Here's a video I did over two years before I built this current website. I've added it here because it still shares my core beliefs, and it adds to the text in a relatively summarising way.

My literary prompts

My books hold my understanding of life, which in my case began slowly after a nervous breakdown in 1992 when I was 24. At that point I got diagnosed schizophrenic, but was later labelled bipolar, however, my writing is universal. I try to share wisdom in a manner that boosts existing thought to add to its validity. Illnesses gave me insights. I've since developed atrial fibrillation, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and had an NSTEMI heart attack. The physical sides play a larger role in my life over mental ones now, but this is not a medical site!! Broader life experiences manifest in my words.

Here the author is pictured amongst a small number of his books ...

My writing journey in brief

At comprehensive school, 1979-1986, my reading and writing was hopeless. I took three attempts to pass English Language O' level, needed to study chemistry at (York) university. I describe myself as "functionally illiterate" due to my very weak (adult) reading.

However, I started writing in 1997. I'd began working at Manchester Metropolitan University in computers and bought a Psion 5mx palmtop word processor/computer for lunch break use. Not knowing quite what to write I began my roman à clef. The quality was poor and I never finished it, but I joined the Writers Bureau poetry course in 2000. After ten years followed by redundancy I got going, and became a prolific, often published poem writer. (Try searching "glenn evans" (my penname) and "michael holme" with terms like "poem" or "poetry", etc.)

Later on I turned to prose, see especially the "I am" book on this website, and my Blogs, which are also here. But my poetry writing has slowly been returning, in an recent existential tack about life in my mancave.

For example...

* * *

Airband

It’s Ground hog day but worse:

no improvements.

Today a recording of Chopin’s Nocturnes

made minute moisture from the miniature filigrees:

harkening back to a different life; a previous wife

and other reasons to live.

Words like tango, delta

and foxtrot periodically emanate,

from expensive hardware,

via wires and a stick.

Someone speaks. Someone’s with him.

His piano’s on a wall,

almost its width, black and silent,

everything said.

“Hotel, Yankee, four…” and stuff; always stuff:

unclear not mattering,

in the mancave.

There’s no plan, except to bide his time,

“Alpha, Charlie, seven” on the Airband.

19/1/26

Mood monitoring

“One to ten?”, he replied,

“a five”,

but he thought

it’s worth holding like a pair of kings,

and he could park them,

even if another king lay on the next level.

I guess that’s being that five.

Micro disruptions bombard his middle-ness,

like realising he’s not used his S.A.D. light.

Or is it the actual realisation?

Either way, each has impetus and anxiety,

the latter held tenuously by a gravity of awareness,

or not.

Walking is a pause: life won’t “see” his hand.

He’s no longer his enemy.

Strolling at 5.a.m.

he’s not alone, but not for words,

that would be somewhere between intrusive

and dangerous.

The spring’s coming.

15/2/26

Breaking the thread

The sun will come.
He has not got S.A.D.
Weather bites bipolar.
His boss suggested S.A.D.
to minimise his lack;
tw@t.

He weathered a run of winters.
Bitterness wasn’t a sine qua none.
However, this winter brought
suicidal thoughts,
at near 60 he knew their fantasy:
the devil telling lies,
like the 40 days, but as temptations
to ruminate,

whilst the sun was coming.
“Everything turns around”.
“This too shall pass.”

A walk can nip evil,
or a shower
or phoning a friend (a Samaritan).

It’s just avoiding the thread,
choosing that thoughts are unreal.

15/4/26

Longer than me

I bought a diamond ring,

marking a turn

I was unsure of:

brilliant cut, 0.8 carat, near

colourless, G colour.

But it was imperfect, included;

like me. Close inspection would reveal

flaws.

Claws let light enter.

A Gypsy ring would drown it.

I’d been exposed, living life nakedly;

psychologically, socially, religiously:

like my shadow keeps telling me.

I keep telling me.

Imperfect;

imperfections define me:

the good outer-side lasting only until scrutiny;

included, included, fucking included;

a near colourless diamond; resilient.

I carry flaws.

8/5/26

Fear and forgiveness

Fear is a sign you learn to hide.

Initially unaware, your body talks,

paranoia forms until you channel it into dead eyes

and flat affect.

It’s a medal you later polish,

a tourist visa stamped “Hell;

unlimited.”

You shut down as life is cynical.

Isolate until you forgive,

at least your own perfectionism.

Psych meds and booze flatten the peaks

to a track.

You long for valleys and hills,

seeing colour in other’s lives.

Before you know it, you are forty.

You remember what Jung said.

You’ve got the data, so live. Perhaps the others

were always pretending.

29/5/26

Here's a video I did over two years before I built this current website. I've added it here because it still shares my core beliefs, and it adds to the text in a relatively summarising way.

Here the author is pictured amongst a small number of his books ...

​My writing journey in brief

​​

At comprehensive school, 1979-1986, my reading and writing was hopeless. I took three attempts to pass English Language O' level, needed to study chemistry at (York) university. I describe myself as "functionally illiterate" due to my very weak (adult) reading.

​​​​

​

Later on I turned to prose, see especially the "I am" book on this website, and my Blogs, which are also here. But my poetry writing has slowly been returning, in an recent existential tack about life in my mancave. For example... * * *

My writing journey in brief

Later on I turned to prose, see especially the "I am" book on this website, and my Blogs, which are also here. But my poetry writing has slowly been returning, in an recent existential tack about life in my mancave.

For example...

* * *