Music is central to my identity, personal and professional, so I've collaborated with the composers Marta Jirackova (Czech Republic), Brina Jez (Slovenia) and Johanna Selleck (Australia). 'The Incomplete Poems', which collects work from 1976 to 2010, was published by Cold Hub Press in November 2011. I held the Robert Burns Fellowship 2013 at Otago University, the Otago Wallace Residency 2014, a UNESCO City of Literature Residency in Prague 2016, and the Ursula Bethell Residency at Canterbury University 2016.

Whatever I do there is an impromptu soundtrack that either intensifies or corrects my mood, letting me attend to whatever.... Ratings? Those who pretend that their favoured performers never went in and out of form are ignoring something we learn as we're hurtling down the birth canal, things change. Not even populist gods like The Beatles recorded albums of uniform value - so how can we trust the judgement of someone who thinks 'Beatles for Sale' is as realised as 'Revolver'? My preferred genres are classical (chamber music) and jazz (hard bop, modal). With honorable exceptions I find pop/rock comodified beyond belief; its reductionist tendencies are too pronounced for me to hear (over and over) again.

Yet I try to assess both how the music has affected me and how it stands (or sits or crawls) inside the living room of the artist's career. In my ratings the first concern is more important than the second because, despite the aesthetic and geographic distance between members, this is a site for passionate listeners not remote adjudicators.

My favourite song? 'My Funny Valentine', the 1937 marvel from Rodgers & Hart. My favourite artist? Paul Bley. My favourite recording across all genres? Paul Bley's 'Open, to love' (ECM, 1973).

[Disclaimer: These ratings do not include a large part of my collection, which is mainly vinyl; I own many classical albums for which there are no entries on this site. Furthermore, I dislike the sound of CDs (I tolerate them if there's no vinyl option) and treat MP3 as a noise rather than a music format; this means some recent releases are not readily accessible to me, eg. the intriguing works of Fennesz.]