Biographical note

I am a semi-retired journalist in Palmerston North, New Zealand. My interests are Islam, current affairs, poetry and schizophrenia. I have a poetry site at http://poetry.2hell.com and a schizophrenia site at http://nzsf.com.

I was born in England in 1940, and was educated at Solihull School in Warwickshire and at Wennington School in Yorkshire. (See http://wenningtonschool.com.) I left England in early 1960, and traveled through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Malaya (as it was then), and Singapore to Australia. I lived in Melbourne from late 1960 to early 1962, and worked as a tram conductor. I then went to Japan, where I found a job as a subeditor at The Japan Times. I worked with Tom Harada and John Yamanaka, who taught me the basics of journalism.

After marrying in 1967, I came to New Zealand with my wife and infant daughter in mid-1972. Since then, I have worked as a subeditor at the Manawatu Standard. I “retired” in late 2005, shortly before my 65th birthday, but was lured back to work in early 2006. At present, I am the sole subeditor in the advertising features department.

Here is one of my poems, written after a return visit to Turkey in 1990-91:

RECLUSE

‘I’m a failed Muslim.
I drink raki now,’ he says.
A bottle twinkles
on the upturned orange box.

On the unmade bed,
a punch-drunk pillow
lurches in a sea of ruptured quilts.

‘I never pray,’ he adds,
as hawk-eyed Ataturk
retreats to an ascetic frame
and glowers at the room.

And we who are too precious
to confess our faults
feel awkward in the silence.