I was a lightning rod salesman

February 20, 2018March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I was a lightning rod salesman
preaching copper
past the imaginary hills

settlers construct
to forsake every direction but dirt.My handshake was a bird,
all getaway
by the time knife fights traced

the sky’s nightly veins.

Between the grave of a man
persecuted for wearing his beard
and a well-governed Florida,

the thunder repeated itself
like a prizefighter who couldn’t bear to leave
a clean stage.

Would you prefer a wife
or a heap of charred offal?
I reasoned with the terrible farmers.

To demonstrate what might happen,
I tried on shivers.

To stand for the sky’s jagged flesh,
my hands turned to rain.

by Christopher DeWeese

We are delighted and excited to say that this week’s poet, Christopher DeWeese, will be visiting Oxford this Saturday 24 February, where he will be reading with the Poetry Centre’s own Andy Eaton at the Society Café. Don’t miss this wonderful chance to hear two award-winning writers! You can buy tickets on the door or book them via our website, where you can also find details of the rest of the spring series.

Our three brand new ignitionpress poetry pamphlets: A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan, Glean by Patrick James Errington, and Lily Blacksell’s There’s No Such Thing, are now on sale from the Brookes online Shop! We will be holding launch events on 7 March (at the Poetry Café in London), 8 March (at the Society Café in Oxford), and on 25 March (at the Oxford Literary Festival), and all are welcome. You can find out more about these events on our website.

Christopher DeWeese is the author of three books of poems: The Confessions (Periplum, 2017), The Father of the Arrow is the Thought (Octopus Books, 2015), and The Black Forest (Octopus Books, 2012). He is currently Associate Professor of English at Wright State University. He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Read more about Christopher’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter.

The Confessions is a book about diving bells, automatons, living insignias, detectives, garden mazes, flea circuses, murder dollhouses, Esperanto, twenty-one gun salutes, spirit photography, company towns, daredevils, forgery, circuses, turning to soap, auctioneering, fake pirates, and anarchist bullfighters.

Based out of Plymouth University’s English and Creative Writing Department, Periplum aims to publish and promote the best new poetry being written in English from around the world. The press’s most recent publication is The Confessions by Christopher DeWeese, winner of the Periplum Open Book Competition, and the next pamphlet will be by the poet and artist Heather Phillipson.

Previous authors have included Mark Ford, Peter Gizzi, and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and you can watch interviews with some of the writers here. Pamphlets are between 18 and 24 pages, printed on good quality paper, and designed by members of Plymouth’s Illustration department. Periplum also runs a bi-annual poetry pamphlet competition, which is open to anyone writing in English. The winner receives £300 and publication in Autumn 2018. The deadline for submissions is Sunday 1 April 2018.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

Follow the Poetry Centre on Facebook and Twitter.

Practice

February 14, 2018March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

As a teenager, fencing was the closest thing
I knew to desire, all the girls swapping one

uniform for another before practice, their white
dresses replaced by breeches. I thought we were

princes in a fairy tale with a twist, since
there were no princesses to be taken, wed.

As knights, we were told to aim for an imaginary
spot just above our opponent’s left breast. Often,

I left a bruise: the blade’s tip ricocheting off chest-
guards onto flesh. Just as often, I would feel yellow

blooms of ache where the girl I thought was beautiful
had pierced my heart. Hours later, I would transform.

I would head back home with a deepening
sense of dread, my bruises fading to quiet.

by Mary Jean Chan

Hear Mary Jean read the poem by clicking here

The Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre is proud and delighted to introduce you to the final poet whose work our ignitionpress is publishing in our first poetry pamphlets! A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan, Glean by Patrick James Errington, and Lily Blacksell’s There’s No Such Thing, are on sale TODAY from the Brookes online Shop.

We will be holding launch events on 7 March (at the Poetry Café in London), 8 March (at the Society Café in Oxford), and on 25 March (at the Oxford Literary Festival). You can find out more about these events on our website. Visit our website to also read and hear Lily’s poem ‘Brook’ and Patrick’s ‘Still Life with Approaching Crow’, and to find out about all three poets here.

Mary Jean Chan is a poet from Hong Kong. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, such as The Poetry Review, PN Review, Ambit Magazine, The Rialto, Callaloo Journal, and Wasafiri Magazine. In 2017, Mary Jean was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, and won the Poetry Society Members’ Competition and the Poetry and Psychoanalysis Competition. In 2016, she won the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition (ESL), and was shortlisted for the 2016 London Magazine Poetry Prize, the 2016 Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition and the 2016 Resurgence Poetry Prize. Mary Jean received the 2015 University of London MA Creative Writing Prize, and is currently a PhD candidate and Research Associate in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London and Co-Editor at Oxford Poetry. In 2019, her first full collection of poetry will be published by Faber & Faber.

ignitionpress is a new poetry pamphlet press with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects. The Managing Editor of the press is Les Robinson, who was the founder and director of the renowned poetry publisher tall-lighthouse until 2011. You can learn more about the press on the Poetry Centre website.

Follow the Poetry Centre on Facebook and Twitter.

Still Life with Approaching Crow

February 7, 2018March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

There’s nothing to distinguish
this from the last three-or-so
hundred fields they pass, but
for whatever reason they call it
far enough. The engine shaking
off its sound, voices dripping
from their mouths to the ground.
When they say let’s go they won’t
mean everyone, this time. Beyond,
a field frozen solid, expression-
less, stubbled with broken grain.
They’ll leave him loose as teeth
in his life, lashed to a fencepost.
Blood gently unlacing the features
from his face and every wound
unwinding from its pain like wire.
It’ll be days before anyone can tie
the term missing to what it has
to mean. The field and his flesh
grow significance against their will.

by Patrick James Errington

Hear Patrick read the poem by clicking here

The Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre is proud and delighted to introduce you to the second of the three poets whose work our ignitionpress will be publishing in our first poetry pamphlets! Glean by Patrick James Errington, together with A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan and Lily Blacksell’s There’s No Such Thing, will be on sale on 14 February from the Brookes online Shop, and there will be launch events on 7 March (at the Poetry Café in London), 8 March (at the Society Café in Oxford), and on 25 March (at the Oxford Literary Festival). You can find out more about these events on our website. Last week we shared one of Lily’s poems with you, and next week we will be showcasing work by Mary Jean.

Patrick James Errington is a writer, translator, and researcher from the prairies of Alberta, Canada. As an undergrad at the University of Alberta (2007–2011), he studied English literature and creative writing with Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. He received his MFA from Columbia University (2013–2015) in creative writing and literary translation, where he also received a Program Scholarship and a Chair’s Fellowship. He has worked as an editor or editorial assistant for magazines like The New Yorker and The Columbia Journal, and is currently the editor-in-chief of The Scores, an online literary magazine based at the University of St Andrews. Patrick is currently a George Buchanan PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews and his research, under the supervision of Professors John Burnside and Don Paterson, is in the field of poetics and hermeneutics.

Patrick’s poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from: Boston Review, Copper Nickel, Passages North, Oxford Poetry, CV2, The London Magazine, Long Poem Magazine, Best New Poets 2016, The Iowa Review, Horsethief, West Branch,The Adroit Journal, Cider Press Review, DIAGRAM, American Literary Review and others. He was Commended in The National Poetry Competition 2016, and has won, among other competitions, The London Magazine Poetry Competition (2016) and the Wigtown Poetry Competition (2017). Together with Laure Gall, Patrick also translated Au creux de la main (The Hollow of the Hand), by PJ Harvey and Seamus Murphy (Paris: Éditions l’Âge d’Homme, 2017).

Follow the Poetry Centre on Facebook and Twitter.