Welcome to poet, photographer and musician, Oz Hardwick's official web site, where you will be able to find details of his readings, publications and general news.

Latest:

Transmission 11 contains a new short story by Oz, 'Fin de Siecle Chocolate'.

Oz has an untitled poem in the sonnet collection, Hand Luggage Only.

Oz's monometer, 'Fledgling,' appears in the latest Roundtable Review.

Your Messages - the exciting collaborative anthology put together by Lynne Rees and Sarah Salway, featuring two contributions by Oz & a host of other fine writers, is now available. All money from this goes to Kids Company. Snap up a copy via the link below:

Not content with the cover of the fine CD by The Brock-Calvert Project, Oz has provided cover images for the Man and Magic Mushroom Band releases in Voiceprint's 'Sixty Minutes With...' series. All of these can be ordered through the Voiceprint website.

The Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society have just published Oz's short sequence, 'Lombard Crossing' here.

The Birth of Venus

Because of the sea and the salt on your skin,

the slip of weed on sand, I

bend to the smooth horizon

of your concentration.

White fingers, still

untanned by sun, move

through mesh of past and future, balanced

on the far coast of recent war. Here

on the shore we remember to forget, yet

behind us lie ruins, but

before:

Here is your hair, blown wild,

your breast, welcoming

worlds to come. We

wait for the sun. Like Venus,

you rise from your shell, your body

offering

the promise of peace.

This, indeed, is ours

because of the sun and the salt on your skin.

From Carrying Fire. Also included in The Book of Hopes and Dreams, ed. Dee Rimbaud (bluechrome, 2006).