I’ve been quiet on here for a little while but lots going on elsewhere.

have been working, with support form my wife Maggie, Steve Cooke and Kirsty Olczak, towards the launch of a new and exciting CIC to support creative writing and poetry in Rochdale. I will post further details in the near future and we plan to launch in April. In the meantime this link – www.rochdalewrites.co.uk – takes you to a holding page which will be updated when we launch.

I also manage the website for Riverside Writers, based in Rochdale Central Library. The site www.riversidewriters.org.uk carries notifications not only for that group but also for lots of other creative writing related activity that we are aware on in our area.

For my own work I’ve been writing and running various writing workshops. My newest writing includes a number of new poems, a collection called “Feathered”, some new short stories and I am continuing to work on a narrative non-fiction book about thin places.

At last in recent days I’ve managed to add a couple of new pages with watercolour paintings to my own nature journal, pictured here. One lesson from all of this is that it doesn’t matter if you pause on something to concentrate on others. You can come back and that when you do you can feel refreshed and ready to go.