Pete Green's Blog

Sheffield Almanac is a long poem I wrote in the mid-2010s which became the first standalone publication in my name. First, it’s back in print. Second, I’m discussing it – and its key influence, Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal – in a new podcast.

First published in 2017 as a pamphlet from Longbarrow Press, the Almanac is a single, 36-page poem in four chapters, corresponding to the seasons of the year. Can you have chapters in a poem, or should they be called cantos or something? I suppose it’...

At first the antique quality of the footage could be artificial. It’s as if a crafty editor has applied a filter to give the impression of film from an analogue camcorder. The horizontal bars of colour distortion jumping in and out. The image skewing and flickering like a candle flame in a draught. It’s pretty convincing.

The timestamp, too, could have been superimposed on a very recent recording, tricking the viewer to believe that these scenes were filmed an age ago.

But then there’s the...

Walkback Limit is a poem set in December 1972. While the crew of Apollo 17 – the last people to walk on the moon – are preparing to return to Earth, the residents of a small English village hold a lamplit vigil to mark the departure of the last train from their railway station before its closure.

This poem appears in my collection The Meanwhile Sites (Salt Publishing, 2022).

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My new single Tinsel Round The Telly, as you may already have gleaned from the header there, is out today! Unashamedly sentimental with just a pinch of nostalgia, it’s a home-made Christmas song celebrating all that’s gloriously messy about the festive period and raising funds for foodbanks.

As well as your regulation chiming bells and stompy 70s glam beat, it’s also got a singalong cameo with my brothers Chris and Jon, with a cute (and also home-made) video starring the kids.

You can ...

Most of what you do as a writer is slow and gradual. Even if you’re writing short poems, and you can finish one in an afternoon, the process by which they coalesce into a collection can take several years. Occasionally, though, an abrupt and unexpected jolt moves things along much more quickly – some kind of revelation which throws new light on the material you’ve been writing or thinking about.

This was the process by which I arrived at The Meanwhile Sites – my first full-length collection o...

Another world is possible. As well as equality, sustainability and justice, it has cute sparkly bracelets and audiences who just smile when the guitarist plays the wrong chord.

Since the end of Indietracks was announced, people have responded in different ways. Some have taken to social media to reminisce and share videos and photos. Others have beaten me to the punch and already blogged about it. Importantly, MJ Hibbett reminds us that Indietracks was the only place where those of us whose a...

Another world is possible. As well as equality, sustainability and justice, it has cute sparkly bracelets and audiences who just smile when the guitarist plays the wrong chord.

Since the end of Indietracks was announced, people have responded in different ways. Some have taken to social media to reminisce and share videos and photos. Others have beaten me to the punch and already blogged about it. Importantly, MJ Hibb...

Hemisphere is the story of an impossible journey, told in verse, which circumnavigates the politics of interaction between people, places and poetry. On a chaotic round trip from the Hebrides across the north Atlantic, Canada, Alaska and Siberia, the poem invites reflection on government and nationality, geography, language and ‘post-truth’, fertility, decay, and imagination. 

Hemisphere is published by Longbarrow Press on 15 October 2021 as a 48-page ‘short book’, with illustrations by...

I am the king of Belgium. See me patronise
la Grand-Place, my regal smile
beneficent among allies

disgorging from the Eurostar
on diplomatic business
to locate our finest lambic bar.

Sure, you may regard a grander square
or two in Prague, Madrid,
New York. Well, don’t compare —

just mark the gilded light that baffles
this thin drizzle, glancing off the corniced
guildhalls; mild as cream on waffles.

In French this house is mine:
Maison du Roi. In Dutch, the Broodhuis —
breadhouse. Both are...

It’s a Sunday afternoon in August and I’m in Acton, west London. For two or three years I’ve been thinking about what we mean by temporary and permanent, and about use and reuse; and for considerably longer I’ve been thinking about place and self and belonging. Today I’ve come to see a place where all these threads might link and interweave.

Leaving Acton Town Underground station, we turn right on to Gunnersbury Lane, and again on to the tautologically named Avenue Road. The word residential com...