From the north to the south and an intriguing new venue: Bournemouth's Natural Science Society. This beautiful Italianate Victorian building is crammed with cabinets full of shells, skulls, skeletons and all manner of natural wonders: the kind of things my Sun likes to take credit for: "I made the cats./I make the snow."
Read MoreSunspots: Manchester Martin Harris Centre for Music & Drama, October 9th
Room 101 was my hotel room in Manchester, nothing to do with the wonderful Martin Harris Centre with its back-screen projection, remote controlled lighting rig and helpful technical staff. And we were in the John Thaw Studio Theatre! I've loved John Thaw since the 70s when my parents would let me stay up late to watch The Sweeney on school nights. But the next day, I couldn't get Inspector Morse's voice out of my head: "There's been a performance of Sunspots, Lewis..."
Read MoreSunspots: Reading South Street Arts Centre, October 8th 2015
After London, Reading was another 'home fixture'. I lived here from 1989 to 1997, having side-stepped academia to work at Our Price Records for a couple of years. The second 'Summer of Love', which I'd spent in Brighton and which did its best to distract me from my MA, was soon clouded o'er by Britpop and the seeping mist of shoegazing.
Read MoreSunspots: Royal Festival Hall, October 2nd 2015
I'm going to write short blogs about each stop on my Sunspots tour. How did it go? How did I feel? What went wrong? What went well? All of this, none of this. That kind of thing.
Read MoreA Sunspots digest: eat the Sun!
On Friday October 2nd, in the Royal Festival Hall's atmospheric Blue Room, I kicked off the Sunspots live tour to a packed, responsive audience. The event was part of the London Literature Festival and we received great support from Freddie the tech lead and her apprentice Susanna.
Read MoreA Sunspot on International Women's Day
I take my responsibility
for these rocky, gassy, charges
seriously, as you can see
The silver apples of the Moon, the golden apples of the Sun*
On Wednesday 25th June, I compèred my first public event at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory: an evening of poems about the Sun and the Moon.
Read MoreWhat if There Were No ( x )?
For my first poetry session at the Mullard Space Science Lab, I thought discussing some poems by the astronomer/writer Rebecca Elson would create a kind of 'singularity' of relevance.
Read MoreTromsø and Sø Øn
Some pictures from the space lab
he Mullard Space Science Lab is crammed with all manner of space paraphernalia and technical equipment, and nitrogen tanks, and bits of rocket, as you might expect.
Read MoreSomeone left the space lab cake out in the rain...
So far, each time I've been to the Mullard Space Science Lab it has been pouring down with rain and there has been cake. Scientists, engineers, and PhD students are partial to tea and cake around 3 p.m. it seems.
Read MoreThe Color of Money: Grady Seasons
Scorsese's hugely underrated 'The Color of Money' is on BBC One right now. I'm reminded of when my friend Beril challenged me and Luke Heeley to write poems about the sleazy bit-part hustler Grady Seasons
Read MoreNew residency at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory
I have just begun a one-year stint as poet in residence at UCL's Surrey-based Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL for short). This is my first big new (ad)venture in a while and I'm tinglier than 'Space Dust Alka-Seltzer', if there were such a thing.
Read MoreHiroshima & Nagasaki & Tsutomu Yamaguchi
August 6th and August 9th: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was caught up in both horrific events.
Read MoreIt's Me, O Lord
...standing in the need of prayer. Well it felt that way in the warm-up room of Jacques Samuel Pianos on Edgware Road.
Read MoreByron's 'Darkness' and the Summer of No Sun
[Given the Sun's reluctance to appear this year, I thought it was a good time to revive a piece I wrote for Birkbeck College's splendid Writer's Hub. This article first appeared there in June 2012.]
Read MoreRemembering 'Simoraine'
Every Father's Day I think about funeral music, a theme that's played through my mind ever since October 1997, when I heard the pieces that my musician father, Clive Barraclough, had selected for his final 'appearance'.
Read MoreBest American Poetry Blog
This week (Monday to Friday), I'm a guest blogger over at the Best American Poetry website. I feel a little guilty, as I'm neglecting my own site, but I'm hoping to continue here from next week.
Read MoreNew blog
A few years ago I had a blog called 'Fallout'. We fell out. This is going to be the new blog. Life, literature, culture, my struggles playing the trumpet, which I took up last summer.