back from sunny West Cork

Never seem to get any time for writing much here but now I am back from

Sunny West Cork in Ireland after a short tour with a stripped down verison

of my band 'Wordmusic' - it sort of made sense if you know what I mean.

Over the past few months, certainly it has being a busy few months with me

busy at work and also busy with my band and also carrying on work slowly

but surely with what is possibly going to be my second book 'Words and Paintings' which maybe out towards the end of 2010. Plans of course change but I am working through this at a nice pace, and I think at the moment there is something like 13 or 14 confirmed poems for this book which will be a joint book with my painter friend, Olga Gerke (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=754782852) who is a excellent, excellent painter.

I met Olga earlier in the year at a exhibition in Manchester and was blown away by his water colours paintings and wrote a poem based on one of her pieces quite quickly. The rest as they say is history.

I have a few other poetry books in mind which I don't mind admitting to - at what pace is a different ball game.

Firstly, is a children's poetry book... I've being writing this slowly for years and years and recently did a children's gig in Ireland featuring a number of them. It was a major challenge too as I hadn't done a gig like that before but it has given me real encourage to carry on with it.

Secondly, is a poetry novel called 'Nothing to Hide'. Not going to say tons more about this yet, but it'll feature poems wrote from several viewpoints.

I am also toying around with a proper follow up book to 'Return to Kemptown' which has maybe 8 or 9 pieces wrote for it, and for fun at the moment a sequence of poetry in the style of James Joyce's 'Chamber Music'.

Gigs wise for Wordmusic, it is all quiet now for a while when I get the next two gigs out of the way - the first is at a place called Kim by the Sea on Wednesday 14th July 2010 in Hulme where me and Jeff (Keys) with maybe one or two of the gang will be doing a few pieces.

After that, I think it's just me but I will be appearing at Jeffarama's 'Jamming with Jefframa' tour on 25th July 2010 in Butterflies in Bolton on a afternoon show which I am looking forward to also.