I 'm a retired engineer based in Southern England, surrounded by some 3000 books and a small garden. I was driven to set up this site by a few disparate factors.

Recently, I found in my loft a folder of poems I wrote quite a while ago. It occurred to me that I might send some to magazines, so I took a look at what's currently getting published. I discovered that it was very different from my own poetry, and it all seemed horribly uniform and, frankly, rather dull.

With my an engineering hat on I've been interested in ‘AI’ since the mid-'80s. I've been surprised by the enthusiasm with which, despite their self-evident limitations and deficiencies, mass market large language models have been accepted by all and sundry for almost every possible purpose, and I'm alarmed by their increasing use as surrogate authors of artistic literature.

I've been concerned for a long time by the way poetry has become something of a cult. Poets write for poets, who publish, read and criticise other poets, but the general public, who not so very long ago (a mere three or four generations back) widely enjoyed reading poetry, have essentially been excluded from the club. So I'm keen to assist in knocking poetry off its pedestal so ordinary folk can get a crack at it again.

So I intend to offer here some down to earth but mostly light-hearted commentary on what makes the results of the best human authorship human and what makes poetry appeal (or not) to everyday folk. That said, it's a truism that all opinion about art is just that – opinion. So I don't expect everyone to agree with everything I post, but I'm keen to engage in courteous discussion about any of it.

And in case you're wondering, the home page image1 is of the Green Man, an ancient forest god who via some confusion became the Green Knight encountered by Sir Gawain some time in the fifteenth century. But this shows him in his original guise.

 [1] from a photo of a stone carving by an unknown hand