In 1980, just when I was about to leave college and move to Germany to start work in the Steinway piano factory, a violin maker friend introduced me to the work of artist & letter carver Martin Wenham. I very nearly abandoned my piano making career to somehow learn wood carving instead: pianos were fun – but beautiful words beautifully carved in beautiful wood took my breath away!

It took another 30 years to properly make time to carve, and by then I was also writing stories and poems myself. I soon discovered that forming words into a poem feels like forming a shape in 3 dimensions – like carving in wood.

Words that inspire me usually come from a sense of humble and joyous connection to the world and beyond (Blake, Rumi, Kirkegaard, etc), but if the original seems rather intellectual (e.g. uses Latinate or technical wording), I paraphrase it in the more earthy and woody feel of Anglo-Saxon or Old English.

I carve letters, words & poems in found & bespoke timber, doors, doorframes, furniture, mirror surrounds, headboards, breadboards, split logs – in any piece of wood a customer may commission…