After Seven Photographic Portraits of a Grey Connemara Pony

May 28, 2019March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

You will know a pony by its ears:
Listening out for weather forecasts and love songs.

By its mane:
Tossed over its eyes like a witch’s broom.

By its coat:
Always buttoned up, tight-fitting, dusty and well-worn.

By its eyes:
That look at you, then look at you again to take you in.

By its hooves:
Made for dancing, and so are worn at the tips.

By its mouth:
That loves to eat words given with pats of the hand.

By its nose:
That knows you, and lifts the pony’s head to let it know you’re coming.

By its tail:
That conducts the symphony of birdsong, lake-song, light-song.
That is the bog underfoot, here above the village of Roundstone.

by Tony Curtis

Candlestick Press will be launching its latest pamphlet, Ten Poems about Horses, on Wednesday 19 June at Alison’s of Tewkesbury, with Alison Brackenbury and a line-up of guest poets. For more details, visit the Candlestick Press Facebook page . Sales support Bransby Horses, an equine welfare charity.

Don’t forget to register for the exciting reading with Ilya Kaminsky and Shara Lessley on 26 June, the symposium ‘Our Poetry and Our Needs’ on 9 July, and the launches of our latest ignitionpress pamphlets on 22 and 23 July. There are more details about all of these events here .

Finally, if you’re keen on filmmaking and poetry, why not enter our filmpoem competition! Choose a poem by one of our ignitionpress poets, respond to it in a short film, and win prizes and screenings! The deadline is 7 June, and there are more details on our blog .

‘After Seven Photographic Portraits of a Grey Connemara Pony’ is copyright © Tony Curtis, 2019. It is reprinted from Ten Poems about Horses, selected and introduced by Alison Brackenbury (Candlestick Press, 2019) by permission of Candlestick. You can read more about the pamphlet here.

Tony Curtis was born in Dublin in 1955. He studied Literature at Essex University and Trinity College Dublin. An award-winning poet, Curtis has published ten warmly received collections. His most recent are: Folk (Arc Publications 2011); Pony (Occasional Press 2013) with drawings and paintings by David Lilburn; Approximately in the Key of C (Arc Publications 2015). He has been awarded the Varuna House Exchange Fellowship to Australia and the Irish National Poetry Prize. In April 2018, the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota, awarded Curtis the 22nd Lawrence O’Shaughnessy prize for poetry. He has read his poetry all over the world to great acclaim. May 2019 saw the publication of This Flight Tonight – a book that celebrates the lives of Alcock & Brown and their incredible flight from a field in St. John’s, Newfoundland, to a bog in the west of Ireland in June 1919. He is a member of Aosdána. Read more about Tony’s work here.

Candlestick is a small, independent press based in Nottingham and has been publishing its sumptuous ‘instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets since 2008. Subjects range from Birds and Cricket to Tea, Kindness, Home and Puddings. Candlestick Press titles are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, as well as by galleries, museums and garden centres. They can also be ordered online on the Candlestick website, where you can find out more about the full range of titles. You can follow Candlestick on Twitter and Facebook. In 2018 Candlestick sold over 75,000 pamphlets.

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.

Toaster

February 18, 2019March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Each Sunday morning
the bread would often get stuck
or launch itself high

across the kitchen
where dad would catch it, juggling
each flapping bird with

blackened wings. His dance
made us laugh. Tea, marmalade,
homemade jam, honey –

again and again
we would wait for its metalled
cough, to watch salmon

leaping through currents
of sun. I ate six slices
one weekend, enthralled

with how happiness
was the colour of butter,
best eaten hot. Toast.

I believed I could
save each tiny crumb of you,
thinking aged just four

that every Sunday
would stay like this, love landing
soft, the right way up.

by Olga Dermott-Bond

News from the Poetry Centre! We’re delighted to be hosting MacGillivray and Niall McDevitt at Waterstones, Oxford on Tuesday 5 March as they launch their new books. Join us from 6.30-7.30pm to hear from two uniquely powerful voices. Tickets are free, but space is limited. Sign up via Eventbrite.

In addition to this Weekly Poem e-mail, don’t forget that you can follow our work on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We look forward to seeing you there!

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Olga Dermott-Bond is originally from Northern Ireland and lives in Warwickshire. A former Warwick Poet Laureate, she has had poetry and flash fiction published in a range of magazines including Rattle Magazine, Under the Radar, Magma, Ink Sweat and Tears and Paper Swans Press. In 2018 she was commended in both the BBC Proms Poetry and Against the Grain poetry competitions, and was shortlisted in The Poetry School’s Primers competition. She is a teacher and has two daughters. Follow her on Twitter.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press based in Nottingham and has been publishing its sumptuous ‘instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets since 2008. Subjects range from Birds and Rivers to Tea, Kindness, Home and Puddings. Candlestick Press titles are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, as well as by galleries, museums and garden centres. They can also be ordered online where you can find out more about the full range of titles. Follow Candlestick on Twitter or find it on Facebook. In 2017 Candlestick sold over 70,000 pamphlets.

Christmas Lights

November 15, 2018March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

They’re putting up the lights strung out on poles
along the harbour wall, the dark young lads
in oily overalls; and there’s a tree
built out of creels out at The Point, as though
a pagan pendant on a flimsy string
of beads, defiant, and alluring as
the Sirens’ phantom lighthouse.
And upstairs
in dim bedrooms the girls undress and dress;
the boys smirk at the mirror mouthing chat-
up lines from movies.
Now the village is
en fête: dressed for a party in the dark,
across the fields, along uneven paths,
a low-roofed barn with steamed-up windows and
a fiddler and her band. And Christmas lights.

by Stephen Keeler

News from the Centre: this evening we are excited to host the prizewinning and shortlisted poets from this year’s International Poetry Competition, judged by Kayo Chingonyi. You can find the winning poems and the shortlist here. Everyone is very welcome to attend; just visit this page for more details.

On Thursday 29 November at Waterstones in Oxford we will be helping to launch a new poetry anthology called Wretched Strangers. Featuring work by an exciting range of contributors, the anthology – edited by JT Welsch and Ágnes Lehóczky – marks the vital contribution of non-UK-born writers to this country’s poetry culture. You can find more information and register to attend the event here, and find out more about the book here.

Feeling festive? This week’s poem comes from the brand new pamphlet Christmas Lights: Ten Poems for Dark Winter Nights published by Candlestick Press. Candlestick has also just published another Christmas pamphlet, Ten Poems about Robins.

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Stephen Keeler worked in educational publishing and international education for 35 years before moving from London to ‘the edge of the map’, to write, in 2010. He won the first Highland Literary Salon Poetry Prize in 2012 and a Scottish Book Trust New Writing Award in 2015. His poems have appeared in Northwords Now, South Bank Poetry, the Glasgow Review of Books, Gutterand The Poets’ Republic. He was shortlisted for the 2018 Winchester Poetry Prize. His pamphlet While You Were Away(2018) is published by Maquette Press. A full-length collection will be published by Red Squirrel early in 2020. You can follow his work on Twitter.

Bouquet

July 3, 2018March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

No, I won’t throw it out, for the sake of that tulip:
still fresh and so white, that satiny curl –
a sea-captain’s collar folded over his tunic,
a theatrical backcloth, like a windowless wall.
Its petals are like cupped and half-turned palms,
its bloom a head, a gleaming cherry in its mouth.

…If it must go, let somebody else throw it out –
as God will say of me when my turn comes.

by Julia Nemirovskaya; translated by Boris Dralyuk

The Poetry Centre recently launched our 2018 International Poetry Competition! Open until 6 August, the competition has two categories – Open and English as an Additional Language – and this year is judged by the highly-acclaimed poet Kayo Chingonyi. You can find full details and enter here .

If you’re a translator, you have only a few days left to enter the 2018 Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation! Translate any poem from any language, ancient or modern into English, and be in the running for a cash prizeand publication by the Stephen Spender Trust. There are three categories: Open, 18-and-under, and 14-and-under. The judges this year are Margaret Jull Costa, Olivia McCannon, and Sean O’Brien. You can find more details on the Trust’s website .

Finally, we have just released our latest Poetry Centre podcast, in which Niall Munro talks to the award-winning Canadian poet Richard Harrison on his recent visit to Oxford. You can listen to the conversation via the Poetry Centre website .

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Julia Nemirovskaya is a Moscow-born writer and poet who now lives in the US and teaches at the University of Oregon. Her two collections are Moia knizhechka (My Little Book published in 1998) and Vtoraia knizhechka (Second Little Book, 2014). This poem first appeared in Russian in PLAVUCHII MOST: Russian and World Poetry Magazine, 2016 #1 (9), and will be published in Tretia knizhechka (Moscow: Vodolei, 2019).

Boris Dralyuk is an award-winning literary translator and the Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA where he taught Russian literature for a number of years. He is co-editor of the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry and has translated Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories, both published by Pushkin Press.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press based in Nottingham and has been publishing its sumptuous ‘instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets since 2008. Subjects range from Birds and Sheep to Tea, Kindness, Home and Puddings. Julia Nemirovskaya’s poem ‘Bouquet’ appears in Ten Poems from Russia – a first co-publication by Candlestick Press and Pushkin press. Candlestick titles are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, as well as by galleries, museums and garden centres. You can follow Candlestick on Twitter or find it on Facebook.

Pushkin Press was founded in 1997, and publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books – everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary. Our books represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world: we publish some of the twentieth century’s most widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Teffi, Antal Szerb, Gaito Gazdanov and Yasushi Inoue, as well as compelling and award-winning contemporary writers, including Andrés Neuman, Edith Pearlman, Eka Kurniawan and Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Pushkin Press imprints include Pushkin Children’s Books, Pushkin Vertigo and ONE.

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, Twitter, and Instagram.

An Irishman Coaches the Beautiful Game in the American South

June 11, 2018March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Time was I was the guru of soccer,
a footie svengali in North Carolina.

I gave the Piedmont Triad the sweeper system.
Touchlines hushed to my nuggets of wisdom.

T-shirts were printed with my every word.
The European Cup was played on our road.

I took Rush and Dalglish to the Mason Dixie.
I was asked to lead grace over Domino’s pizza.

I screamed expletives till the sheriff came calling.
‘Take it down a notch, Coach, or we got a problem.’

Time was I was the guru of soccer,
a footie svengali in North Carolina.

I saw Ossie Ardiles in Oriel Park.
‘That a fact, Coach? Well bless your heart…’

I drifted to watch the immigrant workers,
the barefoot pot-bellied dribblers and jugglers

in a circle of dust, playing hooky with a ball,
displaced in a place that’s all about goals.

I watched them till dark and the troops filed past.
‘Night, Coach. Goodnight.’ We were left last.

Time was I was the guru of soccer,
a footie svengali in North Carolina.

by Conor O’Callaghan

The Poetry Centre is collaborating on a one-day symposium for a second time with the University of Reading and the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI), based at the University of Canberra. The symposium, entitled ‘Contemporary Lyric: Absent Presences, the Secret & the Unsayable’, will take place on Tuesday 26 June from 9.30-5pm at the Museum of Early Rural Life at the University of Reading. All are welcome but places are limited. Find out more and sign up to attend via our website .

Finally, join Poetry in the Meeting House @ 43 St Giles Oxford on Wednesday 11 July at 7pm to hear American poet Lauren Rusk, who will be reading from and talk about her recent book of poems What Remains To Be Seen. The book is inspired by children’s art from Theresienstadt concentration camp. Everyone is welcome.

‘An Irishman Coaches the Beautiful Game in the American South’ is copyright © Conor O’Callaghan, 2018. It is reprinted from Eleven Poems about Football (Candlestick Press, 2018) by permission of Candlestick Press.

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Conor O’Callaghan is an Irish poet and novelist. His memoir Red Mist: Roy Keane and the Irish World Cup Blues appeared in 2005. He has published five collections of poetry with The Gallery Press, most recently Live Streaming (2017) which was shortlisted for various awards including the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. Conor has won the Patrick Kavanagh Award and has taught at various universities in the United States. He divides his time between Sheffield and Dublin.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press based in Nottingham and has been publishing its sumptuous ‘instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets since 2008. Subjects range from Birds and Cricket to Tea, Kindness, Home and Puddings. Candlestick Press titles are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, as well as by galleries, museums and garden centres. They can also be ordered online at the Candlestick website where you can find out more about the full range of titles. You can follow Candlestick on Twitter or find it on Facebook. In 2017 Candlestick sold over 70,000 pamphlets.

Follow the Poetry Centre on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Ramadasi

January 26, 2018March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Return
to me, beloved
and take me on your lap.

Undo my braid
stiff
as buffalo horn

and draw your
fingers
through my hair.

Untie my belt, open
the silk cloth
covering my waist,

let my oiled limbs, my
perfumed skin
envelop you

as the rose
swallows
the bee.

by Shazea Quraishi

News from the Centre: there are only a few weeks left before we launch our first ever poetry pamphlets through ignitionpress! There’s No Such Thing by Lily Blacksell, A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan, and Glean by Patrick James Errington will be on sale from 14 February, and there will be several launch events . More details will follow soon!

The Poetry Centre’s exciting reading series gets underway on Saturday 24 February at the Society Café in Oxford with a reading by American poets Christopher DeWeese and Andy Eaton. You can book tickets via our website , where you can also find details of the rest of the spring series.

The acclaimed Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson will be visiting Brookes on Friday 16 February to give a lunchtime reading . Although this event is aimed at Brookes staff and students, there will be places available for members of the public. If you’d like to attend, e-mail niall.munro@brookes.ac.uk

‘Ramadasi’ is copyright © Shazea Quraishi, 2018. It is reprinted from Ten Sexy Poems by permission of Candlestick Press.

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Shazea Quraishi is a Pakistani-born Canadian poet, playwright and translator based in London. Her first pamphlet, The Courtesan’s Reply, was published by flipped eye in 2012. The Art of Scratching is her first full-length collection and was published by Bloodaxe in 2015. In 2015 Quaraishi was awarded a Brooklease Grant by the Royal Society of Literature and she also received awards from the British Council and Arts Council England in the same year.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press based in Nottingham and has been publishing its sumptuous ‘instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets since 2008. Subjects range from Birds and Sheep to Tea, Kindness, Home and Puddings. Shazea Quraishi’s poem ‘Ramadasi’ appears in Ten Sexy Poems published in January 2018 in time for Valentine’s Day. You can read more about the pamphlet on the press’ website. Candlestick Press titles are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, as well as by galleries, museums and garden centres.

Follow the Poetry Centre on Facebook and Twitter.

The Red Man

December 16, 2017March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Snow is falling. Who comes laughing
over the fields? Stars are falling.
Canals are freezing. Who brings
like nothing on his back
the shape of our life, the hopes
of our life, lumped
obdurate in a reindeer skin sack?

Trees are chiming in orchards of glass.
If childhood’s white and cold, then love’s
the overgrown, evergreen dark. Two rings
of apple peel, our fingers dipped in wine.
Two pale root rings from the frozen earth,
your fingers wound in mine.
Our vows we can see on the air.

by Jacob Polley

This is the final Weekly Poem of 2017! We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a lyrical start to 2018. Our poems will resume in late January – thank you for reading in 2017! As well as the launch of ignition , we have some very exciting readings planned for early 2018, so please follow us on social media , keep an eye on our website, or stay tuned to the Weekly Poem for more details!

‘The Red Man’ is copyright © Jacob Polley, 2017. It is reprinted from Christmas Garland: Ten Evergreen Poems (Candlestick Press, 2017) by permission of Candlestick Press.

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Jacob Polley was born and grew up in Cumbria. He has published four books of poems, winning the 2016 T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry for his fourth, Jackself. He has also been awarded the 2013 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for The Havocs, and the Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel, Talk of the Town (2009). Jacob teaches at Newcastle University and lives with his family on the North East coast. You can find more about Jacob’s work on his website.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press based in Nottingham and has been publishing its sumptuous ‘instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets since 2008. Subjects range from Birds and Sheep to Tea, Kindness, Home and Puddings. This year Candlestick is publishing six Christmas titles featuring newly-commissioned poems and a short story by poet Sean O’Brien. You can read more about them on the press’ website. Candlestick Press titles are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, as well as by galleries, museums and garden centres. They can also be ordered online on the Candlestick website, where you can find out more about the full range of titles. You can follow Candlestick on Twitter or find it on 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.

Follow the Poetry Centre on Facebook and Twitter.

Santa circa 2092

December 4, 2017March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

On the Eve, when tongues of hung dead bells
lay silent, smog scraped the landscape
stretched its wrath across the shivering city.

Below a growling sky, the grey track of a sleigh
lugged by a pack of nine empty dogs
weaved between mounds of bones and rust.

Like a swarthy pioneer he handled the reins
hoping for a place to slap his sack, retrieve a song
from his memory, hang a sprig of mistletoe above a hearth.

Between carcasses of once lit haunts he dug
barehanded, searching for a glint of glitter, broken shells
of decorated baubles, a wayward ring of a bell.

He swept the musty ground, tore over hills,
followed a path of fallen fern, hooked his thumbs
into his belt, bellowed until the withered trees shook.

Night after night he roamed, scraped the days
from his boots, tugged at his bedraggled beard,
listened for life under the covering of dark.

With a sag for a smile and holes for eyes, he sat
whimpering amongst the ashen landscape, there
he set himself, back to a tree, slumped for the last.

As midnight struck, a wail clogged itself to the cracks
in his heart. Hidden in an undergrowth, threadbare
and faint, a woman, swollen, ready.

by Panya Banjoko

This Friday, don’t miss our final poetry reading in this semester’s series! It features celebrated haiku and performance poet Mark Gilfillan alongside Ted Hughes Prize-shortlisted writer and translator Chris Beckett, and will take place from 7-9pm at the Society Café in Oxford. You can find more details and buy tickets here . Tickets will also be available on the door.

‘Santa circa 2092’ is copyright © Panya Banjoko, 2017. It is reprinted from Christmas Crackers: Ten Poems to Surprise and Delight (Candlestick Press, 2017) by permission of Candlestick Press.

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Panya Banjoko is a performance poet and writer whose first collection is forthcoming from Burning Eye Books in 2018. She performed at the 2012 Olympic Games and is a patron for UNESCO Nottingham City of Literature. Her work has been widely published in anthologies and by Bloodaxe Books and in 2008 she won a Women in the Arts Award for Outstanding Achievement. You can find more details about Panya’s work on her Facebook page or on her website and follow her on Twitter.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press based in Nottingham and has been publishing its sumptuous ‘instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets since 2008. Subjects range from Birds and Sheep to Tea, Kindness, Home and Puddings. This year Candlestick is publishing six Christmas titles featuring newly-commissioned poems and a short story by poet Sean O’Brien. You can read more about them on the press’ website. Candlestick Press titles are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, as well as by galleries, museums and garden centres. They can also be ordered online on the Candlestick website, where you can find out more about the full range of titles. You can follow Candlestick on Twitter or find it on Facebook.

She’s a Game Old Bird

June 26, 2017March 30, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

My granny

takes canary sips
from her service-station tea,
jaundiced eyes lantern-bright
as she asks, again,
who the ambulance is for.

is magpie-quick
the nurses say,
fills her knicker drawer
with plasters, rubber gloves,
someone else’s dentures.

sticks her beak in other rooms
Look at’em! Lolling!
picks over the injustice
like a pigeon
pecking at its bruised breast.

preens,
her curled fingers
clawing damp strands.
Presently, she says,
I shall ask you to leave.

sings of her cuckoo-child,
sees his father one day in me
and cups my face,
tells me I have nothing
to be sorry for.

lies in a sketch of stillness:
eyes and mouth drawn
pencil-thin.
A sense of
something flown.

by Liz Soar

Please note that the Weekly Poem will be taking a week’s break next week, but will return with another poem on Monday 10 July.

The Poetry Centre’s International Poetry Competition, judged this year by award-winning poet Helen Mort, is open for entries! Poems are welcomed from writers of 18 years or over in the following two categories: English as an Additional Language and Open category. First Prize in both categories is £1000, with £200 for Second. The competition is open for submissions until 11pm GMT on 28 August 2017. Visit our website for more details.

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Liz Soar (b 1976) was born in Lancashire and studied French at New College, Oxford. After completing a MSt in Women’s Studies, she spent the early part of her career on the fringes of the literary world, first with theatrical literary agent, Judy Daish, and then in Oxford with David Fickling Books, before re-training as a teacher. Liz currently teaches English at Headington School and writes for pleasure whenever she can. Her poem ‘She’s a game old bird’ was written as part of Claire Askew’s ‘Creatrix’ course with the Poetry School. She lives in Charlbury with her husband and young daughter.

‘She’s a Game Old Bird’ is one of the poems featured in Candlestick Press’s new title Ten Poems about Grandparents, which is being launched at Headington School in Oxford at 7pm on Monday 3 July. The launch will feature readings by the anthology’s student editors, as well as by pupils and the English teacher whose poems are included in the selection. All are welcome! To attend, please email info@candlestickpress.co.uk or call 0115 967 4455.

All the poems were chosen by students at the school. The pamphlet also includes poems written by some of the students, alongside others by established poets including Tiffany Atkinson, John Burnside, Vicki Feaver, Joan Johnston, Mohja Kahf, Derek Mahon, and Andrew Waterhouse. The pupils’ choices reflect the multicultural world in which they are growing up. There’s a poem in three languages about a joyful reunion with a grandparent arriving from overseas and another in which a Muslim grandmother raises eyebrows in a posh department store by washing her feet in the sink in the ladies’ room.

Candlestick Press is an independent publisher based in Nottingham. It has been publishing poetry pamphlets since 2008 – not only for people who already love poetry, but also for those who will love it but perhaps don’t know that yet. Candlestick’s ‘instead of a card’ pamphlets are designed to make an ideal alternative to a mainstream greetings card and are a small gift in their own right. Each title is supplied with a matching envelope and bookmark left blank for the purchaser’s own special message.

Candlestick prints at least 3,000 copies of each new title and its pamphlets are stocked by museums, galleries and gift shops, as well as independent and larger bookshops. In 2016 over 55,000 pamphlets were sold.

You can see Candlestick’s full range of titles on the publisher’s website. You can also find Candlestick Press on Facebook and on Twitter.