Big Writing for a Small World - EnglishPEN

Do join us if you can for the EnglishPEN - Big Writing for a Small World Launch in Manchester tomorrow. Nexus Arts Café 1st May, 7.30pm.

It is shaping up to be a really lovely evening with refreshments, a DJ and of course our wonderful poets and writers who will be reading extracts of the work they have created with me.

Copies of the book will also be available.

An Indian Scrapbook

It is fascinating how much travel and writing are intertwined for me. The curious thing though is that when I am away somewhere I don't write about the place I'm in but being elsewhere allows me to look at my current writing projects with good artistic distance and focus.

India is a very important country to me, in some ways it is my spiritual ancestral home as my father came from Jullundur. I won't even begin to try to describe how I feel about the country as it is a place of such radical extremes, especially of psyche and emotion.

Here is a little slideshow for you of some images taken on recent trips. India for me is not a holiday, when I go there there is always much family stuff to do. I keep promising myself to one day just take off and really explore, to get lost and see if I fall in love with the things I find. However as someone compelled to look where others don't, and go to where I should not; even the most ordinary day there has something to teach me.

Kindest thoughts

John