Author: oxfordbrookesuni

Hoppy New Year: a one-legged nursery rhyme

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Winter stiff with frosts and freezes.
Spring renews with warming breezes.
Easter sinks us to our kneeses,
Grateful for the griefs of Jesus.
Summer – bright with birds and beeses.
Autumn – leaves forsake the treeses.
Winter, damp with foul diseases,
Rounds in dark: the season seizes.

by Thomas Kinsella

From Something Beginning with P, © the author.

‘… a sumptuous collection of new work by Irish poets. Like all the best anthologies, it offers poems that extend one’s definition of what the art can do, especially for children nine years old and upward. This book should be in all schools where English (and Irish) is spoken. It is a place where poets and children meet, with no condescension from the former. Buy two copies – one will be stolen.’ Times Educational Supplement

Thomas Kinsella was born in Dublin in 1928 and now lives in the USA. His many collections include Butcher’s Dozen, Poems from City Centre, Madonna and Other Poems and A Dublin Documentary. His translations of The Táin and of Gaelic poems in An Duanaire are major contributions to modern poetry. He is the editor of the New Oxford Book of Irish Verse.

The O’Brien Press is one of Ireland’s leading trade publishers and a multi-award-winning children’s publisher. A wide selection of free teaching resources for this title is available from the website. This title and all O’Brien Press books are available to buy direct from the website or from Amazon.

Please note that there will now be a break in the Weekly Poems until late January. Best wishes to you all for a happy holiday.

Division Street

~ oxfordbrookesuni

You brought me here to break it off
one muggy Tuesday. A brewing storm,
the pigeons sleek with rain.
My black umbrella flexed its wings.
Damp-skinned, I made for the crush
of bars, where couples slip white pills
from tongue to tongue, light as drizzle,
your fingers through my hair,
the little way you nearly sneaked
a little something in my blood.

At the clinic, they asked if I’d tattoos
and I thought again of here –
the jaundiced walls, the knit-knit whine
of needle dotting bone, and, for a moment,
almost wish you’d left your mark;
subtle as the star I cover with t-shirts,
the memory of rain, or your head-down walk
along Division Street, slower each week, pausing
by the pubs, their windows so dim you see
nothing but yourself reflected.

by Helen Mort

from The shape of every box, published by tall-lighthouse.

“Having moved from Derbyshire to Cambridge, I find my poems often contain a kind of longing for people and places I used to know, and ‘Division Street’ is no exception. The poem is named after a street in Sheffield. So much of poetry is a kind of nostalgia – Michael Donaghy’s poem ‘Upon A Claude Glass’ captures this perfectly for me, the notion that the past is in front of us, not the present:

‘Don’t look so smug. Don’t think you’re any safer
as you blunder forward through your years

squinting to recall some fading pleasure,
or blinded by some private scrim of tears.’

“Like many semi-autobiographical poems, this one started from fact, and took off in the writing process.  That can make you feel as if you aren’t being faithful to your experiences, but it’s important to let a poem write itself, rather than always trying to direct it.”

Helen Mort was born in Sheffield in 1985, and now lives in Cambridge. Five times winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year competition, Helen’s work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies including Tower Poetry, The Rialto and Poetry London. The shape of every box was published by tall-lighthouse in 2007; that same year she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. In 2008, she won the Manchester Young Writer Prize. Helen is part of the ‘Escalator’ live literature scheme for performance.

tall-lighthouse was founded in 2000. It publishes full collections, pamphlets, chapbooks and anthologies of poetry, and organises poetry readings and events in and around London and South East and South West England, as well as facilitating writing workshops in conjunction with Arts, Education, Library and Community Services.

For the cosmonauts

~ oxfordbrookesuni

I, Yuri Gagarin, having not seen God,
wake now to the scrollwork of a body,
to my own white fibres leafing into the bone:
know that beyond this dome of rain there is
only the nothing where the soul sweeps
out its parallax like a distant star and truth
brightens to X, to gamma, through a metal sail.

So I return to you, cramming your pockets
with the atmosphere and evening news,
fumbling for gardens in the moon’s shadow,
in its waterfalls of silence. I wish for you
familiar towns, their piers and amusement arcades
unpeopled at dusk, the unicorn tumbling by
on china hooves behind the high walls
of parks, among congregating lamps.

May you find Earth rising there, between
your steepled hands. May your voyages
end. May you have a cold unfurling
of limbs each morning, when I am fallen
out of the world.

by Meirion Jordan

from Moonrise, published by Seren in November 2008.

Finely held moods and moments resonate throughout this unusually accomplished first book. The rich, complex history of Wales often crops up in expected places, as in the post industrial imagery of ‘A Camera at Senghenydd Pit’, and then, in often unexpected contexts: ‘The New World’ is a vision, a cross between ‘Under Milk Wood’ and an early J.G. Ballad novel, of post-global warming Wales, with a polyglot population: “Ronaldinho Davies/wowing the crowds at the Millennium Stadium” and swamped by tropical vegetation: “cobalt lizards and coral snakes/swallowing the cottages in Llandinam/the mahoganies uprooting Carno’s hearths”. Another apocalyptic scenario prevails in ‘Pirate Music’ where a typical weekend in the binge-drinking culture unravels vividly as one of Dante’s circles of Hell.

Such inversions of myth are rife in this book. There is a freshness with which classical motifs echo in thoroughly modern contexts. A girl on a motorbike: “you fly your hair like a flag” is a glimpse of a goddess at speed. ‘The Head of an athlete in an Ionian shipwreck’ is the past as ghost: “his smile as white as alum”. What starts as portraiture sometimes veers off in darkly mysterious incantatory digressions as in ‘The Magdalen College Chef’ whose “souffles bloom from a dipped fork./Upstairs his ragouts seethe under the grins of dons and demons”.

There are also clever, out-and-out satires like ‘The Nuclear Disaster Appreciation Society’ where “We love to watch/the palm trees beating in the thorium breeze…” and ‘Blockbuster Season’ where the protagonist is bizarrely ensnared by the cliché plots and B-list actors of the cinema “Darth Vader using my Ford Fiesta to escape from Colditz…”. The plot twists and clever inversions available in these poems often recall science fiction writers like Philip K. Dick. Engaging, musically deft, an intelligence that wears its learning lightly, this is a sparkling debut from one of the most promising young poets Wales has seen in some time.

Meirion Jordan was born in 1985 in Swansea, Wales, read Mathematics at Somerville College, Oxford, and is currently studying in the University of East Anglia Writing programme. He won the Newdigate Prize in 2007 and has been published in Poetry Wales, the TLS, and Gallous, amongst other places. He is influenced by poets David Constantine, Andrew Waterhouse, Gillian Clarke, Geoffrey Hill, Byzantine & mediaeval art, music and science fiction.

Seren is an independent literary publisher, specialising in English-language writing from Wales. Our diverse and eclectic list has something to offer anyone with an interest in excellent writing. Our aim is not simply to reflect what is going on in the culture in which we publish, but to drive that culture forward, to engage with the world, and to bring Welsh literature, art and politics before a wider audience.

Please visit our website for more information on our authors and titles.

Apologies to the handful of you who also received this poem by e-mail in October. Our software wasn’t working properly then and the poem only reached the first twenty on the maillist, and we didn’t want the other 650 to miss out.

Cuair | Curves

~ oxfordbrookesuni

She stares
at the rising sun,
rests her eyes
on the roundness of hills.
On paper
she draws circles,
arcs of circles,
circle after circle.
Since a surgeon
scalpelled out
her femininity,
she is haunted by curves.

by Áine Ní Ghlinn | translated by the poet

From An Leabhar Mòr: The Great Book of Gaelic, © the author.

Áine Ní Ghlinn was born in Tipperary, Ireland, in 1955. Her collections include An Chéim Bhriste, Gairdín Pharthais and Deora Nár Caoineadh. She also writes children’s stories and for the Irish television drama series Ros na Rún.

Featuring the work of more than 200 poets, calligraphers and artists, An Leabhar Mòr is a unique collection of Irish and Gaelic poetry, from the sixth century to the present day, and includes the earliest Gaelic poem in existence.

Poets include Iain Crichton Smith, Louis de Paor, Sorley MacLean, Aonghas Dubh MacNeacail, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Máirtín Ó Direáin. Each poem appears in the original Irish or Gaelic, accompanied by an English translation. The poems were selected by well-known poets Seamus Heaney, Hamish Henderson and Alastair MacLeod, and by the contributing poets themselves. One hundred artists (50 from each country) were specially commissioned to produce an original and individual work of art to complement each poem. They include Robert Ballagh, Steven Campbell, Shane Cullen, Alan Davie, Rita Duffy and Alasdair Gray.

he O’Brien Press is one of Ireland’s leading trade publishers. A wide selection of free teaching resources for this title, together with audio clips of some poets reading their work and musical renditions of some of the poems, is available from the website. This title and all O’Brien Press books are available to buy direct from the website or from Amazon.

Cold Spell

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Back from the grave my mother chills the air
as she used to. “It wasn’t like that at all,” she says,
speaking from a frosted pane on the stairs.

She shakes herself into her shape – quite
a feat after nineteen years under ground:
“You know I did my best for you, despite

the sacrifices – which I gladly made,”
almost as if now dead she spoke her mind,
who in this life left much she meant unsaid.

My childhood passed as if she wasn’t there.
What I remember most was her blank face
turned to the window, empty as the air.

There are many things I am tempted to say
like: “Yes, but you always lied” or “You never asked
what I thought and wouldn’t listen anyway”,

but I half believe the claim because I know
how tenderly I felt at first for her flesh
that winter underneath its ice tattoo.

But now it is the season of stone-hard ground
and she is back again in modern dress,
a new lilt to her voice, more refined.

“Give me what I never had,” I say, and love’s
blast furnace barbecues my face. It’s still
not what I want but I can’t get enough

and slam out to the cold night, leaving you
your angry tears, to gulp the icy air
and breathe the distance as I used to do.

by Julian Turner

from Orphan Sites
Anvil, 2006
Copyright © Julian Turner 2006

This must have been a hard poem to write from the personal point of view, but it is done without over-dramatization and with not only great power but understanding and restrained feeling. Turner’s technical skill quietly reinforces what’s going on in the poem: you hardly notice them, but both the rhymes and the way that colloquial rhythms play against the metre are finely handled. It isn’t one of Julian Turner’s funnier poems, for sure (read the books for those), but it’s a compelling poem.

Julian Turner was born in Cheadle Hulme, near Manchester in 1955. He lives in Otley, West Yorkshire, and works for the mental health charity Mind. His first collection Crossing the Outskirts appeared in 2002 and Orphan Sites, his second, came out in 2006.

Anvil Press Poetry was founded in 1968 and publishes English-language poetry and poetry in translation, both classic and modern.

At Last

~ oxfordbrookesuni

At last, there is some colour in the house.
Quite amazing, how these four daffodils
have made this room so bright, made the blank walls
painted, the light come back into the space.

It’s all so simple. Pick them from the side
of busy roads, their petals grey with fumes.
Then put them in a jamjar. Now you’ve made
an ornament, a pet, a fire, a home,

an installation, a mausoleum.
I never thought I’d love such sentiment,
and never thought I’d dare to utter ‘pain’.
I didn’t want to take the easy slant

on things. Did not intend. But here we are,
a room, one window, four yellow flowers.

by Michael McKimm

From: Sherb: New Urban Writing from Coventry.

Mike McKimm graduated from the University of Warwick with an MA in English Literature in 2006. His poetry, much of it first published by Heaventree, won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007. This poem comes from the collection Sherb: New Urban Writing from Coventry.

The Heaventree Press is an independent poetry press based in Coventry. For more information on Heaventree, and to buy Sherb: New Urban Writing from Coventry, please visit the Heaventree Press website.

Ceist na Teangan | The Language Issue

~ oxfordbrookesuni

I place my hope on the water
in this little boat
of the language, the way a body might put
an infant

in a basket of intertwined
iris leaves,
its underside proofed
with bitumen and pitch,

then set the whole thing down amidst
the sedge
and bulrushes by the edge
of a river

only to have it borne hither and thither,
not knowing where it might end up;
in the lap, perhaps,
of some Pharaoh’s daughter.

by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill | translated by Paul Muldoon

From An Leabhar Mòr: The Great Book of Gaelic, © the author. Reprinted in An Leabhar Mòr by kind permission of the author and the Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Ireland.

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill was born in Lancashire in 1952 and brought up in Ireland. Her collections include An Dealg Droighin, Pharaoh’s Daughter, Feis and Cead Aighnis. She is also a playwright and screenwriter and has won many prizes for her work.

Featuring the work of more than 200 poets, calligraphers and artists, An Leabhar Mòr is a unique collection of Irish and Gaelic poetry, from the sixth century to the present day, and includes the earliest Gaelic poem in existence.

Poets include Iain Crichton Smith, Louis de Paor, Sorley MacLean, Aonghas Dubh MacNeacail, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Máirtín Ó Direáin. Each poem appears in the original Irish or Gaelic, accompanied by an English translation. The poems were selected by well-known poets Seamus Heaney, Hamish Henderson and Alastair MacLeod, and by the contributing poets themselves. One hundred artists (50 from each country) were specially commissioned to produce an original and individual work of art to complement each poem. They include Robert Ballagh, Steven Campbell, Shane Cullen, Alan Davie, Rita Duffy and Alasdair Gray.

The O’Brien Press is one of Ireland’s leading trade publishers. A wide selection of free teaching resources for this title, together with audio clips of some poets reading their work and musical renditions of some of the poems, is available from the website. This title and all O’Brien Press books are available to buy direct from the website or from Amazon.

Snake, Swimming

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Slim, not a whisper through liquid but still
Silently moving, elegant as silk and slender,
That yellow neck-ring poised above the water –
You move alongside, yet distant, vulnerable,

So that we too try to stay still,
To watch you watching us, there in the river
As if this moment might go on for ever
Until you find those reeds, hospitable

Sheltering substance, close-packed, over the still
Moving and menacing tracks that cover
Where you might go, your sole endeavour
To sound out any agent that might kill.

You are with me now, unappeased, still
Fixed in my being, giving a shiver
Along the spine and spreading all over,
Magnificent, and lost, and beautiful.

by Anthony Thwaite

from Collected Poems (2007)

Anthony Thwaite’s Collected Poems, published as he reaches seventy-seven, give readers an opportunity to see gathered together all the poems he wants to preserve from the sixteen collections he has published since his debut in the Fantasy Poets series in 1953. Although his roots are partly in the Movement, he has developed a distinctive style – once described as ‘cunningly modulated eloquence’ – and a range of concerns which have defined his poetry from the beginning: memory, history, archaeology, travel (he has lived in Japan and Libya, writing of them with subtlety and affection), the intricacies of relationships, and now the frustrations of age. Through his own voice and those he has adopted (most memorably in ‘The Letters of Synesius’ and Victorian Voices), he has made a significant contribution to the literature of the last half-century, elegantly and perceptively setting the curiosities of the present against the layers of the past.

Anthony Thwaite was born in 1930. He spent his childhood in Yorkshire, the USA (1940-44) and school in Somerset. After national service in Libya he read English at Oxford. He then married and went to Japan for two years, where he taught English Literature at Tokyo University.  Since then he has been a BBC radio producer, literary editor of the Listener and the New Statesman, co-editor of Encounter, and in 1986 was chairman of the Booker Prize judges. He is a literary executor of Philip Larkin and the editor of his Collected Poems and Selected Letters.  He is a regular reviewer for the Guardian and other journals. In 1990 he was made an OBE for services to poetry.

Founded in 1967, Enitharmon Press publishes fine quality literary editions. While specialising in poetry, we also publish fiction, essays, memoirs, translations, and an extensive list of artists’ books.

Please note: We’ll be taking a break from sending out Weekly Poems over the summer. The service will resume again in the autumn.

In the wet-faced hours of the night

~ oxfordbrookesuni

considering love, or the lack of it;
on-the-one-hand-this,
on-the-other-hand-that—

in these steep and solitary hours
come the raw questions.    
And sorrow surfaces as tears,
and moonlight finds me, stretched
like some trussed Gulliver, among
the little, scampering, bossy needs of life;
the pinpricks of the new day’s coming cares.

And yet.
The day will dawn.  A bird will sing.
A hundred different clichés spring to life.
Even in this January,
light, unstoppable, will show
the old camellia, up against the wall,
a shout of lipstick red.

by Ann Alexander

from Nasty, British and Short (Peterloo, 2007)

Ann Alexander’s poem “In the wet-faced hours of the night” appeared in her second collection, Nasty, British and Short (Peterloo, 2007).  A first collection, Facing Demons (Peterloo, 2002) was praised by Fay Weldon.  Ann Alexander, who lives in Cornwall with her husband, worked for many years in London as an advertising copywriter.  More recently she taught advertising skills at Falmouth College of Arts.  She won 1st prize in the 2007 Mslexia poetry competition.

Peterloo Poets was founded by Harry Chambers, still the Publishing Director, in 1976. Its masthead is “poetry of quality by new or neglected poets”. Peterloo publishes between 8 and 10 volumes of poetry a year, runs an annual poetry competition – the 2008 competition will be the 24th – and, since 1999, an annual International Poetry Festival.

“From time to time it has seemed to me that the Peterloo Poets series is a haven of poetic sanity in a world of modish obfuscation.”
Michael Glover, British Book News

Edgar

~ oxfordbrookesuni

(i.m. Edgar Bowers, 1924-2000)

A few things that recall you to me, Edgar:

A stately 80s Buick; hearing a car
Referred to by a coaxing sobriquet—
“Now come on, Captain, don’t you let me down.”
French spoken in a conscious southern accent;
An idiom calqued and made ridiculous
(“Eh, mettons ce spectacle sur le chemin”).
“Silly,” dismissive in its deep contempt,
“Oh, he’s a silly; an amiable silly,
But still a silly.” Or the words I first
Encountered in your captious conversations,
“Tad”, “discombobulated”, “catawampus.”
The usage that you gave me once for “totalled”—
“Oh cruel fair, thy glance hath totalled me.”

Most recently, in Cleveland’s art museum,
The French medieval tapestries brought back
Your unabashed reaction to their beauty,
And how, for once, you’d stood there almost speechless,
Examining Time’s Triumph inch by inch,
Enraptured by its richness, by the young man
Proud in his paradisal place, until
You saw what his averted gaze avoided—
The old man, beaten, bent double by fate’s blows,
Driven from youth’s charmed, evanescent circle:
And how you’d wanted to be sure I’d seen him.

by Dick Davis

rom A Trick of Sunlight
Anvil, 2007; Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2006
Copyright © Dick Davis 2006

This poem in memory of the American poet Edgar Bowers is from Dick Davis’s seventh collection. Unfashionably perhaps, Davis rejoices in the traditional tools of rhyme and metre, though this poem is a slight exception with its unrhymed, conversational address to the dead friend. His poetry has been applauded by Thom Gunn, Richard Wilbur and Anthony Hecht among others. Its wit, intelligence and grace often (and startlingly) achieve an immediacy and rawness of vision.

Dick Davis was born in Portsmouth, England. He is a professor of Persian at Ohio State University. He has also published translations of prose from Italian and poetry and prose from Persian. His previous collection, Belonging, was chosen by The Economist as a Book of the Year.

Anvil Press Poetry was founded in 1968 and publishes English-language poetry and poetry in translation, both classic and modern.