'Are you planning for your nebula? The things you'll leave behind?' So, the Sunspots tour is done. Sunset was at Lakeside Arts on the campus of The University of Nottingham, my alma mater and the place partly responsible for the allusiveness of Sunspots.
Read MoreSunspots: Kings Place London, December 7
The last show of the year and the third one in London (previously we've been to Keats House and the Royal Festival Hall) brought us to this premier venue. I have a little bit of history with Kings Place, having been commissioned to write new poems for its opening in October 2008.
Read MoreSunspots: York St. John University, November 25
Every time I go to York I swear to go more often. Such a beautiful city (particularly so in the winter months) and only two hours from King's Cross. In the last few years I've visited the University of York a couple of times with Psycho Poetica but this time we were bringing Sunspots to York St. John University.
Read MoreSunspots: Hull Humber Mouth Festival, November 6th
The last time I was in Hull, there were posters for GoodFellas all over town, I saw Roland Gift cycle past me, and I watched Evil Dead II on VHS with a friend who was doing his PhD at the university.
Read MoreSunspots: Bournemouth Arts by the Sea Festival, October 13th
From the north to the south and an intriguing new venue: Bournemouth's Natural Science Society. This beautiful Italianate Victorian building is crammed with cabinets full of shells, skulls, skeletons and all manner of natural wonders: the kind of things my Sun likes to take credit for: "I made the cats./I make the snow."
Read MoreSunspots: Manchester Martin Harris Centre for Music & Drama, October 9th
Room 101 was my hotel room in Manchester, nothing to do with the wonderful Martin Harris Centre with its back-screen projection, remote controlled lighting rig and helpful technical staff. And we were in the John Thaw Studio Theatre! I've loved John Thaw since the 70s when my parents would let me stay up late to watch The Sweeney on school nights. But the next day, I couldn't get Inspector Morse's voice out of my head: "There's been a performance of Sunspots, Lewis..."
Read MoreSunspots: Reading South Street Arts Centre, October 8th 2015
After London, Reading was another 'home fixture'. I lived here from 1989 to 1997, having side-stepped academia to work at Our Price Records for a couple of years. The second 'Summer of Love', which I'd spent in Brighton and which did its best to distract me from my MA, was soon clouded o'er by Britpop and the seeping mist of shoegazing.
Read MoreIt's Me, O Lord
...standing in the need of prayer. Well it felt that way in the warm-up room of Jacques Samuel Pianos on Edgware Road.
Read MoreRemembering 'Simoraine'
Every Father's Day I think about funeral music, a theme that's played through my mind ever since October 1997, when I heard the pieces that my musician father, Clive Barraclough, had selected for his final 'appearance'.
Read More