Welcome! Explore My Creations & Discover Your Favourites.
This is the central home for all of my creative work. Whether you are a long-time reader or visiting for the first time, I invite you to dive in and explore.
🧭 How to Navigate the Site
Latest Postings: Tap on the links in the written menus below to search my writing. To dive straight into my most recent pieces three will show on my front page. To browse by Category: Click the Menu drop down at the bottom of the page. Simply choose a category that sparks your interest and see what you discover.
✒️ The Poetry: From Craft to Soul
My writing journey spans over a decade, and you will find an eclectic mix of styles reflecting that growth.
The Evolution of Style: Explore everything from my early, structured days—where my poetry was more didactic and traditionally rhymed—through to my contemporary work, which leans toward free verse while still experimenting with classical forms.
Themes & Texture: I have a deep love for psychological poetry, vivid imagery, and the natural music of language. My hope is that you find lines within these pages that truly speak to your own experiences.
The Craft Behind the Words: Having dedicated several years to studying the mechanics of writing, I also share numerous craft-based articles. If you are a fellow writer or a curious reader, these insights into the “how” and “why” of poetry are for you.
📚 Coming Soon: Sneak Peeks & Previews
I am currently in the exciting throes of producing two new books of poetry that take an intimate look at psychology and the self.As these collections come together, I will be sharing exclusive snippets right here on the blog. Keep a close eye out for these previews I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts, reactions, and feedback as the project evolves.
Enjoy your time exploring, and thank you for reading!
Below see my Three Latest Posts.
- Changing Diction: How Word Choice Shifts a Poem’s Soul.
Changing Diction, Changing the Theme: How Word Choice Shifts a Poem’s Soul.
In poetry, you can use the exact same scene, the exact same characters, and the exact same sequence of events to tell two completely different stories. How? By changing your diction—your specific choice of words.By shifting your word choices, you change the emotional emphasis. You change the atmosphere. You alter how the reader feels before they even fully realize why.Here is a side-by-side example of how altering your diction completely transforms the emotion and tone of a single morning scene.
The Canvas. One Scene two Views.
The Canvas: One Scene, Two Radiantly Different Moods
Version 1: The Heavy, Reluctant Morning
Sunlight sneaks through the curtains
bathing the room in slithers of light.
I stretch and blink and turn away.
I see the end of the bed getting clearer,
the hump of our toes under the duvet
like a batch of smokey chimneys.
The bottles on the dressing table start
to march across the surface in irregular groups.
I hear the beat of their feet, their sibilant whispers.
The light pushes in further, fighting the shadows,
stridently announcing its presence,
asserting a new day, a new day,
as I pull the duvet over my head.Version 2: The Light, Playful Morning
Sunlight pushes through the curtains
bathing the room in beams of light.
I stretch and blink and turn away.
The sunlight flirts with the contents of the room,
the hump of our toes under the duvet
appear like the Rocky Mountains.
The bottles on the dressing table start
to pirouette across the surface,
chased by errant sunbeams.
I hear the beat of their feet, their giggles,
as the light creeps catlike, illuminating them
in the mirror as they call new day, new day!
I stretch, smile, and leap out of bed.
Breaking Down the Craft: How the Tone ShiftedBreaking Down the Craft: How the Tone Shifted.
Look at how the emotional landscape changes based entirely on the vocabulary families being used:
- 1. Movement and Action. In Version 1, the bottles “march in irregular groups” and the light “pushes” and “fights.” The tone is militaristic, aggressive, and intrusive. The morning feels like an assault, ending with the speaker retreating under the covers.
- In Version 2, the bottles “pirouette” and are “chased.” The actions are dance-like, whimsical, and celebratory. The speaker is energized and leaps out of bed.
- 2. Sound Imagery
- In Version 1, the bottles make “sibilant whispers.” Sibilance (hissing sounds) naturally creates an atmosphere of conspiracy, secrecy, or unease.
- In Version 2, that exact same sound is translated into “giggles.” Instantly, the room feels lighthearted and joyful.
- 3. Visual Metaphors In Version 1, the toes look like “smokey chimneys”—evoking grey, industrial heaviness and smog.
- In Version 2, they become the “Rocky Mountains”—evoking grand adventure, crisp air, and vast potential.
The Takeaway for Writers
Your diction sets the emotional weather of your poem. If you are writing a piece and the emotion feels flat, don’t change the plot—change the verbs and adjectives. Audit your text: are your words marching, or are they pirouetting?
Over to You
Can you see how easily a piece’s emotion shifts just by swapping a few key words? Try taking a single stanza of your own work and rewriting it by swapping the verbs to the exact opposite emotional tone. What did you discover? Let me know in the comments!
- The Bloodstream of Romantic Poetry: A guide to controlling imagery.
Images and imagery are the bloodstream of love poetry. They’re how emotion becomes sensory—how longing becomes something the reader can taste, touch, or see. When you control your images rather than letting them drift in randomly, you shape the reader’s emotional experience with precision.
Below is a craft-focused guide to how imagery works in love poetry, and how you can wield it deliberately in your own writing.
1. The Somatic Bridge: Making Emotion Physical
Love is a ghost—it has no weight, no temperature, and no shape. If you simply tell a reader you are “very sad” or “deeply in love,” they might believe you, but they won’t feel you. Love is abstract; images make it tangible.
Consider the difference:
- Abstract: “I miss you so much.”
- Sensory: “Your absence is a cold windowpane.”
- Abstract: “Her voice makes me happy.”
- Sensory: “Her laughter is warm bread.”
Why it Works: The Mirror Effect
Neuroscience suggests that when we read a vivid sensory description—like the “sharp snap of a cold apple”—our brains fire in the same regions as if we were actually biting into that apple. By using physical imagery, you are crossing the gap between the abstract mind and the physical body. You are literally hijacking the reader’s nervous system to make them experience your love story.
Control Tip: If you find yourself using “feeling words” (happy, sad, lonely, ecstatic), delete them. Replace the word with the physical evidence of that feeling. Don’t tell us the room is lonely; tell us the tea has gone cold in the cup.
2. Establishing Thematic Gravity
A dominant image system isn’t just a recurring motif; it is the spine of the poem. Without it, a poem can feel like a junk drawer of pretty metaphors. When you choose a dominant image family—like archaeology, mechanics, or weather—you provide the reader with a coherent map.
Avoid the “Metaphor Salad”
Inexperienced writers often jump from a “burning heart” in stanza one to a “sailing ship” in stanza two. This creates metaphorical whiplash because the brain cannot settle on a single physical reality. To control the poem, stay inside one world.
- The Metaphor Salad (Weak): “Your love is a fire that warms me, / a map I follow, / and a song I sing.”
- The Dominant System (Strong): “Your love is a hearth; / I am the kindling waiting for the spark / of your return.”
Scaling the System
A great image system scales seamlessly from the microscopic to the cosmic. If your chosen system is “The Garden,” look at the massive range of tools you instantly have at your disposal
- The Micro: The grit of dirt under a fingernail (the raw labor of love).
- The Macro: The changing of the seasons (the inevitable cooling of passion).
- The Internal: Roots strangling a pipe (the hidden, darker side of attachment).
3. Intimacy Through Specificity (The Illusion of Truth)
General images feel generic; specific images feel deeply personal.
- Vague: “Your hands are soft.”
- Intimate: “Your hands smell faintly of rosemary and ink.”
When a reader encounters a highly specific, slightly “offbeat” detail, their subconscious assumes the scene must be real. This is called the Illusion of Truth. Specificity signals proximity—it proves that the speaker has stood close enough to the beloved to notice the “small, jagged scar on their thumb from a childhood kite string.”
The Subversion Tactic
Step away from the predictable phrases that have long since become clichés. Subvert them by adding a layer of contemporary, textured reality.
- The Cliché: “Your voice is music to my ears.” (Vague, expected)
- The Specific: “Your voice has the scratch of a worn needle on a record.” (Textured, historical)
- The Subverted: “Your voice is the low hum of the refrigerator at 3 AM—the only thing keeping the silence from being absolute.” (Mundane, yet profoundly intimate)
The imagery you choose dictates the rules, tone, and narrative arc of the relationship you are describing.Setting the WeatherImages act as immediate psychological clues about the speaker’s state of mind. If the speaker compares their lover to:
- A storm – they feel overwhelmed.
- A hearth -they feel safe.
- A locked door – they feel shut out
Creating Emotional Movement
Images should never stay completely static; they should shift as the relationship shifts. This is how imagery transforms into a narrative arc:
- Conflict: Fractured, shadowed, sharp, or metallic images.
- Reconciliation: Warm, returning, mending images.
Reconciliation: Warm, returning, mending images.
🛠️ Two Quick Exercises to Try: Right Now
1. The Body Scan
Think of a specific romantic moment (a first kiss, a sudden realization, or a final goodbye).What physical object in the room shared that exact sensation? (A vibrating window? A dry leaf? A tight knot in a rope?)Combine them: “My throat was a vibrating window.”
2. The Grit Test
Take a classic, overused romantic image and “control” it by adding one specific, un-poetic detail.
- Standard: A bouquet of roses.
- Controlled: A bouquet of roses wrapped in a damp Sunday newspaper.
- The Result: Suddenly, there is a setting, a time, a backstory, and a sense of effort. The damp newspaper tells a story the pristine rose never could.
Over to You
Which image system do you find yourself returning to the most in your own writing—is it water, fire, landscapes, or something entirely different? Let me know in the comments below!
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Converging Lives. Sounds, Silence and Imagery 