About Bob & Poetry
I am Bob Dunning and I read and write poetry almost everyday.
​
I find the internet very big, and this site aims to make it smaller, like a bookshelf that exclusively holds poetry, and poetry related books. I am very much learning as I go, and my approach to websites is to get it started and see what happens. It is more free form beat poetry than meticulous cynghanedd; and that is the first time I have ever used the word 'cynghanedd' (closely followed by the second).
​
The website idea was first conceived on 1 April 2021, and it was first launched on to the internet with minimal research on 8 April 2021 to an audience on one (me)! Please do get in touch to let me know ways in which you feel the site could be improved.
​
I am also keen to report any websites, or links to poets, or online poetry news you may know about. The website has no ulterior motives, everything that appears here is purely presented for the love of poetry, and does not profit me in any way. Neither am I aiming to sell you anything.
​
After lockdown, all the free time disappeared and this site went to sleep for a while. It has now re-emerged in a format that I hope will require less regular updating, but like the internet itself, the site is always open, and never far from a quick update if you want to get in touch. Please do get in contact and I will endeavour to reply pretty much the same day.
I should add that I have absolutely no control over the contents of any of the links, so though I do try to do my best to ensure the links are good and healthy ones, people click to them and purchase anything available from them at their own risk.
​
Biography:
I have been reading and writing poetry on and off, since I was ten. I grew up in Maidenhead, and went to Desborough School there, though I have lived all my adult life in Leeds. I gained two different professional degrees, including a first, at (the now named) Leeds Beckett University.
My first great poetry achievement was writing the nightly prayer for a Junior 3 class at St Joseph's School in Maidenhead (now called St. Edmond Campion). In the 1980s I did also co-write lyrics for a single by the radio talk show host, James Whale, which reached about 120 in the charts - adjustment for local purchasing bias preventing an actual chart entry. Cruelly, or maybe thankfully, this achievement was uncredited on the single itself.
​
One of my poems did got into an Ilkley Festival online poetry magazine - alongside Simon Armitage no less, for which I can now find no evidence online, so for this and all the above previous 'achievements', you will just have to trust me, it is all true!
​
More recently a number of my poems have been recorded and are available to hear on Bandcamp thanks to the wonderful collaboration with Nick Davidson's Thee Objects. Some of these poems were written for the project and others date back a number of years. Please follow the link on the foot of every page, and give the tracks a listen.
​
I have been married 31 years, have two grown up children, and two grandchildren. I am a retired psychiatric nurse still living in Leeds.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
The Poetry Archive 2021
​
