I love a fresh start, how about you? I love it so much that I have notebooks and rooms full of unfinished projects, and a head full of even more that I am definitely going to start, one of these days…

…which is why it’s a refreshing change to say I have finished something! I started this blackout poetry book back in 2012 perhaps? A lifetime ago. And last weekend I finished it. It’s not the most incredible thing in the world, but it’s mine, and I’m done. What project have you completed recently? How long did it take you?

In my imagined future I sit on a cushion rag-rug-covered in denim blues, looking at the neolithic horses I’ve sculpted out of papier mache and all those toilet roll innards. I’m relaxing after recording the seventh in my series of poetry review vlogs, and pondering the edits to my fourth collection of poems about geomancy, post-Apocalyptic shamanism and GPS. I’ve loved writing it, it’s been such a welcome break from the best-selling crime novels. On the wall behind me is a huge canvas covered with coral polyps fashioned from water-softened rail tickets I’ve collected over the past decade. My stop-motion filmpoem of hand-painted beetles has been selected for an international festival, and I pen a little celebratory sketch into one of the hand-made scrapbooks I fill each lunar month. Soon I will go out and contemplate the incredible living patterns I have painted on my garden wall in buttermilk and blended moss. Birds are bathing happily in the water feature I made from a reclaimed pedestal hand basin, encrusted with Gaudiesque mosaics. I think I may have lost a little weight…