write and move ... write and move ... write and move on
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Bookerage
This anthology selection from 12 volumes of poetry was published as a book in 2016 to raise awareness of the suicide rate amongst former military folk. You can have a copy here if you’d like one. No, no, it’s a gift, no catch.
Courtney Hulbert
CH is, was – feels strange writing in the third person to create greater weight and authority – a ‘street’ poet, writer, and drunkard living in Cheltenham. Then he went to Uni in 2016, studied Creative Writing and reinvented himself. To a greater or lesser degree …
Lothlorien -- 'ome of good mental 'elf
When Life comes calling. Up until Covid, CH used to teach poetry and Creative Expression for a Safeguarding Trust in Glos. This came about from experiences in ’16 when he went looking for his Army knife. Not for whittling. Then a dog got in the way. More stuff about this troubling and difficult topic (to live through but also to talk about here ).
I’ve lived a life of many changes, all without version control. Each iteration came bereft a Project Initiation Document, or functional specifications. The persona of Courtney Hulbert, shield while I hid behind my writing’s shadow side, spanned a decade and a half of the biggest, tectonic, changes. As a teenager grows out of childhood, the reflection-teenager grows out of adulthood into some other shifted-shape. Old-age, maybe. Wiser? Huh! While I settled into my own skin, after six decades, into and out of the chrysalis stage we (Courtney and then me, Guy) often dropped the baton, fussing around in the dust to find it again. I couldn’t say both hello to CH, in terms of this web presence, and good-bye, until my own compass had stopped its chaotic oscillation and finally pointed downwards to the earth. ‘Bye old friend, and thanks for all the fish. GPM, Spring ’24 xx.