Hi, I’m Al – a poetry editor, not a publisher.
Poet in the dark is the result of feeling that I am often a poet in the dark! I have no way of knowing if what I’m producing is intelligible let alone poetic. I’ve often wished that there was safe, constructive space where I might send my work which didn’t cost the earth. There doesn’t seem to be, until now…
If you would like, send me a poem, or poems, or a collection, and I’ll do my best to give you an honest, non – judgemental, interested, and helpful response. If that’s what you would like. Or, if you would rather, I could provide critical and incisive feedback, or even just a thumbs up! Or whatever else you can think of. Let me know what you’re after.
I’m a life-long poetry addict. I obsess about writing them, I live for reading them, poets are my best friends.
I am a published poet and currently working on my third collection.
I have run poetry workshops; I have taught poetry at school and university. I am currently an English teacher in a UK secondary school. I have an MA in Literary Studies, a first class degree in English with Creative Writing, and I was an intern at Penguin-Putnam.
I also work as a guide at Dove Cottage, home of William Wordsworth.
More often than not my dog, Lorca, and I are to be found roaming the Lake District, seeking the path less travelled, deep in somewhat one-sided discussion about Wendell Berry, Cormac McCarthy, Kate Tempest, Ryokan, Denise Levertov, William Golding, Robert Frost, Alice Oswald, Julie Carter, John Wyndham and many, many others.
Fundamentally, I love all forms of literature, but especially poetry. Nothing gives me more pleasure than encountering a new poem, noticing its parts, hearing its voice, feeling its tone and effect,
