STEVE DAY
POET, PUBLISHER, PERCUSSIONIST
STEVE DAY
Steve Day is a writer, poet, drummer/percussionist.
Steve spent a year on the Poetry Teignmouth organising team before concentrating on Wylde Publications and music projects. He is managing editor of Wylde Publications, working closely with Ric White (musician & artist), plus Jennie Osborne (poet) and Roger Philip Dennis (poet and established painter, tutor & colourist).
Steve's poetry has been performed in major theatre spaces, including Bristol Old Vic Theatre and national radio. He is currently drummer/percussionist with a number of bands including the Sam Richards Trio and the Occasional Quintet. The critic Richard Olivetti described the Quintet’s album, Recording Rites (Discus Music) as “a low key masterpiece”. Steve’s poetry is featured on many albums, most recent examples: Day & Langford, Pairing (Freetone Records), the Day Evans Dale Ensemble, Green Money (Discus Music) and Sergio Armaroli, Rib Music (Leo Records). In 2025 he hopes to be working with the dance chorographer Yolande Snaith on new movement/music/sound narratives.
Steve lives in Devon with his wife the poet Jennie Osborne. His career began volunteering for inner London street soup runs and clean needle projects. He then completed theology studies in Birmingham, which he describes as an “expensive wasteland”. He retrained as a social worker, gaining a Master’s degree in Postmodernism and Profound Learning Disability (Bristol UWE). Steve went on to work in social services and major charities.
He lists life’s milestones as poetry, music, environmental politics and Zen mindfulness. Steve Day identifies as a Buddhist Quaker & Green Party Activist.
Books - Prose & Poetry
Information on Wylde Publications: www.wyldepublications.com/
Information on Discus Music: https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/recording-rites-184cd-2024
_______________________________________________________________________
Gully
Diamond wrapper blue
between crevice splits
sea sharp, sparkling glitter gifts for
a shard place and the sliced bow
that binds eyes and bathes bright blindness.
The pores of a poem
and picture but not the
roar of the halen gully of water nor
the soaring herring gull clawing
at the red edge of iron ore bored into stones.
Taste samphire pellet
of spray-surf rung from
a stirred surge of tidal currents tolling
through the gaping turquoise gash
dressed for a huge din in a pearl of whirlpools.
Granite gannet turned
to guano sucked off the
stacked rock by a tidal turn that slaps
a slab skin raw of metal soldiers,
drives a flowered force of camouflaged factions.
The Castlemartin tour of
duty is in an insecure rise
and fall, an avian leap over the deep.
A pretty cliff harbour becomes an
army manoeuvring its orders to kill or be killed.
The land above the Pembrokeshire Castlemartin gully
is owned by the Ministry of Defence for military training.
Steve Day, Copyright 2023
Pub. Untamed - A Collaborative Anthology
South West Poets & Visual Artists
Wylde Publications
Steve spent a year on the Poetry Teignmouth organising team before concentrating on Wylde Publications and music projects. He is managing editor of Wylde Publications, working closely with Ric White (musician & artist), plus Jennie Osborne (poet) and Roger Philip Dennis (poet and established painter, tutor & colourist).
Steve's poetry has been performed in major theatre spaces, including Bristol Old Vic Theatre and national radio. He is currently drummer/percussionist with a number of bands including the Sam Richards Trio and the Occasional Quintet. The critic Richard Olivetti described the Quintet’s album, Recording Rites (Discus Music) as “a low key masterpiece”. Steve’s poetry is featured on many albums, most recent examples: Day & Langford, Pairing (Freetone Records), the Day Evans Dale Ensemble, Green Money (Discus Music) and Sergio Armaroli, Rib Music (Leo Records). In 2025 he hopes to be working with the dance chorographer Yolande Snaith on new movement/music/sound narratives.
Steve lives in Devon with his wife the poet Jennie Osborne. His career began volunteering for inner London street soup runs and clean needle projects. He then completed theology studies in Birmingham, which he describes as an “expensive wasteland”. He retrained as a social worker, gaining a Master’s degree in Postmodernism and Profound Learning Disability (Bristol UWE). Steve went on to work in social services and major charities.
He lists life’s milestones as poetry, music, environmental politics and Zen mindfulness. Steve Day identifies as a Buddhist Quaker & Green Party Activist.
Books - Prose & Poetry
- Prose Writing: Two Full Ears – Listening To Improvised Music (Soundworld), Ornette Coleman – Music Always (Soundworld), Free Music (chapter) Masters Of Jazz Saxophone (Backbeat/Freeman Miller), The Ganelin Trio – A Russian Triptych (Palmyra), Looks Like Leisure? - Intellectual Disability & Social Inclusion (Churchill Livingstone)
- Poetry: Day By Day (South West Arts), The Edge Of England (GHP), Curving Sentences, Selected Poems (GHP), Diamonds In Streams (GHP), Selected Poems, Invocations And Portraits (Wylde) with Roger Philip Dennis), edited & contributed to Untamed A Collaborative Anthology of South West Poets & Visual Artists (Wylde), The Temperature In The Room (Wylde), Four Windows On The Male (Wylde), with Kerry Priest, Veronica Aaronson & Roger Philip Dennis.
- Past Bands include: Tallow, PKAP, General Nuisance, Slippers Afire, Lagos To Lanercost, BeforePoets, Blazing Flame, Crow Country, Day Evans Dale Ensemble.
- Albums on Leo Records, Visitors, Song Of The Fly, Strewn With Pebbles, Blazing Flame Play High Mountain Top, Murmuration, The Set List Shuffle, Wrecked Chateau, Rib Music (with Sergio Armaroli) plus Pairing (with Mark Langford & Julian Dale)
- In November 2022 Discus Music released Steve Day’s 10th album, Day Evans Dale Ensemble, Green Money poetry/spoken word.
- In November 2024 Discus Music released The Occasional Quintet album Recording Rites - Steve Day plays drums and percussion.
Information on Wylde Publications: www.wyldepublications.com/
Information on Discus Music: https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/recording-rites-184cd-2024
_______________________________________________________________________
Gully
Diamond wrapper blue
between crevice splits
sea sharp, sparkling glitter gifts for
a shard place and the sliced bow
that binds eyes and bathes bright blindness.
The pores of a poem
and picture but not the
roar of the halen gully of water nor
the soaring herring gull clawing
at the red edge of iron ore bored into stones.
Taste samphire pellet
of spray-surf rung from
a stirred surge of tidal currents tolling
through the gaping turquoise gash
dressed for a huge din in a pearl of whirlpools.
Granite gannet turned
to guano sucked off the
stacked rock by a tidal turn that slaps
a slab skin raw of metal soldiers,
drives a flowered force of camouflaged factions.
The Castlemartin tour of
duty is in an insecure rise
and fall, an avian leap over the deep.
A pretty cliff harbour becomes an
army manoeuvring its orders to kill or be killed.
The land above the Pembrokeshire Castlemartin gully
is owned by the Ministry of Defence for military training.
Steve Day, Copyright 2023
Pub. Untamed - A Collaborative Anthology
South West Poets & Visual Artists
Wylde Publications
