 'The Adventures of Monkey and Riggy' is a collection of children's stories aimed at 5-8 year-olds. The book has been featured by Sefton Libraries in a project to encourage bedtime reading. More details HERE.
HIGHLIGHTS:
  • Appointed to the judging panel for the Royal Television Society annual awards.
  • Finalist in Sefton Slams poetry competition, October 2021.
  • Visibility included in A String of Pearls (Merlin Unwin Books) alongside poems by Norman Nicholson, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Simon Armitage, May 2021.
  • Privileged to write the foreword to The Unpredicted Spring (The Book Mill), anthology of lockdown poetry commissioned by the Norman Nicholson Society. March 2021.
  • Sefton Libraries highlighted The Adventures of Monkey and Riggy in an online campaign to keep children reading during the Covid-19 lockdown, June 2020.
  • Awarded second prize at Liverpool Dead Good Poets Society's annual competition to find Liverpool's  most romantic poet, March 2020. 
  • Boutique by the Harbour published in 'Port', Dunlin Press, November 2019.
  • The Adventures of Monkey and Riggy is featured by Sefton Libraries in a campaign to encourage bedtime reading, autumn 2019.
  • This Place I Know wins Literature & Poetry prize at Lakeland Book Awards, July 2019.
  • My book of children's stories, The Adventures of Monkey and Riggy, was launched September 2018.
  • Two poems featured in audio soundscape Time produced by The Art Clinic, Liverpool and premiered at Central Library, Liverpool. Again is at 25 mins 37 secs on timeline and Growing Old Together at 53'37 HERE
  • Honoured to be asked to compose and present the Oration for 'Citizens of Honour' ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall.