In September and October 2025 I was Poet in Residence at the church of All Hallows by The Tower in the City of London. You may be interested in the blog I wrote about my time there.

As you will read, I have hopes of a pamphlet to follow on from this. 

The talismanic advice to would-be writers—a phrase I hear myself parrot in discussions—is ‘Read, read, read’.
 
The to-be-expected response is ‘Read what?’ And I find myself saying ‘Anything’. It should go without saying that poetry should be among them. Don Paterson told a Poetry School MA Summer School I attended that poetry should be at the forefront of the reading of anyone who tilts toward the description of being a poet. But it should not be restricted to poetry alone.
 
On my first visit to the Holy Land, I met an inspiring headteacher in Nazareth who dropped many pearls before us swine visiting a school in the bustling town. One was ‘We tell our students to be like the Sea of Galilee: water flows into and out of it. Don’t be like the Dead Sea, which only receives.’
 
Keeping up with new writing, as well as filling the always substantial gaps from the past, can be a full time job. But apart from those who live and breathe poetry—perhaps more of them now because of the sustained culture that re-rewards the already over-rewarded—it’s the oddball stuff that can capture the imagination. But some of it is in plain sight.
 
While there is a laudable rise of poetry coming from identarian sources, the great creative flowing out from the ‘I am’, not to be confused with the utterance to Moses on the mountain (Exodus 3:14), it is only one rivulet leading to the wide stretch of water we call poetry.
 
So much energising and exciting work has emerged from hitherto overlooked voices because of the emergence of identity focussed writing. This has flourished mainly due to the tireless, and dare I say, sacrificial efforts of those who publish work in print and online by small, independent enterprises. The people behind these do so more from love than from financial reward. Indeed, it is a dictum in publishing that money is not made from the art form. Except, of course, with the spectacular exceptions.
 
When I was studying for the priesthood I had to read set texts and, as any student should, find material around them that was challenging, stimulating and confronting. Systematic Theology, an academic subject, was one I worked hard in and, to be honest, struggled with. I often say theological college is a place you got to to learn long words—soteriology, euthychianism, perichoresis, eschatology—that one uses in pastoral ministry only among consulting adults. But aren’t they great words in themselves?
 
A fellow student and a damn fine poet, Ophira Adar, explores Jewish heritage in her writing in many ways, recently in a residency at the Jewish Museum in Manchester, and often uses the languages associated with her culture—Hebrew, Yiddish and other vernaculars. She once suggested I mine the seams of particular language(s) of Christianity. She did this after I spent some months writing a series of Stations of the Cross, a work that mixed personal devotion with poetic praxis.
 
In one of his weekly newsletters linked to the podcast Poetry Unbound, Pádraig Ó Tuama wrote of his encountering a carpenter who was a poet. He thrilled at the potential particular vocabulary available to the writer through day to day association. Every trade has its lexicon and it can used to startling effect when taking out of the traditional setting.
 
I have a habit—perplexing and at times annoying to my wife Adey Grummet, because of the books lying about the house—of reading several books at once. Some are related to language (a lifelong obsession), while novels, poetry, religious and other non-fiction, as well as artistic material. They all  feed different parts of my brain.
 
Which is a long detour to getting to three poetry books I have read recently which, to my mind, point to the importance of reading widely. Each has its own particular idiosyncrasy but they share a mixture of previous reading by and knowledge of the authors. This leads the reader into realms of encounter, vivified by extraordinary deftness and daredevilry with language. This surely is the job of poetry.
 
So if you are looking for three cracking reads, let me point to these books to top your to-be-read pile:
 
Hyena! by Fran Lock

I found myself cheering, as I do watching Leyton Orient at its best, sitting on the edge of my seat just thrilling at the action on the page. As Fran Lock says on the Poetry School website: ‘I’d describe my practice, such as it is, as feral: that is omnivorous, opportunistic, accretive and excessive. To unpack that a little: there’s this persuasive cultural myth – certainly in the global north – that poetry is an essentially middle-class pursuit, that it germinates in periods of quiet sustained reflection. I don’t agree with that. At least, that’s not how it is for me. I don’t believe that there’s this ideal contemplative position that is equally possible for everyone. I think that for many of us, poetry erupts in the midst of precarity and scarcity, in the jaws of unlovable labour. It is the perfect mode of production for those poor in time and in resources; it travels light, communicates in fragments and flashes, requires no specialist equipment or training.’

After You Were, I Am by Camille Ralphs

In three sections—roughly categorised as prayer, witchery and necromancy (though it’s much more complex than that)—Camille Ralphs works spells of knowledge, wordcraft and luminescence. At a recent reading I found myself laughing, almost whooping in delight, and at times resorting to the poetry ‘Mmm’ favoured by the more formal settings, as opposed to the preferred clicking of fingers at Spoken Word nights.

The Literate Detective by Paul Scully

Okay, the last one is by my brother, but he’s a brilliant poet and, as I messaged him, the book is a dazzling mix of lexical fireworks, imagination and revelational writing. As I said to him, ‘It's a wonderful collection, its mix of wordplay, imagination and the confessional. A couple of the poems I found enormously moving, especially those tributes to Julie and your life together. You have something I have pointed myself at - the poetics of Australian suburbia. I am in awe and admiration and, to be honest, more than a little jealous.’
 
Each of these books is worth reading because each points the way to the dictum I began with. They are the fruit of reading, reading, reading.

We all like to be stroked. Ah, a cat metaphor.

Every now and then I get to read at various venues. Last December I returned to the Eastbourne Poetry Café as a featured reader. It was great to get twenty minutes, which is what I now give our guest writers at the Open No-Mic in Cowden Pound. You can either dig deep in one seam, or mix it up.
 
I chose to do a bit of both, having three themes, punctuated by the odd random poem. Compiling a set is a great task, and it is probably reflective of me that I like to start and end with a bit of a laugh.
 
Anyway, back to the feline. I am returning to the Café this Friday for its World Poetry Day at the Fishermen’s in Eastbourne. I will be joining Antony Mair and Oenone Thomas, my successors as Poet in Residence on the Cuckmere Pilgrim Path. The café is curated by Mister John and Pam Knapp.
 
I was checking details for the coming gig and I stumbled over this. 
 
You can join me in going ‘Awww’.

Sorry about the title for the post: as we were advised when I started in journalism,  'Avoid clichés like the plague!' but....

I have had two bits of good news among the usual 'Sorry, but no thanks' emails this week.

First was that I was among three winners named for the Eastbourne Poetry Café’s National Poetry Day competition with my poem, 'The counting of sheep...'

And on the last day of the month, I was notified that I had won the inaugural Ashdown Forest Poetry Competition. The poem was 'The family tartan'. It is available to read on the Forest's website.

​I started to earn a living from writing in my first job after leaving school. It was not perhaps where I foresaw myself, but you take what you can get. Between ambition, drinking and testosterone, I would carve out time for poetry.
 
I read it avidly as our house was full of the latest collections from Australian publishers, thanks to my father’s job as a journalist involving reviewing. Even as a teenager I would read a volume a day, dreaming of cracking the code that would allow me into the ranks of these gods who, on reading their biographies, seemed to be mostly the kind of people who surrounded us in 1960s and 70s suburban Sydney.  Australia was a more egalitarian place than it is now.
 
Something happened with the election of the first Labor government for 22 years and, all of a sudden, Australian arts in all forms blossomed, beginning the plethora of opportunities that continue, despite the right wing tendency to see profit over service and ideas, to this day.
 
I started on police rounds but ended up in a range of settings—pop music, politics and some theatre reviewing—as well as postings to Melbourne and to national parliament in Canberra. Between the calls of work and hangovers, I burned the late night creative candle and maintained a steady output of poetry, prose and drama. Much of it, no doubt, was rubbish but—and here is the change—you were able to send it to editors and producers and they would respond. Sometimes it was with encouragement, but more often than not, especially in poetry, it was with the standard rejection note.
 
When I lived in Melbourne in what my journalistic colleagues used to misname a commune, I would send off poems and when each of these slips of paper arrived I would stick them onto the kitchen wall beneath a large poster of Brigitte Bardot folding her arms across her otherwise assumed naked chest. When I was recalled to Sydney by my newspaper, my housemates gathered them up and posted them on to me, with a note along the lines of their knowing how important such tokens of rejection were to my psyche.
 
The odd piece made it into print, usually in small, fringe journals, all of them now defunct. One, probably one of the worst pieces of tosh I have written, certainly in published form, was titled ‘2AM Destination’ and made into the second and final edition of a Melbourne journal Unknown Poets. If my effort was anything to go by, the title was deserved.
 
I could possibly have avoided a lot of this had I gone to Sydney University and studied English, which seemed to be the traditional avenue into the literary life. That at no time did anyone suggest this to me, given my tastes and predilections at school, is a mystery. Still, there have been many entertaining and distracting adventures on the way.
 
Later, after I had graduated from NIDA and was trying to graft my way as an actor, I came to an understanding of the importance of ‘the scene’. I recall one director, a mentor and unsuccessful promoter of my work, once telling me I had to lift my game in the small talk and networking in bars before, at intervals and after plays. I had hoped, foolishly no doubt, that the work would speak for itself.
 
In latter years I have returned to places of learning, as well as hanging around holy houses, pubs and bars and libraries. I have never left them but now it is with concentration, and I have been able to pick up on current trends, craft and reading. One effort got me on the longlist of a prize but, to be honest, it’s been slim pickings—one or two poems accepted a year.
 
I am about to start the final term of my MA at the Poetry School and what is apparent is the change of landscape since I sat in my room bashing out fair drafts for despatch on the latest of my tortured manual typewriters. Talent among my colleagues is prodigious and the tuition is a great mix of input and assessment of students’ efforts.
 
The Poetry School is, of course, one of many routes in the now standard model of literary education in higher learning. This was pioneered in the United States and now almost every university has some kind of offering in creative writing, even journalism. It is, as many who work in the sector will tell you, one of the few ways of earning a living in the writing trade.
 
It is also favours those with disposable income—the Tories will be pleased, as their desire to reward their own and well-off continues apace—and it is tough as so much of the landscape is based on entry and tuition fees. In the US you often have to pay for submission to a magazine, with a sliding scale of costs for speed in response/feedback.
 
Despite the challenges, what this means is that competition is fiercer than ever and the complex nature of poetry, spoken word and publishing is more difficult than ever for an outsider to negotiate. To look at the figures of only one magazine, the wonderful Butcher’s Dog, about 25 poems made it through the long and shortlist culling from an 2079 submissions.
 
What keeps people going? I will leave it for others to opine on that. For me, I ask the  question which has haunted me most of my life—how can I stop now?

Wildhart Radio's Poetry Bath is no more.

The wonderful host, Sian Thomas, is transitioning the programme, which ran for two years, into a podcast.

Her final broadcast was on August 25. It was an honour to be asked back for a second time, this time to discuss my pamphlet, For The Journey.

You can listen to the episode here.

And if you want to buy a copy, you can do so here.

Having spent time walking, praying, talking and generally hanging out on the Cuckmere Pilgrim Path for just over a year, a pamphlet, For The Journey, was launched at an event at the amazing Berwick Church in Sussex on July 12.

That evening also involved the reading of four poems written by members of the Hastings Stanza, who held an ekphrastic poetry workshop in the church in September 2022.

I read the pamphlet's poems in order of publication, which mirrors a walk around the path (with a few surprising diversions) that can be started anywhere.

It was a delightful project to be part of and some of the work was bounced off other writers as part of my MA (Writing Poetry) at the Poetry School and workshops run by the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society.

Mark Oakley, author of The Splash of Words, has written:

Kevin Scully's poems work like sandpaper to the soul. Unafraid to embrace the disquiet of both inner and outer landscapes, he nevertheless leads to places of epiphany and radiance. Alerting us to the locality of his residency, je makes the heart local to us too, provoking us to wonder at rumours of transcendence.

To buy a copy, click here.

​For a while in my journalistic career, I was the rock reporter with a weekly column which had the awful title of Pop People.
 
I have toyed with writing some memoirs of that time, probably called Notes from a Nobody in 1970s Australian Rock and Roll.
 
I mention the column as it was in the days before photos of journalists routinely appeared over or beside  their writing. It was the byline we longed for. I had that, at least.

Pictures of hacks started to appear at The Sun in Sydney with the return from America of the shy new editor, Derryn Hinch, who ensured his face appeared all over the paper, a bit like an earlier Evgeny Lebedev in London’s Evening Standard.
 
As a writer of poetry and prose I have not really needed a likeness on my books. Theatre programmes only wanted one sometimes. Actors must have their day.

The website is a different story, and I have been lucky to have Adey Grummet, my wife of almost forty years, who has somehow captured me on various occasions in a not zombie-like rictus that is my reaction to having a photo taken.
 
But I found myself being asked about a mugshot, which the publishers of my first poetry pamphlet required. Publication was something of a surprise but Peter Blee, the priest behind the Cuckmere Pilgrim Path for which I was inaugural Poet in Residence, thought a gathering of poems from the year would be a fitting end to my time there.
 
So it was I found myself thinking apart from the fabulous Adey Grummet, who could carry out this office?
 
Our village held a street party to coincide with the weekend of King Charles’s coronation. Photographer and local resident Karolina Krasuska took a number of candid shots on the day and two of those caught me in a way I recognised myself.
 
We set a date for an hour’s shoot as light faded in the churchyard and some great images emerged. Which is a testament to Karolina, who tends to eschew formal portraiture.
 
From the proofs emerged a number of images, one which will be on the back cover of the pamphlet, For The Journey. It can be seen here.
 
Another adorns this page, along with me striding through a field. That was by Adey, and it appears on the front of the book.
 
I will let you know how you can obtain it soon. 

Being a poet can be like the proverbial bus wait: a long time with nothing happening and then two or three opportunities come along at once.

I was delighted to be asked by the wonderful Sian Thomas to be a guest on The Poetry Bath on Wildhart Radio just before Christmas 2022. The discussion, with readings from  my work, is now available on catch-up.

Sian's shows are great: she is a natural interviewer, with a keen sense of humour and poetic pomposities are often interspersed with giggles. They also provide a broader insight into the lives and work of her guests. I do commend a soak in the bath to you.

I am also a member of the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society, an organisation with a 75 year history. It currently has about 90 members, who meet monthly for workshops on Zoom and alternately in person or online for open mics and a reading by a leading light of poetry.

Once a year, in January, the guest slot is opened to three members of the society and I will be one of them on Tuesday January 17  at the Royal Wells Hotel, starting at 2000. Non-members can attend for an admission fee of £3.00.

I expect I am due for a good long wait before anything else happens.

​Writing is full of detours and cul-de-sacs. Sometimes you take them wittingly; other times they just occur, or maybe are mistakes.
 
It has been a quirk of my writing career that a number of journals (including the daily newspaper where I started working as a journalist in the 1970s) have gone out of print or existence.
 
The titles that make up a CV can be beguiling. But what happened to the editors of Greenwich Window, Poems in Public Places or Unknown Poets (which ran for two editions) as did the more recent Saccharine Poetry.
 
It’s been a decent, albeit slow, couple of years on the publication front but last week I got work into two editions from different sources—a convent and a football fanzine.
 
In the former I had a poem, calling uncollared, which had a nod towards Jenny Joseph’s Warning. I have known, and been privileged to say mass occasionally at St Saviour’s Priory, Haggerston for nearly 30 years.
 
So it was an honour to have my poem published in their annual magazine, The Orient.
 
It so happens that I am a longstanding supporter of the Os, Leyton Orient Football Club. I can be found in the Supporters Club before the game (and sometimes after full time) and in the West Stand. I have been going there since the church deployed me in the East End, first at Stepney, then Bethnal Green.
 
There are two fanzines at the Os: The Leyton Orientear and Pandemonium. In the former, for which I have penned a number of articles over the past few years, I have written about Poets in Residence at football clubs. There are more than you might expect.
 
Having featured in these two publications—and thanks to the respective editors of each—I can only hope the revkev Curse does not follow their decision to put my work in print.