After the Miracle
published 2nd October 2025 by HappenStance
This new collection, After the Miracle, picks up where my earlier books left off - exploring quiet moments, inner shifts, and the emotional texture of what happens when things change.
The book contains a short sequence of poems about my mother, and dementia. A tribute to her, I hope, despite the tragedy of the condition. There's also a sequence of poems inspired by the great Japanese poet Ishakawa Takuboku. I marvel at his focus and concision, and his humanity, and my poems are an attempt to capture something of his art.
If After the Miracle is about anything, it isn’t spectacle but how we live with what we’ve been given, or what we’ve lost. I hope readers find something in it that resonates, especially in those in-between moments where we’re asked to keep going without knowing quite how.
Featured Poem
an excerpt from 'After the Miracle'
Muscle Memory
A wide, blank beach in northeast Norfolk,
my young son learning frisbee-throws.
A backhand, arrowed from his checkered breast pocket.
A second like it, only one which reaches
the other thrower slower, stalls,
to hover right above us, thinking.
A third flicked upwards, angled, from the side,
to climb and climb then carve straight down.
A fourth that, late in flight, will arc
in such a way it might provide
a template for all future beauty.
And, on the boy’s face, as he gets it
and as the world falls open slightly
to show its workings oh the joy
