Richard D North.

Here is the first of a tranche of poems I wrote in 1996 for Valerie, who became my wife in 2013. Read more...

This is the second of a tranche of love poems from 1996. Read more...

This is the third of a tranche of love poems from 1996. Read more...

This is the fourth and last of a tranche of love poems from 1996 Read more...

What's the command-and-control in a skein of geese? Read more...

A couple of years ago, I had a run-in with my brain. I like its not having a precise diagnosis, and even better that it only happened once, briefly. (Insurers please note.) Read more...

A couple of years ago I had a.... No that's boring. Hell, I'm 67, I am in the zone, no more or less than that, so far. I have had the odd brush, the odd procedure, I take the meds... Read more...

I like my bus rides into town. We are a very mixed bunch, but I like best checking out the real-life youngsters I overhear. How like are they to the reality-TV shows and dramas by which I normally get to hear and watch them? How like the young of other generations? Read more...

This summer, I saw Shady Lady: Mission accomplished... running on empty at the Chichester Film Festival and thought it marvellous. I nabbed a DVD of the film on my way out, and some others from Fact Not Fiction Films, and settled on a stormy British winter afternoon to be transported to 1943 and the longest range bombing mission ever then attempted, from Darwin, to  Balikpapan, on the island of Borneo, 1300 miles away. Read more...

Chris Allinson, a master in portraiture (paint) and Haiku (brevity) took me to the excellent Bridge Inn at Shoreham-by-Sea ("fresh local fish", lively mixed crowd), and put my hat on straight about my "poetry". Please note my quotation marks. He said something like, "I like your stuff about Alfie and Bernardine Bishop, but it's not really poetry". Before I got upetty, he smoothly proceeded, "You ought to be looking at Haibun". Read more...