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My new single ‘The High Far Fields of Home’ is released on Friday!

Click the pic to pre-save on Spotify:

It’s a really personal song that has only taken me 25 years to finish writing- I began a version of it in the year 2000 when I lived in Brighton. It’s about finding meaning in the middle of a dark, anxious night of insomnia.

The High Far Fields of Home

So tired,

But you can’t sleep,

Oh to have some time to yourself.

Drifting off to sleep.

Phone rings.

That’s it.

You’re awake now for the night.

When it really hurts,

when it really hurts,

You find a bit more to give,

You find a bit more to give.

When you walk the night alone,

The windows always glow,

Somewhere inside you know,

The high far fields of home.

The nine times you get everything right,

Nobody notices.

The one time, you don’t quite

You’re up all night, worrying about it.

When it really hurts,

You find a bit more to give,

You find a bit more to give.

When you walk the night alone,

The windows always glow,

Somewhere inside you know,

The High Far Fields of Home.

The White Bird

I couldn’t make the Refugee Buddy Project Poetry Fundraiser last night-
seeing all the posts about it this morning I can see I really missed out. I
donated here instead –

https://www.therefugeebuddyproject.com

do the same!

I thought it was a good moment to share this work made by Afghan refugees from a project I did a few years ago. I worked with a group for a whole school year, who had fled Afghanistan after the US withdrawal. All of the children had frightening first hand accounts of clamouring to get on the plane leaving Kabul – of the crush of the crowds and the pain of leaving loved ones behind.

But mostly they were the most ridiculously fun, joyously naughty and messy group I’d ever worked with.

The poem was by a year 6 child, who was a genuinely extraordinary human being, who I could imagine growing up to be Prime Minister. She wrote the poem almost word-for-word as it is, without edits, after just 6 months or so of learning English. My input was just to help jiggle it around to make it rhyme and to suggest some bits repeated.

The mask was by her little sister, who made this dark, shadowy monstrous mask, hot glued with gravel she found on the playground. She called it ‘Mask of The Taliban’.

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