In the Winter of 2020/21 I was commissioned by the orchestral outfit Manchester Collective to create a new work to be performed alongside their presentation of John Adams' Shaker Loops.

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I was thinking and reading a lot about English identity at the time so created a small suite of poems trying to get under the skin of something that always seems to lead to cliche and imperfect failure. I'm not sure I offered anything more concrete than others have but presented a fair summary of my task and its context alongside a choice selection of part remembered and part imagined poetic visions, quite dreamlike, that I'm certainly fond of.

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Titled An Elegy for England, the poems Swarfega, Genesis 6 - 9 and WD40 can be read below.

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It was performed with a full orchestra and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 but from an empty concert hall due to the Covid lockdown restrictions of the time.