Rob creates bespoke poetry for significant occasions/events and runs workshops for schools and businesses.

Modern Day Poet provides services to clients using poetry as a starting point for various projects for individuals, for schools and for businesses.

I will work with you on a private poetry commission which could be for any purpose i.e for a  wedding speech or a family celebration, perhaps a university graduation or a piece with which to remember one special day or a particular event in your life or that of a loved one. I specialise in producing Family Time Capsule pieces which detail, recall and celebrate a particular moment in time and/or at a place in a family’s life. You give me the information on the subject in as much or as little detail as you wish. I will draft an initial brief and discuss the style of the work and whether the finished product is to be framed and hung as a print or produced on a scroll or a card, or just e-mailed to you as a pdf file. The choice of format is entirely up to the client who can additionally choose to have an on-going editorial input to the work if desired.

I also run workshops, both for schools and for businesses. For schools poetry is used as a vehicle for creating a dramatic presentation, and through rehearsals and exercises enhances children’s understanding of their relationships with one another and the value of taking both individual responsibility and of working as a team. For businesses the emphasis is on using poetic texts as the framework for team building days or weekends, also incorporating performance where appropriate,  but seeking to encourage a desire to discover how a group works best together and how, from the workshop, that can be usefully transplanted back in to the business environment.

 Modern Day Poet is also currently embarked on four projects for 2012: three books of poetry for children and a challenge to write a poem a day for the rest of the year. The books’ themes are ‘Poetry through the Seasons’, dealing with both the changes and enjoyment each season brings and also including pieces about the various festivals we celebrate through the year; a set of poems collectively dealing with the wonder and miracles of the world as a child perceives them, as yet untitled, and what I envisage as a series of books based on the lives of a family of undersea creatures. I am seeking to collaborate with Illustrators for all three projects and would welcome any interest. Poetry for children, as well as being entertaining to read, is written to include lessons for life, either  incorporated in to the poems underlying meaning or, sometimes, more evidently within the text. In setting myself the challenge for this year I’m hoping that if I can produce 366 poems in 2012, a reasonable percentage might be good enough to form the basis for another publication. There is no theme for these: they are written each day as the mood takes me – these last five words could well end up being the title of the anthology.

I also offer poetry recitals of my own work as part of an Open- Mic evening every second and fourth Sunday each month at The Bush Inn in St Hilary. Anyone is welcome to come along and read, as long as the material is essentially arts based and is ideally neither inflammatory nor indecent. Readings should be no longer than fifteen minutes.

Contact Rob on 07891 427887 or by email at rpl44@yahoo.com.