Author Archives: Dick Jones

CLAYBURY HOSPITAL Shortly after leaving Goldsmiths’ College back in the late ‘60s and whilst awaiting creative and commercial success with what our agency touted as ‘South-East London’s First Flower-Power Band’, I took a job in the laundry at Claybury Psychiatric … Continue reading →

We are informed that digitisation will, ultimately, replace every function currently managed by human agency. We will be counselled by robots; automated doctors will diagnose and prescribe; classroom learning will be directed by a disembodied electronic presence; all vehicular transport … Continue reading →

PUTTING OUT THE CALL… Way back in 2003 one of the first posts that I uploaded to my hip new blog, the Patteran Pages (this via the steampunk software adopted by the American news and culture site Salon, who were … Continue reading →

GO WEST Nearly two decades ago, I read Barry Miles’ just-published The Beat Hotel. The book depicts an on-&-off six-year period spent by Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso & William Burroughs in a run-down little hotel in the back streets of … Continue reading →

names of the moon sucked pebble: tongued smooth by ancient salt night / starflecks in a quantum field / sour white beached as blue-black sucks out // old coin: dun metal edged like a flint scrap / spent / effaced … Continue reading →

Moraira is a small coastal resort about an hour’s drive from Alicante.  MORAIRA 1. We each of us carry a strange portfolio         of ghosts and vipers         spiny things and ticks that burrow … Continue reading →

Much as at the point when suddenly rain stops,             or wind abates,                         or cloud obscures the sun, there is a moment just between              breathe in and breathe     out                          when shock stops the spin and hum of … Continue reading →

At the moment of her death         she saw the curtain fidget                 around a hint of starlight. At the moment of his death         he heard … Continue reading →

LOVE SONG TOO LATE was written some years ago after a particularly vivid dream of love lost many years earlier. Subsequently I took the poem’s narrative and wrote it up as a song. Co-writer Steve Moorby put it to music … Continue reading →

PHLEBOTOMY As I drive home my blood is talking to the man. My salts and spices are telling my story to a stranger. Confession in absentia. Unremarkable, that chapel with its scattered single pews. Then the curly-headed priest in white, … Continue reading →