Month: November 2021

The Last Days of August

~ oxfordbrookesuni

After James Tate


Through gaps & crannies in
the clapboard house blows the hot wind
to quicken a ghost of a lover 

& me. All day it has travelled over
the plains & now it trembles across
my cheap drapes. Is it the wind or 

a lover from faraway? Like the cold
breeze that tapped on my grandmother’s
door the night Grandpa died & every night 

after: the knocking. There it is again but
warm as breath, singing the blast
of the train whistle & I am nothing 

if not hungry. For it is the end of August, &
I know—love is hitched to the tracks, blown
through, travelling away across America.


by Zoë Brigley

News from the Poetry Centre: we’re really pleased to say that our pamphlet press, ignitionpress, has been shortlisted for this year’s Michael Marks Publishers’ Award! Established in 2009, the Michael Marks Awards represent the main awards for poetry pamphlets in the UK, and you can tune in to the online ceremony, when the winners will be announced, on 7 December (just after our own competition event – see below!). To find out more and to register for the event, visit the Michael Marks website. We’d like to thank everyone who has supported the press this year and encourage you to check out the work of our wonderful poets! 

We recently announced the winners of our International Poetry Competition, judged by Will Harris. You can find out who won and who was shortlisted in the EAL and Open categories on our website, where you can also register to attend our online awards event on 7 December. Everyone is welcome to attend! You’ll be able to hear from the winners in both categories and also from the judge, Will Harris, who will talk about judging the competition and give a short reading from his work.

‘The Last Days of August’ is copyright © Zoë Brigley, 2021. It is reprinted from Into Eros (Verve Poetry Press, 2021) by permission of Verve. You can read more about the pamphlet on the Verve website.

The poems in Into Eros consider the dangers for women in risking desire, and they tell a story about nature, trauma, and healing. Here, pumpkin flowers, poison sumac, and apple blossoms are as much persons as women are, and their experience are parallel but different. These poems register the value of love after violence. Not possessing or dominating but dwelling with people, with nature – this at last might lead to freedom, and joy. You can read more about it and buy a copy on the Verve website.

Zoë Brigley has three collections of poetry from Bloodaxe: The Secret, Conquest, and Hand & Skull – all three were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She has also received an Eric Gregory Award, been Commended in the Forward Prizes, and listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Zoë has also published a collection of nonfiction: Notes from a Swing State: Writing from Wales and America (Parthian). She is Assistant Professor in the English department at the Ohio State University and runs an anti-violence advocacy podcast: Sinister Myth: How Stories We Tell Perpetuate Violence. You can find out more about Zoë’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

Winner of both the Saboteur Award for Most Innovative Publisher and the Michael Marks Publisher’s Award, Verve Poetry Press is a Birmingham-based publisher. It is dedicated to promoting and showcasing Birmingham and UK poetic talent in colourful and exciting ways – as you would expect from a press that has grown out of the giddy and flamboyant, annual four days of poetry and spoken word that is Verve Poetry Festival, Birmingham.

Added to this is a colourful pamphlet series featuring poets who have previously performed at our sister festival and a debut performance poetry series which sees us working with the brightest rising stars on the UK spoken word scene. We also assert our right to publish any poetry we feel needs and deserves to find print wherever we find it. Like the festival, we will strive to think about poetry in inclusive ways and embrace the multiplicity of approaches towards this glorious art.

You can find out more about Verve Poetry Press on the publisher’s website, where you can also sign up to the mailing list. You can follow the press on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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.

2004

~ oxfordbrookesuni

I hadn’t heard of Section 28 and how it was repealed
in November 2003 in England and Wales but I knew
that taking out the library’s only copy of Oranges Are
Not the Only Fruit would be difficult, so I tried to read
as much of the book as I could behind Harry Potter and
the Chamber of Secrets till the librarian asked what I was
reading and said do your parents know, which made me
turn the colour of my school tie. The librarian smiled like
people do in films before the scene changes to a moody shot
of the protagonist by the sea on a stormy day contemplating
whether to swim in the tidal pool full of seaweed with no life-
guard on duty and said you’re reading a book from the Adult
Section, at which point the babies who were normally crying
stopped and I thought about the Childline poster at school
which now had the word GAY graffitied across the boy on
the phone looking sort of sad with the number 0800 1111
printed in one of those typefaces that tried too hard to be
popular with teenagers and I thought about everything I’d
say if I called up but as the librarian asked me again to put
Oranges back on the shelf even Childline didn’t comfort me
much as I realised the counsellor could be someone like her

by Jo Morris Dixon

News from the Poetry Centre: we recently announced the winners of our International Poetry Competition, judged by Will Harris. You can find out who won and who was shortlisted in the EAL and Open categories on our website, where you can also register to attend our online awards event on 7 December. Everyone is welcome to attend! You’ll be able to hear from the winners in both categories and also from the judge, Will Harris, who will talk about judging the competition and give a short reading from his work.

This week’s poet, Jo Morris Dixon, will be launching her pamphlet online this evening (Tuesday) at 7.30pm alongside other Verve poets who will also be sharing new work: Zoe Brigley, Phoebe Stuckes, and Golnoosh Nour. You can sign up to attend for free. Just visit this page for the Zoom details.

‘2004’ is copyright © Jo Morris Dixon, 2021. It is reprinted from I told you everything (Verve Poetry Press, 2021) by permission of Verve. You can read more about the pamphlet on the Verve website.

Jo Morris Dixon’s debut pamphlet I told you everything reveals how poetry can function as a holding place for difficult experiences and emotions. Through language at once vivid and straightforward, Dixon skilfully addresses coming-of-age themes which are often left unexplored, even in therapy rooms. There is a keen attentiveness to form in these startling poems, ranging from the sonnet to the Golden Shovel. Urgent, complex and searingly honest, I told you everything is a fierce addition to poetry and queer writing in the UK. You can read more about it and buy a copy on the Verve website.

Jo Morris Dixon grew up in Birmingham and now lives in London. She has worked in museums and currently works for a mental health charity. Her poetry has been published in Oxford Poetry and The Poetry Review. She was longlisted for the 2015 Plough Poetry Prize and the 2020 National Poetry Competition.  I told you everything is her debut pamphlet. Read more about Jo’s work on her website.

Winner of both the Saboteur Award for Most Innovative Publisher and the Michael Marks Publisher’s Award, Verve Poetry Press is a Birmingham-based publisher. It is dedicated to promoting and showcasing Birmingham and UK poetic talent in colourful and exciting ways – as you would expect from a press that has grown out of the giddy and flamboyant, annual four days of poetry and spoken word that is Verve Poetry Festival, Birmingham.

Added to this is a colourful pamphlet series featuring poets who have previously performed at our sister festival and a debut performance poetry series which sees us working with the brightest rising stars on the UK spoken word scene. We also assert our right to publish any poetry we feel needs and deserves to find print wherever we find it. Like the festival, we will strive to think about poetry in inclusive ways and embrace the multiplicity of approaches towards this glorious art.

You can find out more about Verve Poetry Press on the publisher’s website, where you can also sign up to the mailing list. You can follow the press on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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.

Foxes

~ oxfordbrookesuni

I lie awake at night thinking of all the times I was told
to stay quiet. All the times I should have said nothing. 

Listen, I am only a mangy fox among the recycling bins,
screeching to no one, chewing on my own tail. I know 

I’m supposed to be checking over my shoulder
for something, but what? I keep expecting 

the yellow window light of other people’s houses
to bust open like a yolk and let me in. I keep waiting 

to be picked up and held until I stop shaking
but I’m difficult to touch. Even the stars 

are absenting themselves to the orange dark.
I sit at home, I lick my wounds. I chose 

all of this, my job, this city, I pulled it close,
over and over with my grubby little hands.

by Phoebe Stuckes 

‘Foxes’ is copyright © Phoebe Stuckes, 2021. It is reprinted from The One Girl Gremlin (Verve Poetry Press, 2021) by permission of Verve. You can read more about the pamphlet on the Verve website.

Her first pamphlet since her debut full collection Platinum Blonde sees Phoebe Stuckes’ trademark poems of high humour and hubris take on a dreamier, more abstract, quality. Perhaps the ‘wise-cracking party girl’ of her earlier work is sensing that, for a while at least, the party is postponed. There isn’t much worth staying up late for any more in these poems. Instead, our character lies awake in bed long into the night or wakes up into a pre-dawn world they barely recognise. And the strange new rural setting they wake to is inviting and also threatening and therefore not to be trusted. Read more about the pamphlet and buy a copy on the Verve website.

Phoebe Stuckes is a writer from West Somerset now living in London. She has been a winner of the Foyle Young Poets award four times and is a former Barbican Young Poet. Her writing has appeared in Poetry Review, The Rialto, The North and Ambit among others. Her debut pamphlet, Gin & Tonic was shortlisted for The Michael Marks Award 2017. She has been awarded an Eric Gregory Award and The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. Her first full length collection, Platinum Blonde, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2020. You can find out more about Phoebe on her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram (and if you’d like to keep pace with her baking exploits, you can find those here).

Winner of both the Saboteur Award for Most Innovative Publisher and the Michael Marks Publisher’s Award, Verve Poetry Press is a Birmingham-based publisher. It is dedicated to promoting and showcasing Birmingham and UK poetic talent in colourful and exciting ways – as you would expect from a press that has grown out of the giddy and flamboyant, annual four days of poetry and spoken word that is Verve Poetry Festival, Birmingham.

Added to this is a colourful pamphlet series featuring poets who have previously performed at our sister festival and a debut performance poetry series which sees us working with the brightest rising stars on the UK spoken word scene. We also assert our right to publish any poetry we feel needs and deserves to find print wherever we find it. Like the festival, we will strive to think about poetry in inclusive ways and embrace the multiplicity of approaches towards this glorious art. 

You can find out more about Verve Poetry Press on the publisher’s website, where you can also sign up to the mailing list. You can follow the press on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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.