There is a purple birthmark on the throat
of the mestizo engineer who drains the aquifer
to make the copper for our mobile phones,
allowing us to chat via Google Translate:

why such dismay, o my Mother?

Mischievous wind, the Mapuche sprite
rips cagoule-hoods from our heads,
till we find refuge in a log-cabin and drift-off
to the sound of a glacier’s waters breaking.

Why such dismay, o my Mother,
and why is the sky like a shot-up road sign?

Mendoza friars tame the soil, seeded poplars,
less for their gold in evening light, but as roots
to soak-up winter floods, tall tulips packed
more to an acre than the sprawling, native firs.

Why such dismay, o my Mother,
and why is the sky like a shot-up road sign,
the holes like stars, winking moonlight down their dead trajectories?

A Chilean frog (cf. ‘The World’s Weirdest’ on YouTube),
carries their young in a vocal sac, the father literally
annunciating his offspring onto the Endangered List,
and we, lacking all irony, name them ‘Darwin’s Frog.’

Why such dismay, o my Mother,
and why is the sky a shot-up road sign,
the holes like stars, winking moonlight down their dead trajectories
to the lost forests of a southern hemisphere?

In 2018, Ken won the Kent & Sussex competition. His poems have featured in Magma, 14, Under the Radar, Envoi, The Frogmore Papers, the Lighthouse Literary Journal, The High Window, Obsessed with Pipework, and The Interpreter’s House. Ken longlisted in the National Poetry Competition in 2015 and 2020.

In 2016, Ken won Battered Moons Competition and was runner-up in Poets & Players.
A first pamphlet, ‘The Opposite of Defeat’ appeared in 2016. Ken’s first collection, ‘True Forensics’ in 2018.