Stickleback

My poetry collection The Anvil Earth is now available in paperback and in Kindle formats on Amazon

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I’m a Birmingham born and based published poet, aspiring novelist and award winning screenwriter, producer and director with a range of projects in development – both live action and animation. My ambition is to make a series of critically acclaimed, commercially successful feature films.

My first film Black Widow (2008) was shot in 48 hours in Birmingham and Madrid on zero budget for the Film Dash competition. It was cited for Best Cast.

In 2010 I won the 2 Weeks 2 Make It Music video competition.

In 2011 I was selected for the Screen West Midlands Regional Producer Mentoring Scheme and mentored by Rachel Robey (London to Brighton).

I was also selected for the 104 Films' Generator scheme which involved attendance at Edinburgh Film Festival 2013 and the London Screenings 2014.

In 2014 I was selected for a UK team pitching at Dragon Forum – part of Krakow Film Festival. The Dragons and fellow delegates really liked my historic WW2 animation series idea.

I have put large teams together to make tiny budget, high quality 48 hour shorts on three different occasions.

This culminated in winning the UK parliamentary Film The House competition 2015 for the £900 pound, 50 volunteer cast and crew war film Around Again. I story-lined, produced and directed 2nd Unit.

I won the Sci-Cine Film Festival Best Short Short in 2016 for Fled. I crowdfunded, wrote, produced and directed.

I’m an alumni of the 2017-18 Filmonomics scheme run by Oscar winning producer Mia Bays. This was on the back of conceiving and curating 6 of the Best Festival in January 2017 (#6BestFest) which featured 6 new films by British women.

In November 2018 I came “a very close second” in the UK national Script 2 Screen competition run by Daniel Alexander films. The judges were from the BBC and Creative England amongst others. Daniel said:-

"Really appreciate you entering and the conversations some of the judges had around your script were amazing to hear. I think out of all of them, your story was the one that had everyone the most excited about and was a very, very close second."

I’m an alumni of the Royal Court Theatre’s Critical Mass play writing scheme 2010.

I won the A & C Black Children’s Book pitch in 2009.

I’ve had short stories short-listed and highly commended in national newspaper competitions.

I’ve had poetry published worldwide in journals, magazines, newspapers and online e.g. Poetry Ireland Review, The Galway Review, The Clare Champion newspaper and Fire Magazine (UK).

I’ve supported Benjamin Zephaniah, Wendy Cope and Carol Ann Duffy at poetry readings in Birmingham, West Chester University (Pennsylvania) and Galway respectively.

Nobel Poetry Laureate Seamus Heaney once wrote to say he liked one of my poems.

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