My Blog

Orbital’s performance at the Glastonbury Festival on Saturday 25th June 1994 is commonly regarded as legendary because of the context in which it happened as well as its quality. In May 1992, a week-long free rave took place on Castlemorton Common in Worcestershire....

Just before 9/11 happened, I had been listening to ‘Pyramid Song’ by Radiohead while feeling sorry for myself. Whatever I had been thinking about was rendered instantly meaningless when I saw the news. Like everyone else, I watched and listened to the updates in total...

UNIVERSITY BEDROOM PIN BOARD   A photo of my family at the seaside beside Einstein’s head, his tongue sticking out. A semester timetable, curry house menus, a cluster of taxi numbers above a blown-up photo of Fugazi, last year’s Reading Festival line-up rainbowed...

I’ll be performing my set Fair Isle Death Metal at Midlands Fringe tomorrow. The gig is at the Lych Gate Tavern in Wolverhampton and it starts at 12:15pm. It's the second year of the Fringe, and I'm really proud to be a part of it. The BBC reported on its growing...

My joint poetry collection with Antony Owen has been published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. Antony has published ten collections of his own and has been shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Rain Men includes poems inspired by our late...

“Someday you will find me / Trapped beneath the seaside / In a methane pooper nova in my eye…” Thirty years ago, Oasis released ‘Champagne Supernova’. It famously makes little sense. Physicists are stereotypically bald because of the amount of frustrated hair pulling...

According to my daughter, poetry gigs don’t exist. However, the poetry ‘gig’ that I did a few days ago was heavily inspired by music – so, does that make it a gig or not? Rather stupidly, I overdid it on the liquor the night before. The morning was spent mourning the...

I’ll be reading some poems at the Swan Theatre in Worcester on Friday 24th April as part of ITCH! The Worcester Scratch. The event starts at 7:45pm and you can buy tickets here. “Neil Laurenson wants to be a rock star. He clings onto this dream despite a notable lack...

There’s a trend on Instagram whereby celebrities pretend to look bashful in response to the question “Mom/Dad, what were you like in the 90s?” It seems reasonable to assume that anyone watching the highlight reels are meant to think, “Wow! That famous person was an...