What is Fact to Fiction? It is this; An artist – me for example – listens to the weeks news at BBC and writes, within that same week, a poetic text which is recorded on Friday of that same week and broadcast on Saturday and Sunday. Pressure is on. The producer of Fact to Fiction at BBC Radio Four which I’m writing throughout next week, has dropped out. I got the call about the producers disappearance from Eoin OCallaghan , the executive producer. He is now going to be producing my show. This is when your mettle is tested - not when everything goes smoothly, but when things like this happen. I am chewing my knuckles and standing on a ledge. I am sending this via text. It may be my last message. Read more [...]

This is a message to the hundreds of people whom from around the world have written to me as a result of the article on the world service. Firstly I must apologise for not having written individually but I couldn’t answer many of the queries. Many of your compassionate and heart felt emails brought me to tears. Those and many others also gave me a sense of triumph and support. Read more [...]

This is an unusual posting and not one that I would normally do. A few blogs ago Elizabeth Kelly Sloane sent me a question. It is there in the blog Antidote To The Winter Blues. It has taken me a while to answer. So here I include both her question and my reply. It's the first time I have done this and may intrude on my developing style of blogging but I think her question merits it. I will begin with her comment and my answer will follow: Read more [...]

I’m in a car – not driving it – but in it. The driver is driving it which is good because otherwise I’d be sat in an empty car going nowhere. It’s 9am. The sun is shining in East London. It is pouring through the beech trees of the park. It’s weight causing leaves to fall – large lush leaves that make me wish leaves where fruit. They are brown and large and are the shavings of Autumn. Winter is ebony deep grained smooth in its darkness. Autumn is the wood cutters floor. Read more [...]

I enter the glass façade of The Channel Four Buildings. Russel Brand the wunderkind of channel four is in reception looking tall and gangly like a younger version of punk poet John Cooper Clark. He’s the presenter equivelant of my publisher Jamie Byng. Jamie is a soul as old as The Chair of Edinburgh and a spirit and visibility with the same presence. They, Brand and cooper clark, were definitely separated at birth. In fact there is a great table Jamie, Russel Brand and Cooper Clark. I’d serve that table. The reception is laid out like a pack of cards spread. I pick a gorgeous queen of spades. And she simply glances to someone who looks the part. Read more [...]

I put it to you, your honour, that to spend a day with a friend is a thing of beauty. Exhibit number one, the friend, is Whitney McVeigh and exhibit number two, the thing of beauty is ofcourse, me. Actually it isn’t me, it’s Rodin whose exhibition we attended at The Royal Academy of Arts. Read more [...]

This evening is last of what here in England is called Black History Month. I have been out of the country for the most of it but today it got me with a vengeance. And wonderfully so. I somehow think there is a waiting room somewhere where black artists wait for this month each year so we can radicalise on demand. Ofcourse I am joking but I said as much to a packed audience at Clapham Library. Thankfully they laughed. I pretended to be serious and to be slightly bemused by the laughter - but there is a point.... Read more [...]

Just been to hospital for sleep studies. They were going to keep me over night (the clue is in the title apparently) but fortunately it isn’t happening and I have been given some apparatus to use at home that will monitor my sleep pattern and makes me look like a cross between buzz lightyear and a ghostbuster. At the moment I sleep on average about five hours a night and I am up early writing. Still the day does not have enough hours. But I love what I do and I do what I love. However whatever the case to do good work one must also do good rest. Read more [...]

Tonight I am doing a reading at Hampstead Library on Keats Grove right next to Keats House – the house were the writer Keats lived in Hampstead. Did I mention that Keats lived there. It is dark. Pitch Black. And I arrive by bike and train. I can’t tell you how much fun it is to go to a reading on a freakin bike – how cool is that. Read more [...]