email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com
Human Voices Wake us is a podcast devoted to history, poetry, and creativity. Each week the voices from history – poets, artists, stories from myth, first person accounts from ancient Rome to today’s telemarketers – come to life in through my (hopefully) unhurried voice.
The podcast as a whole asks: how can we all – not just creative people – thrive in the world as it is now, and how can art and history help us do it? How did the writers and artists of the past do their work? Why have certain poems, stories, or ways of storytelling lasted, while so many others have disappeared – and what, indeed, are the stories and voices we need now?
My latest book, and my first book of essays, Notes from the Grid, was just released.
You can read more about it here.
Over the years I’ve published a few books of poetry and fiction. Click on the covers to read reviews and excerpts:
Below is a continuing list of poems, essays and stories published online and in print:
The Basilisk Tree: 1 poem: Pythagoras (podcast version here)
The Basilisk Tree: Interviewed by Bryan Helton
Substack: 3 poems from The Great Year, including audio: “The Autumn Village,” “I was in Iceland centuries ago,” and “Smith looks up the long road”
Ancient World #43: Essay: Putting Osiris to Bed (on ‘Germinating Osiris’ bricks)
The Basilisk Tree: 1 poem: Leonardo (podcast version here)
Amethyst: 1 poem: Viśvakarmān
Medieval World Culture & Conflict #4: Essay: Living on the Edge: The Life of Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir
Amethyst: 1 poem: “Jacob”
Jewish Journal: 2 Essays: The Leaky Boat, Walking with God in the World
Jewish Journal: 6 poems: A Ploughed Field, Train, Moses, Bezalel, Abraham’s Father, The Water Waited
The Journal #61: 2 poems from the plague of 1666: The Harvest of 1665, Rich Houses
Londongrip: 1 poem: Caedmon Comes to Singing
Crossways: 1 poem from School of Night: Mr Cassian’s 120th Dream
Amethyst: 2 poems from School of Night: Mr Cassian’s 51st Dream, Mr Cassian’s 54th Dream
Jewish Literary Journal: 1 poem from School of Night: Mr Cassian’s Good Friend, Albert Einstein
Southword #37: 3 poems from School of Night: Mr Cassian, Heavy Judger of Men, Mr Cassian’s Beeping Garage, Mr Cassian Gets Self-Conscious
Isacoustic: 7 poems from School of Night: Mr Cassian’s 105th Dream, Mr Cassian’s 156th Dream, Mr Cassian’s 159th Dream, Mr Cassian Shares the Park with Other Parents, Mr Cassian’s Snotty Eyes, Mr Cassian Flees the Scene of an Accident, Mr Cassian’s Good Friend, the Roman Soldier
Cutthroat #24: 1 story from School of Night: The Frog (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Bold+Italic: 1 story from School of Night: Isis in Old Age
4 Poems from Columbine: The Mother, The Mother at the Salon, The Two of Them, Infatuation
WWII History, April 2019: essay: The Vermehren Betrayal
Renaissance Magazine #120: essay: Monks & Vikings at the Edge of the World
Military Heritage, March 2019: essay: The Battle of Pydna, 168 BC
90.5 WESA: Interview with NPR on Bone Antler Stone
WWII Quarterly, Winter 2019: essay: When the Blitz Came to Bath
Renaissance Magazine #118: essay: The Black Death Comes to Bohemia
The Wisdom Daily: essay: The Loneliness of Isidore of Seville
Voices Behind the Words: interview
Military Heritage, July 2018: essay: The Roman Siege of Jerusalem
WWII History, June 2018: essay: Henry Kissinger’s World War Two
Amethyst: essay: Risking the Sacred
Seattle Book Review: essay: Generous Chance Encounters in Publishing
The Big Windows Review: 1 poem: The Seeress of Vix *Nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award
Amethyst: 2 poems: Esus, Sucellus
Orbis: 2 poems: New Families Arrive in Britain, Bronze Offerings in the Water
Cider Press Review: 1 poem: Old Man’s Shed
Isacoustic: 3 poems: The Brough of Birsay, St. Magnus Cathedral, When I High, When I Saw the Deep
The High Window: 6 poems: Painted Stags Clermont-Ferrand, The Sun Sets into the Sea, Axes, A Song to Stone, Song of Trees, The Seafarer
WWII History, December 2017: essay: The Scholarly Spies of the French Resistance
Military Heritage, November 2017: essay: The Battle of Crecy
Crannóg: 1 poem: Cauldron & Drink
Cumberland River Review: 2 burial poems: Oleneostrovskii Mogilnik Cemetery, Skateholm Cemetery *Nominated for a Best of the Net Award
Underfoot Poetry: 6 bog poems: Last Meal, Haraldskaer Woman, Tollund Man, Kayhausen Boy, Damendorf Man, Grauballe Man, Lindow Man
Poethead: 4 goddess poems: Song to Sequana, Song to Sulis, Song to Nehalennia, Looking for Nerthus
Cider Press Review: 1 poem: Missing Child
The Journal (Wales): 3 burial poems: Long Barrows, Tormarton Ditch, To the Air
The Basil O’Flaherty: 4 poems: Unfinished Michelangelo, Kafka’s Sister, The Painted Caves: Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira, A Disciple of Pythagoras Wins a Chariot Race
Albatross: 2 poems: Migrations at the End of the Ice Age, Ring of Brodgar
Concho River Review, fall 2016: 1 poem: Neighborhood
Londongrip: 2 burial poems: Near Copenhagen, The Amesbury Archer
Military Heritage: Constantine the Great & the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
The High Window: 3 poems: Star Carr, Fire Houses, Pytheas in the Shetlands
World War Two History: essay: Exhausted Caravan, the 1940 Exodus from Paris
Poethead: 6 poems: Robert Oppenheimer, Horses from Orkney, Daedalus & Icarus, Skara Brae, Bone Antler Stone (Orkney Museum), Cuween Chambered Cairn
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 1 poem: Winter Crash
Military Heritage, May 2016: Alexander the Great & the Battle of the Granicus
Living Orkney, May 2016: essay: A Tourist in the Heart of Orkney
Concho River Review, fall 2014: essay: Blindness, War & History
Meat for Tea, March 2014: story: Adult Conversation
Bitter Oleander, vol. 20 #1: story: Flew Away for Number Three