John Clare, Ampersands & Ecological Entanglement
I have been working on a small collection of poems, tentatively titled Ampersands , which I am hoping to release in the new year. This will be my first self-published collection (not including the poems in Goblin Realism , which, incidentally, I will also be publishing the second edition of which around a similar time). I have compiled around twelve short poems, potentially stretching that number to fifteen depending on the amount of poetic creativity I can conjure before its publication. I have also been experimenting with collage to accompany the words, but these are still at the level of very-basic experimentation. I do like the idea of having art alongside the poems, though, something along the same manner as William Blake's illuminated works (precursor to zines that these are?). I use a lot of ampersands in my poetry, hence the title, which is something I have borrowed from John Clare, especially his long poem The Shepherd's Calendar . As a poet of nature and place, I