What the devil am I up to?

October's a busy month as well as a haunted one. If the launch of 'a pint for the ghost' on October 30th wasn't enough to be getting on with, I'm currently in the middle of a residency at the strange and spooky Shunt lounge, below London Bridge.

The residency is connected with Apples & Snakes and explores the idea of listening, involving three performances in the busy main bar at Shunt. I'm working with a ridiculously talented group of writers and performers including Byron Vincent, Molly Naylor, Joe Hakim and Joshua Idehen. You can read more about the residency here and, even better, you can come and see us perform tonight and tomorrow from 8pm.

Throughout October, you can hear me reading extracts from 'a pint for the ghost' amongst other work, at loads of different places. Including:

Sheffield's fantastic 'Off The Shelf' festival on October 17th
Soho Theatre on October 21st
...and in deepest Devon on October 28th

Watch this space for more reading dates.

'Course, today is National Poetry Day, so in the spirit of that, here's a favourite recent poem of mind, taken from Don Paterson's book 'Rain' which won the Forward Prize last night:

Rain

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.