Hearing Eye

Desk With A View honours William Carlos Williams’ dictum that everything is fit material for poetry. He has poems on the legacy of Socialism, meditations on nationalism, sex and love, and personal elegies. These poems are informed by literary tradition without being inhibited by it, working in a lively, accessible contemporary idiom spiced by black humour.

Green Suede Shoes

A sexy story about shoes has me wondering
if I am a latent foot fetishist or closet Elvis
impersonator since I catch myself crooning
‘All Shook Up’, Ahhahhah Ahhahhah Yeayeah,
into my hand, starting the swivel & pelvic shimmy,
till I realise I am in a room in Yorkshire
with a bunch of people who hardly know me,
who might start to question my mental health,
keep me busy with autographs & cameras
while they send out for the straitjacket…

“It is a pleasure to find work that has something to say with wit and perspicuity.”

“Brian Docherty writes well about politics and survival/exile”

“By turns elegiac, serious and funny, Docherty places descriptions of childhood and growing up against a wonderfully evoked background of popular culture and politics.”