Tom Wiggins, Letter Carver & Writer

It is Bank Holiday Monday morning and as I write this, a cover of Future Islands’ ‘Seasons (Waiting on You)’ is playing on repeat on my laptop.  “Seasons change and I try hard just to soften you.”  It’s something about the rhythm of that line that keeps me returning to it.  It might be how it forms a metrical palindrome in the way the stresses fall.  I imagine a mirror, or pivot, between ‘try’ and ‘hard’, and a great blossoming from its centre, rather than from left to right.  Its content adds emotion to its appeal, but its structure has a symmetry and simplicity that’s as pure and as honest as a blush.    It is one of the most beautiful first lines in music and it is being sung by Rebecca Taylor of Slow Club.  The song is a tapestry rich with feeling that Slow Club delicately weave their own brand of richness through. The Future Islands original was the soundtrack to last June’s family trip to Gdansk in Poland and I am transport...

After Matthew Sweeney's 'The Volcano' A few days after I met you off the ship we walked to a quiet spot in the park and you told me all about your life in Europe.  I cannot say for sure how long we sat there but as the sun set I remember watching your hands work in rotation as you described how limestone is formed.  I laughed away some tension because you must have said layers a dozen times before you said that those layers were layers of sediment that compressed into stone.  Then you cupped your hands into what I saw as a heart but what you saw as stone and you tipped that stone onto its edge and onto its face to represent its three bedding planes for building: natural-bedded, edge-bedded, face-bedded.  You had earned enough money to get us off the island and the rest would go towards the stone we would use to build a house.  The moment you said that, you clapped your hands together in prayer and promised that it would be the softest, cre...

Worst Haiku Ever Rubbish, Rubbish, Rub- a-dub-dub, three men in a  Jerome K. Jerome.  Tuesday Haiku  Behind at college. How will I fly to the moon  before the term ends? {Film Spoiler Alert} Creed Haiku  #1 Time to get fast-tracked to a fight with the scouser with my dead dad's name.  Creed Haiku  #2 Yo Rocky, train me! Everyone you knew is dead and you might die soon.  Creed Haiku  #3 My name IS NOT Creed.   Well, okay - maybe it is.  Where's my title shot?  Creed Haiku  #4 My route to success:   bypass the amateur ranks  and fight the world champ. Creed Haiku  #5 Oh, did I tell you -  leave the mansion out of this! - I've been to juvey.