Sean Bw Parker (MA) is a British writer, artist and musician, born in Exeter in 1975. He gained a Masters degree in Fine Art from the University for the Creative Arts in 2003, following which he lived in Istanbul for ten years until 2014 where he gave TEDx talk ‘Stammering and Creativity’, and also lectured at Istanbul University. He has published several books, poems and albums, won a number of Koestler Arts awards and a Perrie Lectures essay award.

He has been published by the Westminster Commission, T.S. Eliot Foundation, Time Out Istanbul, Louder Than War, and appeared at the Brighton Science Festival, the University of Bristol, BIMM and others. He has interviewed Julie Burchill, Ed Harcourt, Kristin Hersh and Ian Broudie, hosted shows by The Members, Mark Morriss of The Bluetones and Eat Static at his Seafish music and arts venue in 2016, and was interviewed for a Sky Arts documentary in the same year. He curated the Chi-Signs, Blakefest and Wildefest mini-festivals between 2015 and 2017, and has performed at many more.

Jeremy B

There are voices in her head, she says
Everyone knows it
Tense as the family may be

But guns aren't his thing, having fun is
From his cell of more than thirty years
Jeremy watches TV series come and go
Endless ruminations on his character
And the murders at the Farm

A now-haunted seat of tragedy
Haunted by the public imagination
Mediated through the convicted harms 
Of one man-boy
Or so we're told; as the story is better
Than the reality might be

Jeremy grieves for all, while accused
Having never had a gun
But being a confident young man, adventuring in money
Paying the ultimate price at the disposal of the State
Would the Judge have hanged him
Given the chance?
Whyever not - the public demands

There is a struggle, the sister is fighting
Leaving marks, scratches
Jeremy's girlfriend panics
Or is she out of young love?
Or had enough of endless questioning
By the police; cuts the lifeline

'He'll do' for the thousandth time
The public wants more blood; the family's wasn't enough
'And that lad looks like an arrogant so-and-so'
Quiffed-up and expressionless
On the evening news

'He must've done it because he was adopted'
With bio-parents at Buck Palace
Never trust a bisexual anyway, they say
Whether he helps other prisoners to read or not
How dare he study for his GCSEs?
And what more evidence do they need
To be well in front of reasonable doubt
At the very least.

The NFL Forecast

The Malin Head looks blue and red
And the Seahawks are at Cardinals tonight
Dead carnal flights squawking through the dread
Of the true and free calling, hooks glued together
Like muzzled beaks, bread falling from southern Iceland
And the Irish Sea, fish-heads slopped in buckets for 
The likes of you and me

The 49ers and New Orleans Saints are in gold and black
And red, fed on Blackpool's lights on the night of the dead
Britain's poorest towns, plodding along in drizzle,
Grizzled songs barked on piers in sodden dressing gowns
As Malin's lighthouse sends shards of cares onto shores
The emotional blocks come down like sticks of rock
Shot through with messages of love from the company
Minty and pink and white for the likes of me and thee

Rockall sits in guano and wave, pecks deprived
As the red and blue beams strafe the seas and white lines
Cincinnati Bengals are prowling tonight, striped helmets
Of orange and black, camouflaged in the nightclub
Along the jungles of the Jewel, new rules
Bungled by songs, sung in a prancing dressage
Big cats in cinnamon and sugar, coating mewl and cry
Over the light crimes and safe pleas of a Counsel's dreams
Crazed necks swivelling in bug-eyed glee
Tracing a lighthouse beam from the rock to we.

The Reluctant Public Intellectual

Frizzy-haired, his blue eyes scan the auditorium
Fun was the plan, but hubris prompted scared
Messages, indentured movers working behind the scenes
Kind queens twerking over smooth passages of grime
As time slid down the crevasses of the hall, velvet seats
Worked over as the academic's pride blinded the teens

To the fact that he would have preferred to have been at his desk
Had his mother not unloved him just a little less
Titlle-tattle thrust him into a smothered glove
Aglow, the prattling beaks spanking each other
Under tables, the bad old queens willing and able
To further careers with nods and winks, pedigrees
Buffed with a footnote, kind citations and innocent blinks

The reluctant public intellectual looks down at his notes
And thinks of the two pencils either side of a worded page
Thinks about inserting them into his nostrils, sharp end up
And slamming his head downwards, instant death or damage
Guaranteed, and no more of this; but was this really so bad?
Worse things happened at sea, or so his father had told him
Lying through his beard, as his father always had

Forty-five minutes of nodding will do, grant assured
And a few year's tenure, fortifying his department
Diversity allowing, some more black faces needed to be found
Maybe he should talk about this, bare-chested, beat his breast
Pound the caring classes as the teens eyes wettened
Fatten the calves of the university's food halls some more
Demand four more facts of these limp lambs before the carnivore

Straining under the expectations of the Great Wall of China
A paper and wire dragon, ready to breathe fire across the quad
God squads now disbanded as coercive groomers, bequeathed
A new frontier, draped in kashmir and ready with machine guns
Flagons slammed down like pencils into eyeballs and beyond
Fond and enthralled, the auditorium is rapt, frizzy-hair bobbing
Here and there, along with every mannerism, disallowing 
The abscond until the forty-five minutes is up, and make-up wiped off.