✩ ⋆ ✩ ⋆ ✩ Featuring Peter J. Donnelly ✩ ⋆ ✩ ⋆ ✩

 ✩ ⋆ ✩ ⋆ ✩ Featuring Peter J. Donnelly ✩ ⋆ ✩ ⋆ ✩

Peter J Donnelly was born in Middlesbrough and grew up in North Yorkshire. He was educated in York before taking a degree in English Literature at the University of Wales Lampeter, followed by a MA in Creative Writing. His poetry has appeared in various magazines and anthologies including The Starbeck Orion, The Broken Spine, Dreich, High Wolds Poetry Festival, Obsessed with Pipework, Ripon Poetry Festival, Lothlorien, York Literary Review, Dust, Black Nore Review, High Window, Hornblower Press, Tap into Poetry and The Fig Tree. He was a joint runner up in the Buzzwords open poetry competition in 2020 and won second prize in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition in 2021. He is the author of three books, The Second of August, Solving the Puzzle and Bloom and Grow, all published by Alien Buddha Press. Peter J Donnelly lives in York. As well as reading and writing poetry he enjoys baking, walking in the countryside and by the sea, visiting stately homes and gardens, gardening and looking after houseplants, and jigsaw puzzles.

but now Bloom is empty,
lying at the bottom of my bin
with brown crust around its rim,
the first thing of yours I’ve thrown out
for what use is an empty plant food bottle?
Grow stands alone amongst strangers
on my kitchen shelf, looking bereft
like a swan who’s lost its mate.
Not, strangely, like you

Bloom & Grow is a quiet reckoning. A slow unfolding of time and memory. Peter J Donnelly’s third book with Alien Buddha Press builds on the introspection of The Second of August and the careful precision of Solving the Puzzle, offering a collection both deeply personal.

Donnelly moves through landscapes of childhood and change, tracing the delicate balance between past and present. Born in Middlesbrough and shaped by the North Yorkshire countryside, his voice is one of measured reflection and quiet revelation. A prize-winning poet with an MA in Creative Writing, he continues to shape moments into meaning, each line a step forward. Each poem a way to bloom and grow.