All Blogposts

  • Crawlers, spiders and bots, o my

    Crawlers, spiders and bots, o my

    Since my last post about the huge spike in this site’s visitors and views (up over 500%) I’m pretty sure that it’s not my content but another, more malicious, activity causing my sudden popularity. I’ve learned more about internet bots, sometimes called spiders and crawlers, systematically browsing the web for content or (in my case)… Read more

  • Hello, China

    Hello, China

    “Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!” read my recent notification. “You registered on WordPress.com 14 years ago. Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.” These days, I’m not doing much flying or blogging. I’m trying to remember why I started this blog in 2011. I’m pretty sure it was because of meeting Ian Pindar, a poet,… Read more

  • Congrats to Abeer Ameer and Modron Magazine!

    Congrats to Abeer Ameer and Modron Magazine!

    A very quick post to draw your attention to the wonderful news that Abeer Ameer, a guest reader for Trowbridge Stanza last year, is shortlisted in this year’s Forward Prizes for Poetry in the Best Single Written Poem category for her poem ‘At Least’ published online at Modron Magazine. Abeer gave a terrific reading in… Read more

  • Philippa Sutherland

    Philippa Sutherland

    My friend of about eight years, artist Philippa Sutherland, died last month. She’d been ill for some time and I’d been visiting her weekly for a year. We weren’t close friends, and Philippa had many friends from different places, particularly Ireland where she lived for many years, but we found lots to talk about, books,… Read more

  • Pauline Scott-Garrett

    Pauline Scott-Garrett

    Today, we said goodbye to artist Pauline Scott-Garrett who died in early April. I was so glad to have known Pauline over the years, and honoured to collaborate with her last year when I wrote a zine of poems in response to her beautiful series of collage and intaglio prints, BORDERLAND, which engaged with a… Read more

  • Not blogging, or writing, but…

    Not blogging, or writing, but…

    It’s already nearly mid-February so I thought I’d write a quick blog. As I mentioned before I’ve been focusing on recovering from a small health issue and that is going very well. I’ve also been reading and notetaking, not writing as much as I would like, starting projects and getting stuck, becoming distracted… and, talking… Read more