This is the airport.  Up at 7am on a plane to Umea via Malmo.  The picture is from the airport. Back in London today Rankin launches his exhibition at The South Bank,  outside the royal festival hall. I wish I was there. Linton Kwesi Johnson is there. I am one of subjects of this photographic exhibition.  You can see it here.  Click.   Look forward to seeing it when I get back.
Tonight I'll be performing Something Dark my one man show, for the last time EVER. I will never perform it again. After three years, three whole years of taking it around the world, from Zimbabwe  to Cornwall from Holland to Hull, finally it’s over. I wrote the play to give the back story to my career as poet and essentially about the unending search for my family. The last line of the play is thus:

Secrets are the stones that sink the boat,
Take them out look at them, throw them out, and float. 

This performance was the most beautiful. The audience gave  a standing ovation and I can not tell you what a high I'm  on. Afterwards I went to News café and did a radio interview. News is the number one vegan resteraunt in Umea.  I ordered a steak Rare – it was cooked to perfection and accompanied with hazelnuts and mushrooms in butter - glorious. The weather is so cold but beautiful. Umea is Swedens centre of theatre and I met someone from the board of directors of Sweden National Theatre. The gig was very very very special. Though I know it is the final performance I may still be open to international gigs. Who knows. Meanwhile I must get back to England to finish writing the morcambe piece.

I’m on a train speeding through Sweden. Sweden is white, white white. Tonight is the penultimate performance of Something Dark my one man show in a city called Hasselholm, (pop. 28,000) in the south of Sweden. It’s three an a half hours from Stockholm by train. Sweden has a population of 9 million people. About sixty percent live in the capital, Stockholm. London alone has 8 million.   more »

I’m staying in Stockholm for a night at The Columbus Hotel, with Anna. Before you get the wrong idea Anna Cole is the lighting technician for my play Something Dark. She is brilliant. The hotel built in 1780 was once a prison. The Columbus hotel has winding corridors with metal doors and a massive wine cellar. It’s everything but a prison. The wooden floors in the corridors are decorated with lush hand woven Indian carpets. I slept like a baby while snowflakes sloped from the sky. Tomorrow I’ll be getting a train to Hasselholm. The GF called me to say that The Guardian featured me in Portrait of An Artist . I did that interview months ago.   more »

I like to stand on the platform next to a stationary train. I stand very still adjacent to said train until it fills with expectant customers who may notice me. At some point I walk backwards slowly at first then quicker. This gives the people on the train the impression that they are moving. I stop abruptly and watch them jolt. Well you’ve got to do something to fill the hours.   more »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/yorkslincs/series11/week7_poem_flying.shtml Check it out. I do a loop the loop in a plane for a BBC programme Internal Flight which wsa broadcast today. It will only be available this week.   more »

Her is the poem Perfect which I read on Satruday Live on BBC Radio FOur. I will be appearing next on 31st March 9am   more »

A Punjabi gentleman by the name of Daljit was driving us the three and a half hours back to Delhi where we'd booked a hotel before getting the early morning flight home. I have a fear of driving at night. I think that the darkness is an open mouth that will at some point swallow the car. Snap. It’s what death in a car crash would feel like.    more »

Our final two days are spent here picture below at The Neemrana Fort Palace three hours drive from Delhi on the edge of Rajasthan. The palace was built in 1464. There are forty five rooms in total. At the end of two weeks working away from home it was the perfect wind down. Except at night - there really were winding candle lit stone steps up to our rooms and the wind really did howl and batter the room in the turret like a bitter banshee. Mist descended upon the hillside and enveloped the fort as the storm came. The windows really did rattle as packs of wild boars squeeled. The lights really did flicker.   more »

Hyderabad. Though the reading was organised by the British COuncil none of it would have been possible without the wherewithall of dynamic poet and Academic Mamta Sagar. I met mamta at a poetry festival in South Africa an we have been good friends ever since. In Hyderabad I met Mamta, her husband academic and artist, Sham and there wonderful son. There were two readings in all in Hyderabad. The first was at the Sheraton Hotel and with various schools and the second was in the open air at an Ampitheatre.    more »

5th February Tonight I read on stage at the habitat centre in an amphitheatre beneath the stars. The audience was electric and JeetThayli was an astounding poet on stage and with music. The gig went down a storm. The whole evening had an electricity, a power. The reception afterwards reflected the energy of the whole damn thing and it sort of made me want to live there to watch the development and growth of poetry and poets on stage. It was hip angry tearful and with laughter. Damn near perfect. When I see a poet I want to be moved in some way. Wether it is moved to laughter or moved to tears – I want to be moved. Otherwise it’s all too safe, too predictable and too slick. Poery was never one of the aforementioned.   more »

I decide travel in the three wheeler known to tourists as a “tuk tuk. As It banked at roundabouts I was reminded of Whacky Races . It was freezing cold with no windows. The sikh driver touched his bindi (for good luck and more) one too many times for my liking. There's no suspension in a tuk tuk except the suspension of disbelief so I grip the chocolate cake for dear life as it and I bounce in alternate rhythms towards what may or may not have been the destination. This lack of suspension made my attempts at giving directions sound like a distrespectful attempt at Himalayan throat singing.   more »

“your flight will be two hours late due to delays in Delhi”. Said the woman at the check in desk at Bangalore airport. I narrowed my eyes in disgust then she narrowed hers. I narrowed mine more and she narrowed hers more. I shut my eyes completely, which was completely stupid.   more »

Article pending. Ranga Shankar Theatre performance. Shirt made by villagers. Beetle nut with buttons made from coconut Shells. Mamta Sagar. The performance. Gets locked out. Culture minister kept out. Meal afterwards. Hotel.    more »

article pending. Grand Ashok. Mount Carmel. Link to rev.   more »