In December 2002, after almost twenty years of having my poetry published in various small-press titles, I was appointed the Fifth Poet Laureate of Peterborough.

The post had been inaugurated by the city council as part of the year of literacy events and strangely survived. How it works is that every year the local (in the sense of living, working or having some connection with the city) poets are invited to submit a poem on a particular theme. Around fifteen finalists are then invited to read them, or have them read for them, at an evening event. The judges then make their decision based upon the criteria of content, language, performance, etc. At previous competitions I had been a runner-up twice.

Also over the previous twenty years I had had four slim chapbooks released by the Possum Holler Tarot Press of Orleans, USA. Other writings in that time included the biographical introduction to the Ash-Tree Press reprint of E.G. Swain's Stoneground Ghost Tales; art, theatre and comic reviews for Prism - the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society; CD reviews for Data Dump; and the script of the very short film Late Shift. This was shown at the Manchester Festival of Fantastic Films in 2001.

Over the year of my tenure as Poet Laureate of Peterborough I had my verse printed in around twenty publications, which as well as the local press and the Daily Mail, included titles from Ireland, Finland and North America. For the city my verse included pieces for the local football, ice hockey and speedway teams, plus one poem to mark the fall from grace of the head of the Conservative faction of the council.

I also wrote a cycle of poetry for the city's Museum and Art Gallery inspired by objects in the collection and events that it hosted. During the year I had helped to organise a three month long exhibition on Death and Remembrance, unfortunately international events in the spring of 2003 meant that the local press were loath to mention too much about that. (www.peterboroughheritage.org.uk) A second cycle of verse was penned for the local comic shop The House on the Borderland; inspired by the various comics I regularly bought. Individual poems from that sequence were subsequently used on the websites of the comics and actually in the issues (Bulldog Adventure Magazine from the UK and Mythstalkers from the USA).

In the summer I was part of a science fiction poetry item, organised by Steve Sneyd, at a poetry festival in Oxford. This also included the author Brian Aldiss; someone I'd queued up to get the autograph of twenty-plus years ago. So this was a big thrill for me to be reading alongside him.

At the end of October I was the Poet in Residence at the weird fantasy convention They Came and Shaved us in Dundalk in Ireland. The main guest was Robert Rankin who has mentioned my band from years ago in a few of his novels. As well as writing verse for the event, I also spoke on a panel about Jack the Ripper, (a great grandfather of mine was a City of London policeman at the time and family legend places him on the case). I was also on a panel about the American author H.P. Lovecraft. Less seriously I helped to judge a cocktail competition. Another family related item was to read from the journal of a great uncle. William Ashwell went out to South Africa in 1875, fought in the Zulu wars, went prospecting, hunted game, and became regarded as a witch doctor by the locals. It was a real honour to be involved with the weekend.

My yearlong reign of terror has afforded me plenty of opportunities which I turned to me advantage. Peterborough's post is regarded as one of the top five of its type and I hope my fellow writers, if they get the chance, will enter for similar competitions.