Writing
Writing as a form of thinking-through β slower than a photograph, more portable than a sculpture. Essays on art, technology, and place; and longer-form work that doesn’t fit elsewhere.
Are You
Crazy
“No-one here is just a little crazy. You can’t stay here for long if you’re only a little crazy.”
A 37,000-word illustrated middle-grade novel set in Ozora Village — a floating island above an abyss called the Not C, where people hatch from eggs as either Crazy or Innocent, a trained snake controls the passage of time, and a lake yields only things beginning with the letter C.
The cast includes a nose-picking prince in exile, a gardener made entirely of grass, a chef who bathes in his own soup, and Isabella Ding-Dong — a devoted AI who calculates her compatibility with the prince at 92.48% and whose personhood the village must decide whether to recognise. Written in 2015, the Isabella subplot anticipated questions that have since become unavoidable. Every character name carries a Japanese meaning hidden in plain sight: Hana Hoji Oji (ιΌ»γ»γγγ, nose-picking prince), Aozora Hime (ι空姫, blue sky princess). The wordplay works on two levels — pure nonsense for English readers, a second puzzle for anyone who knows Japanese.
The village works by its own logic, which the book takes entirely seriously. Dou Nichi Ojisan, the oldest fisherman ever hatched, is kept alive by the weekly bite of his trained snake Donq Hebi — sleeping all week and waking only on weekends. Krispie the gardener is made entirely of grass and grows everything the village needs. The Chef prepares extraordinary meals, then relaxes in a bath of his own soup.
Beneath the absurdism runs a quieter current: the book is genuinely about time, belonging, and what it costs to lose your nature. The Moku Moku ceremony — a ritual head-bashing dance on a giant lily pad above the abyss, where losing your balance means falling into the Not C forever — is played for laughs and genuine stakes simultaneously.
For readers of The Phantom Tollbooth and Cressida Cowell. Illustrated by Anna Morozova, now represented by Futura House. Currently being submitted to publishers and agents.
Selected Poems
The Surgeonfish
I'll bring up the photos, the surgeon said, just of what to expect in the recovery process.
I swim a little in his Aussie accent, strangely reassuring,
dipping my toes into the water
and finding it unseasonably warm.
Clitoris, he says, or more like clid-er-us, the word rolling out of his mouth smoothly,
as smoothly as my tongue might lick someone else's, given half a chance.
This doesn't feel like surgery,
even when he shows me photos of girls immediately post-op,
talks about 500-700 mL of average blood loss, most girls don't need a transfusion,
you can see the drains in this photo here,
we've moved the tube off to one side so you can see the clid-er-us more clearly.
I ask some questions, you know, the usual practical stuff, like
What impression do you think my new cunt would give
to someone forcefully inspecting it in an ambulance on the tarmac
at Qatar's Hamad International Airport?
After some more idle chit-chat, the surgeon tells me about
eight inches depth with self-lubrication, some of the younger girls insist on it
and I paraphrase in my head
Some of the younger girls want a dripping wet fuck tunnel
ready for the unrelenting onslaught of monstrous cocks the universe will inevitably supply.
I drift further out into the comforting ocean, looking not so much at but
through the surgeon,
still monologuing about cock-hungry cumsluts on my Zoom screen.
Now he seems not so much a surgeon as a surgeonfish, all blue and black
beauty with yellow highlights,
swimming around me as I look on with dreamy intrigue.
Look, I'm really just interested in the labiaplasty, I say,
partly because there's less complications and the recovery is quicker.
Okay, the surgeonfish says, glancing at the watch held somehow by his left fin.
I still have a little time, so let's do this.
It will take some getting used to, sitting down to pee, riding a horse, that kind of thing.
Six weeks maybe, and more like six months to feel and look "normal", making air quotes with his fins.
Luckily we're doing this over Zoom so you're far enough away you won't even feel my scalpel.
But I feel the twinge
and bleed into the salty ocean, which stings against the fresh opening between my legs.
I bleed, 500-700 mL, just as he predicted.
I feel pressure, not pain but poking and pulling and goings-on.
Soon I feel the tightening, being sewn up and re-connected.
I wonder at the new sensations down there, floating in the warm sea,
watching as the surgeonfish darts around me, this way and that.
Some other fish pass by, seemingly oblivious to the transformation under way.
And that's about it, we're done.
The ladies will email you through some details and pricing.
I reach down, finding soft womanhood between my legs.
Time to swim back to shore.
Ode to a Katsu Sando
Sugary white bread, puffy, devoid of nutrition.
Crust easy to hold, reassuringly firm, the way
exposed facets of things naturally develop, like rust,
a sacrifice to protect what's vulnerable inside.
Crunchy cabbage strands, sliced as if a skilled artist
hijacked the task. An occasional piece falls onto my chin
or torso, like a lover's wiry twisted pubic hair, fallen
victim to the passion of my hunger.
Sometimes I meet you as a ritualistic debaucherous celebration.
Sometimes in anticipation, for power, luck, and encouragement
to persist, sustenance to fight in the front-line of great battles
and to sail over unknown seas.
Sticky brown sauce, on my chin
and fingers. My sometimes-vegan lips bloodied, dripping
with the mildly tart sweetness of your syrup.
Someone once offered me a side dish to eat, alongside you.
Affronted, but too polite to outright refuse, I granted it space
to rest on the table near you, a delicacy in a pottery dish
with crackled glaze like a heavy snow splitting into chunks
on a steep rooftop, and it stayed there, abandoned,
as I couldn't bear to taste anything else in your presence.
I bite into your heart, a juiciness I love but try to resist.
Textures swirl into a gluttonous whirlpool deep inside me,
where I hold you and we become indistinguishable.
Max
I saw
a boy,
and his mum,
at the park.
I saw
a boy,
rainbow socks,
a funky haircut,
close by his mum,
at the park.
I saw
a trans boy,
rainbow socks,
trans pride pin on the collar of his shirt,
mud clinging to his spiked soccer boots
and grazes on his right shin.
An undercut, sculpted, stylish haircut.
His mum's arm around him,
smiles and love amongst the other families,
Great game Max, c'mon, let's go
at the park.
Then I saw
what looked like a boy,
frames of memories flashing up like in a dream,
superimposed over reality
like the latest phone app gimmick.
The same exact place, but another era, another me, where the parameters of safety
meant being invisible was inevitable.
I stayed inside
a self-induced coma
four decades
until the danger receded.
It transpires, that boy-shaped figure
who was never a boy
found herself, but without rainbow socks,
without her mum's arm around her,
without the smiles and love.
By coincidence, her brother was Max
and her father too,
who never loved her
and who never knew.
Beechwood
Today we painted your study, pink-grey
Beechwood covering old blue. Amongst your
dusty things, your craft cutting-board, idly
taking up space, unusably bent, four
months of hot sea-voyage destroying it.
You could not throw it away. Right next to
it, a framed, numbered print: golden yellows
and orange, tall trees by Shomei Yoh, a
happy delight we adored, forgotten.
The picture's frame damaged too by the long
journey from Japan, but we will of course
restore it and show it proudly again.
Our love cracked some more at around that time,
and I wonder, can we repair it too?
Transmission to another galaxy
Away from the new moon,
my eyes adjust to the dark
and I search the sky for you,
knowing you're out there
in a place that looks dark,
with the distance between us.
My orbit has altered,
caught amongst the gravity
of bodies I'd tried to escape.
Time is an illusion now,
the length of our days
tied to our nearest star.