As part of an event at the Essex Book Festival, a Camarade I had the pleasure of putting together, I got to read with my friend and collaborator, David Berridge. We launched our book 40 feet, which has been published by Knives Forks and Spoons press. http://knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/

40 Feet is a poem in dialogue. 40 poems as 40 moments, 40 fragments, 40 conversation starters / enders. It is a poem deliberately broken, misheard, overheard and overlapping. It is a record of meeting, writing, witnessing; mulching and reflecting London in 2013, where both of us lived and frequently met. 40 Feet is the events of that time and the character of that place, fixed in the subjective, the miniature, the specific - through an open-ended poetics of expression and conversation.

We wrote the book over a year ago and revisiting it in Essex was a beautiful thing, to feel the book as a record of a friendship in poetry but also a marker of a time in my life.

And you can read more about David's work here http://verysmallkitchen.com/

Both these works are about to emerge in their entirety with Knives forks and spoons press, and really kick off the Enemies series, a selection of my collaborative works published as stand alone books in their full form. // http://cordite.org.au/poetry/collaboration/40-feet/ David Berridge and I wrote 40 feet, made of 40 poems over a year ago now, and it stands to me as a very specific representation of a time, and a city, before David migrated south.

now everything’s big, everybody’s mother
is bluer than blue, whiter than white
privileged as a dip in the car thief fame and muscling up
for money
sounds like a good deal to me
when I’ve become wealthy
I’m bound to be calmest
said a Giant, currently fashionable
if the screaming doesn’t end by sunday we’ll call a doctor, said the elephant

http://cordite.org.au/poetry/collaboration/1000-proverbs/ Tom Jenks and I took an unknown amount of time to write 1000 proverbs, and an unknown amount of wisdom. All of his are very very funny.

Better an egg today than an egg nog tomorrow.
Better Butlin’s than a Russian prison. Better a scarf in Skegness than rubber gloves in Minehead.
Better a wrestler in the vale than in Bognor Regis.
Better a bugger in Bognor than a penis in Penistone.