The Tow Rows

Barbara at fish from a platter

A fun poem

The intercom crackled

This poem traces the rise and fall of the out-of-town superstore — once a place of bargains, announcements, and convenience, later a hollow centre that quietly replaced the very town it helped erase. Through tannoy voices, rolling baskets, and abandoned local shops, it charts how community life was absorbed, repackaged, and ultimately discarded. By the time the intercom speaks again, announcing closure, the irony is complete: the town is gone, the store is going, and there is nowhere left to shop. A poem about consumer culture, convenience, and the unintended cost of progress — told with dark humour and a very British shrug.

Norway

Norway is a poem shaped by memory and place, where landscape and feeling are inseparable. Moving through quiet villages, narrow streets, and still water, it captures a deeply personal vision of Norway — not as a destination, but as something held and returned to in the mind. With blossom, mist, mountains, and mirrored fjords, the poem reflects on how places become part of us, and how memory preserves their beauty long after the moment has passed.

The Kestrel Hovers

A chilling metaphor of predation and disguise, The Kestrel Hovers examines emotional blindness, manipulation, and the masks worn by those who feed on others — asking the listener to question what appears gentle, and what waits beneath.

The Tow Rows

My mother once told me that when she was a child there was a story of the village woken in the night by terrible screams. She said it was a ghost story, and it was called The Tow Rows. I’ve used that memory as the starting point for this poem. A bleak and haunting tale of a ship lost in a gale, the cries that carried ashore, and the silence that answered them, The Tow Rows explores fear, inaction, and the weight of what is left behind when the sea is finished.