Poetry
I have now published three collections of poems.
My latest work, The Tree at the Edge of the Mountains, was published in February 2026, and is available as an e-book.
Rooted in the landscapes of Europe and working in the traditions of Ted Hughes and Edward Thomas, the 30 poems here explore belonging, nature and love in a time of pandemic, intolerance and war. It is illustrated by me, and by my daughter Eleanor.
Here's a video of the title poem of the collection, with another key poem below the picture.
The Afghan Family on the U-Bahn
They are mountain people,
stocky and strong and at ease.
He sits sturdy, and beside him
his wife in bright headscarf,
a two year old boy on her lap.
The bigger brother’s standing
part hidden by the pushchair,
stretching round to poke
and be poked back, kittens
soft-pawing with sheathed claws;
it’s just part of the game,
but I feel a brutal lurch of horror,
dragged to a sudden
darkness by a scream.
His father feels it too.
Gently he pulls the child
into an embrace, and hugs
the most precious thing in the world
tightly to his heart,
right into his heart,
protecting it forever.
I look down and notice
the boy’s artificial legs and
sandalled prosthetic feet.
A father and a son,
fumbling for paper, all I find
is a blank page in someone else’s book
Here is one of my most popular works from my first book, Shadow Cast By Mountains, published by Hayloft Books in 2016.
Mrs MacDonald Visits Her Father
She felt the ebbing tide
And went to the loch shore
To gather sea shells.
She last saw him
Marching off, tall
To her, and special,
But smaller with every step
He took away from her,
Unremarked in kilted uniform.
Soon he was nothing more
Than just another
Claggy lump of Belgium.
From eighty hard
Highland winters she came
To a green field
He knew only as mud
To bend painful knees
To kneel before him,
And arranged her shells
To spell out one word -
DADDY.
See Video
Reviews
The journalist Allan Little wrote an early review of Shadow Cast by Mountains:
"I opened it at random at Mrs MacDonald Visits Her Father, tried to read it aloud to my wife and choked before the end. It is a beautifully accomplished poem."
And Professor Richard Sambrook was also very kind:
"The poems are accessible, beautifully written & take us beyond the headlines to an emotional reckoning. This is a compassionate, intellectual & literary response”.
The Road Taken
Hand in hand we walk
Where tumbled rocks
Meet Rhine-sifted silt
Generously dumped
To shore-up England.
I lead a child
Beneath chalk cliffs
To be told she’s taking
The path with her,
To find the way.
Crying gulls drive back
The fleeing tide
In complicated pulses
As the wind whispers sadly,
‘You’ll find no peace here’.
To Robert Frost & Edward Thomas