Coral Island

October 6, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

To our surprise the island was well watered.
The fishes were strangely easy to catch
And the little pigs that gambolled around
In the interior provided nourishment,
As well as fun for my fellow castaways.

The weather was persistently benign,
Stroking our hair and murmuring white noise.
Though my spyglass had suffered from the sea
I could still use it for scanning the waves,
Hoping for a sail or even a monster.

Meantime I memorised our days in paradise
And the little that happened, looking forward
To the book I should write when we were rescued –
A more or less truthful tally of events,
Spiced up or embroidered as need might be.

At night the land crabs rattled round the palms
And the waves were bored by the same old beach.
Peterkin snored guilelessly in our hut
While Jack dreamed in silence about his pig-sticking
And I stared out to sea with an empty mind.

That was before the coming of the cannibals
And our unforeseen arrival at manhood,
When things that should not be seen were seen
And could not be unseen, and our green Eden
Receded into a book for small boys.

by Fergus Allen

Together with the Institute of English Studies in London, the Poetry Centre is organizing a conference from 13-14 March 2015 at the IES to address the three initiatives: New Generation Poets (1994), Next Generation Poets (2004), and Next Generation Poets 2014. It aims to examine important concerns of contemporary poetry arising from these projects, such as the relationship between poetry and the public, the promotion of poetry through initiatives such as these, and what the selection of the particular poets on these lists can tell us about the state and direction of British poetry at various stages over the past twenty years. For more information and the call for papers, please visit the IES website.

Fergus Allen was born in 1921; his father was Irish, his mother English. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, he moved to England during the Second World War. He was Director of the Hydraulics Research Station and ended his professional career as First Civil Service Commissioner. In 2000 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He published his first book (with Faber) at the age of seventy-two; the poem here is one of several recent poems that comprise the first section of his New& Selected Poems, which also includes work from five previous collections. You can read more poems from the book on the CBe website, read more about Allen’s work from the CBe blog, and hear him read at the Poetry Archive.

In 2011 CBe inaugurated Free Verse , a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in 2012, 2013, and this year too, with over 60 publishers taking part.

Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

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.

from Lives of the Poet

August 4, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

He remembers lunchtime readings at The Swan,
The Dove, The Mermaid; ‘the girls were all gazelles’
and among them sat that lovely, dutiful daughter . . .
He loved her. He began to write ghazals
to her eyes that reminded him of the sea . . .
He stepped out to sun that glittered on the water
beyond shop-girls and typists, suited types
and he felt, not that they were ‘free bloody birds’
but that happiness might still be caught, endlessly –
a salt-wet happiness in which there were few words,
in which she lay naked with that just-fucked look
and oleanders rustled in the breeze that shook
a leaf-shower down outside, while on
her shoulder shuttered moonlight fell in stripes . . .

Immoderation, intransigence, exorbitance,
a feeling of being out-of-this-world
or better-than-this-world, the prizes coming
at the wrong times to the proper people
and vice-versa, the protestations
of cheerfulness, the all-pervasive insecurity,
the chronic lack of commitment, the lifelong
dependence on others – for hospitality,
money, love – the simultaneous contradictory
impulses to be adored and alone, connected
and adrift; the brief passionate flare-ups, the long
epistolary retreats, the ecstatic arrivals,
panic departures; ‘agonizing reappraisal’,
disavowal; severe gloom, habitual dejection.

by Alan Jenkins

Poems ‘9’ and ‘20’ from Lives of the Poet are copyright © Alan Jenkins, 2013, and reprinted from The Palm Beach Effect: Reflections on Michael Hofmann, edited by André Naffis-Sahely and Julian Stannard (CB editions, 2013).

Calling all poets! The Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre invites all members of the Oxford community to join us in celebration of National Poetry Day on Thursday 2 October 2014 by performing poetry in our Pop-up Poetry event.

The performance will be a part of a series of Pop-up Poetry events featured around Oxford exclusively for National Poetry Day. Should you wish to take part, we would need you to have around five minutes of material to perform. We encourage you to read your own work and/or the work of other poets. If you would like to participate, please send us an e-mail at brookespopuppoetry@gmail.com including your name and a sample of the poetry you would like to read, by Friday 5 September 2014. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
Notes from CB editions:

Alan Jenkins, deputy editor of the Times Literary Supplement, has published a number of poetry collections, among them Harm (Forward Prize, 1994) and A Shorter Life (2005). The second poem here, in italics, is from the prose of the poet and translator Michael Hofmann – himself the subject of the book in which the poems are included, a collection of memoirs, poems and criticism published by CBe under the title The Palm Beach Effect.

CB editions, founded in 2007, publishes poetry alongside short fiction and other writing, including work in translation. Its poetry titles have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize three times (in 2009, 2011 and 2013), and have been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize.

In 2011 CBe inaugurated Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in 2012 and 2013, with over 50 publishers taking part, and has become an annual event. The next fair will take place on 6 September at Conway Hall in London.

Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

The War Reporter Paul Watson and the Boys with the Bomblet

June 30, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

A gang of shepherd boys minding their own
rib-caged cows. When a yellow can appears
in a dust cloud. Like soda or a sleeve
of tennis balls, clasped in a corona
of tabs known as The Spider. Casing scored
so as to better shatter in a blast
of stampeding shrapnel that will strip all
clothes and flay any naked skin, leaving
pulped, cauterized stumps. Tinkling like wind chimes
after the wetter thuds. The tiny chute
hangs limply from the lip. Designed to drift
silently, otherworldly, increasing
our scatter radius. Preset to detonate
at precise heights or times. Or with the thrum
of traffic, the plosives of speech. Tremors
of the lightest footfalls. Two boys running
off in search of a father. The one boy
holding the canister suggests, Maybe
we’ll find some food inside? The other one
slips his knife beneath the tab to find out
what’s inside The Spider.

by Dan O’Brien

A reminder that as part of the MCS Arts Festival Oxford, Azfa Awad, Youth Ambassador for Poetry (a position co-sponsored by Oxford Brookes and Oxford City Council), will be reading in Oxford alongside the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, this Thursday 3 July from 7.30-9.30pm. For more details, visit the festival website.

This year’s Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public, organized by this week’s publisher, CB editions, is taking place on 6 September. See below for more details.

‘The War Reporter Paul Watson and the Boys with the Bomblet’ is copyright © Dan O’Brien, 2013, and is reprinted from War Reporter (CB editions, 2013) by permission of CB editions.

Notes from CB editions:

Dan O’Brien is an American playwright and poet living in Los Angeles. His play The Body of an American was the inaugural winner of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, and was produced in London in January 2014. War Reporter – which won the 2013 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize – derives from a collaboration between the poet and the war reporter Paul Watson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1993 photograph of a dead American being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and has since reported from the Balkans, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Read more from Dan O’Brien’s book on the CBe website, and find out why CBe decided to publish the book on its blog. You can also follow O’Brien’s work on his own website and via Twitter.

CB editions, founded in 2007, publishes poetry alongside short fiction and other writing, including work in translation. Its poetry titles have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize three times (in 2009, 2011 and 2013), and have been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize.

In 2011 CBe inaugurated Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in 2012 and 2013, with over 50 publishers taking part, and has become an annual event. The next fair will take place on 6 September at Conway Hall in London. Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

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.

The North Side

April 28, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I took a job at the Arnold Grill,
topping off drafts with a paddle
for the St Johnsbury truckers.

Tuesday nights my father came in
to buy a shot of muscatel
and nurse it in a far booth
beside a small jukebox
which he plied with quarters.

He was dead so the smoke
and obscenities did not bother him.

At three a.m. I began tallying my tips –
a fortune in Canadian pennies.

Once, I confronted him:
Why do you keep coming?
Can’t you rest? And why Tuesday?

He was hurt. He averted his fine eyes
and joined a conversation
about Billy Martin –

had he ruined Vida Blue?
A waitress laughed – apparently
my father knew nothing of the forkball –
and next Tuesday he did not come.

No one missed him.
The pool players cleaned the table,
rack after rack, adjusting the score
with beads on a string in midair,

the dart players paused, with pursed lips,
pushing the feathers through air
as if they had just found an opening,

but my father had not returned,
not even as a ghost, not even
as a tremor in a bettor’s hand.

I locked the iron door at first light,
lowered the steel shutters,
clicked the seven padlocks,
and instead of my father,
to whom I’d spoken all my life
with bitterness, with sarcasm,

I spoke to that uncertain moment
between false dawn and dawn
when the traffic roars north,
just streaks of trapped light,
lamps go out in the charity ward,
and the tenements light up,
the highest floors first:

Why can’t you rest, I said.
by D. Nurkse

Two important announcements! First, to all Brookes staff and students: do you have a favourite poem? The Poetry Centre invites you to share your love of poetry with the community in our exciting new project for National Poetry Day. If chosen to participate, you will be filmed reading your favourite poem and sharing why it is memorable to you. Filming will take place in September 2014 and videos will be posted to the Poetry Centre website via the Oxford Brookes YouTube channel for National Poetry Day on 2 October. If you wish to participate, all you need to do is send an e-mail to favouritepoem@gmail.com including your name, your role at Brookes (student or member of staff), the title and author of your favourite poem, and a brief description of the poem’s significance to you, by Friday 16 May, 2014. No original poems, please!

Secondly, there are a number of poetry and creative writing events coming up at this year’s OutBurst Festival (6-10 May). OutBurst showcases cutting-edge research and expertise from across the university in a variety of stimulating and fun events for students, staff, and the local community, including installations, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and discussions for all ages. Find out more from the website, via Facebook, or on Twitter, and book your tickets now!

Notes from CB editions:

D. Nurkse lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is a former poet laureate of that borough. His parents fled Nazi Europe during World War Two. His Voices over Water, published by CBe in 2011, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. He has also written on human rights issues and worked with Amnesty International. You can read further selections from A Night in Brooklyn on the CB editions website.

CB editions, founded in 2007, publishes poetry alongside short fiction and other writing, including work in translation. Its poetry titles have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize three times (in 2009, 2011 and 2013), and have been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize.

In 2011 CBe inaugurated Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in 2012 and 2013, with over 50 publishers taking part, and has become an annual event. The next fair will take place on 6 September at Conway Hall in London. Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

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.

from Soon

March 3, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

There is a woman. Sitting by the door. It slides loudly. She wears a blue
jumper. A beaded necklace. She looks out the window. Her features look
fragile. She’s thinking of her husband. He’s away on business. She doesn’t
trust him. She crosses her arms. The train doesn’t move. She turns her head
towards me.
I know her. I’ve seen her before. At a party in Chelsea. The waiters were
Portuguese. Everyone was rich. Everything was expensive. Even the noise. Even
the smells. Air clogged with entitlement. She wore a long black dress. She
laughed loudly. Her legs were long. You found her pretty. Some music came
on. She swung her hips. So did the others.
Let’s leave, you said. A man came towards us. He was drunk. He spoke of
birds. You enjoyed him. We stayed. You mentioned buzzards. Then marshes.
The sea, I said. No one heard.
We went home.
Your hand was warm.

by Alba Arikha

Two competitions seek entries: for the Dylan Thomas International Poetry Award poets from around the world are invited to submit a single previously un-published poem of a prescribed length in response to the word ‘Harmony’ by 31 March 2014. An award of £2000 will go to the winner and a copy of the poem will be displayed for the next year at the Dylan Thomas Centre. For more details, visit the Prize’s designated website.

And the Poetry Centre and the Ashmolean Museum are still accepting entries for ‘Picture This!’, their Pre-Raphaelite poetry competition, open to all Sixth Formers studying in Oxford. More details can be found on the Ashmolean’s website. The competition deadline is Monday 17 March.

‘from Soon’ is copyright © Alba Arikha, 2013, and is reprinted from Soon (CB editions, 2013) by permission of CB editions.

Notes from CB editions:

Alba Arikha was born and grew up in Paris, and now lives in London. Major/Minor, her memoir about growing up in Paris (where Samuel Beckett was her godfather), was selected among the ‘Best Books of 2012’ by The New Yorker; she has also published a novel and a short-story collection, and has recorded a CD of her songs, Dans les rues de Paris. In Soon, the book-length narrative poem from which the above extract is taken, a train comes to an unscheduled stop an hour outside Paris, and while the other passengers bicker, confide and flirt, the narrator remembers – lovers, disappointments, childhood, marriage. You can read further excerpts from the book on the CB editions website.

CB editions, founded in 2007, publishes poetry alongside short fiction and other writing, including work in translation. Its poetry titles have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize three times (in 2009, 2011 and 2013), and have been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize. In 2011 CBe inaugurated Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in 2012 and 2013, with over 50 publishers taking part, and has become an annual event. The next fair will take place around Easter 2014.

Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

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.

from At Maldon

December 23, 2013April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Byrhtnoth, using spear as walking-stick,
clutches at its steady upright line,
shrinks his tired weight to its wood
as the fight grinds on about him.

His ooze of pain becomes his sped-up life:
the pure white of his beard to pull at his cheeks;
the curl of his fingernails clawing to his palms.

Selective hearing dulls the battle’s din:
the muffled talk heard through a rubber mask;
the upstair tenant’s stomps upon the floor.

In the midst of which comes sharp the ring
of the river flowing clear over stones;
the heavy distant tolling of a church;
his own tintinnabulate whistle above the wind.

Still clinging to his staff as his sight closes in.
A creep of bright-rimmed blackness.
A misted tunnel-mouth.

Till nothing but nothing surrounds him,
an empty sphere neither lighted nor dark,
with him at its centre, a seed
still alive, still himself — unresponsive;
a mind re-learning how its body moves.

Till he senses his circle of calm has been breached,
feels for his sword-hilt;
once veined in gold
now black and cold.
The last drop of strength to close his fingers,
to draw the blade an inch,
to give air to its etchings —
before a blow to his arm
breaks the bone, and the sword
snicks back in its scabbard,
as his strength is snuffed out,
by J. O. Morgan

This is the final Weekly Poem before the Christmas and New Year break. Many thanks to all our publishers for contributing such a terrific selection of poems in 2013, and thank you to our readers for supporting them and us. Have a very happy Christmas and excellent start to 2014!

‘from At Maldon’ is copyright © J. O. Morgan, 2013, and is reprinted from At Maldon (CB editions, 2013) by permission of CB editions.

J. O. Morgan lives in Scotland. His first book, Natural Mechanical (featured in a previous Weekly Poem), won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward First Collection Prize; its sequel, Long Cuts, was shortlisted for a Scottish Book Award. At Maldon is a re-imagining of the Old English poem ‘The Battle of Maldon’, recounting the engagement between a ragtag army of Anglo-Saxons and a party of Viking raiders on the coast of Essex in 991. It was chosen by Andrew Motion as one of his ‘books of the year’ in the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement. You can read more about the book and see further selections from it at the CB editions website.

CB editions, founded in 2007, publishes poetry alongside short fiction and other writing, including work in translation. Its poetry titles have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize three times (in 2009, 2011 and 2013), and have been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize. In 2011 CBe inaugurated Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in 2012 and 2013, with over 50 publishers taking part, and has become an annual event. Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

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.

Sweets

October 28, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

After dark she handed round the confectionery
and the rustle of the papers excited me.
As well as the comforting chocolate colours
there were staring greens, lumps of grainy yellow
and white fondant homunculi, whose feet
were the first items to be bitten off.
I would nibble my way up through the body,
thinking about the organs I’d consumed
and which had yet to come. The head when reached
was crunched between my remorseless milk teeth.

Now there’s unwelcome knocking at the door
and parents’ voices in the social mode.
No, I will not come home! This is my home –
from now on and forever. I have left you
and shall be colonising this chaise longue,
where Phyllis sits, warm thigh pressed against mine,
biting into dusted Turkish delight
with regular little ivory teeth
and squeezing the pieces against her palate
with a pink, unspeakably catlike tongue.

by Fergus Allen

If you are in Oxford or visiting the city soon, and haven’t yet seen the exhibition Where We Begin to Look. Landscape and Poetry, there is still time! Where We Begin to Look is a collaborative exhibition by the artist Zoe Benbow and the poet, Deryn Rees-Jones, and is presented by the Poetry Society and Small World Theatre, Ceredigion. It will be at the Glass Tank at Oxford Brookes until 5 November, and you can find out more about it on the Brookes web site.

Fergus Allen is 92 years old. Educated in Ireland, he moved to England during the Second World War and ended his professional career as First Civil Service Commissioner. Following retirement he has published collections with Faber and Dedalus Press as well as CBe. Writing from a lifetime of rich experience, Fergus Allen offers poems of precision and fine observation, stripped of illusion yet deeply human in their affections and glancing wit. The confusions of abroad, of childhood and memory, of love and sex and identity, are rendered in Before Troy with a bracing clarity. You can hear Fergus Allen reading from his poems at the Poetry Archive.

CB editions publishes no more than six books a year, mainly poetry and short fiction and including work in translation. Since 2008 its poetry titles have twice won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and have been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize three times. In 2011 CBe put on Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in September 2012 and this year, with over 50 publishers taking part. Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

Putting on my shoes

September 30, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I am going to be sociable, I need
an intermediary between the planet and my own weight.
I lean my head towards my feet; I love and serve myself.
A rapid mechanical operation.
For four or five seconds
my brain engulfed with blood
and shut off from the universe
reformulates some fundamental notions.
Its conclusions are wiped out when I sit up.
I surface again, tired,
but the world hasn’t changed one iota.
Why not carry on, as a drowned man? Something
might happen.
Every morning my shoes grant me dizziness
and a sudden secret opportunity.

by Joaquín Giannuzzi

This year’s Oxford Brookes Annual Creative Writing lecture will be given by Mark Watson on Wednesday 9 October at 6pm. The novelist and comedian will be combining two strands of his rich and varied career in an evening of ‘bookomedy’, and the event is open to all. To book a place, visit the Brookes website.

Notes from CB editions:

Joaquín Giannuzzi was born in 1924 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and died in 2004. His ten collections of poetry, written while working as a professional journalist, established his reputation as one of the most admired and influential Spanish-language poets of his time. You can read further excerpts from the collection on the CB editions website. The translator Richard Gwyn has published several collections of his own poetry, two novels and a memoir, The Vagabond’s Breakfast (2011), winner of the 2012 Wales Book of the Year in the creative non-fiction category, as well as books on illness, language and the body. He is Director of the MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University.

The Grape Grower in Champagne

August 26, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

The regiment arrives
The village dozes off in the perfumed light
A priest has a helmet on his head
Is the champagne bottle artillery or not
The vinestock like ermine on a coat of arms
Bonjour soldiers
I saw them racing this way and that
Bonjour soldiers champagne bottles in which blood ferments
You’ll stay a few days then back to the front
In your echelons like a field planted with vines
I send my bottles all over the place like the shells of a delightful artillery

The night is blond oh blond wine
A grape-grower was singing bent over his vines
A grape-grower without a mouth on the far horizon
A grape-grower who himself was the living bottle
A grape-grower who knows all about war
A grape-grower in Champagne who’s an artilleryman

Now it’s evening and they’re playing poker
Then the soldiers will return to the front
Where the Artillery uncorks its foaming bottles
Well Adieu gentlemen come back if you can
But who’s to say what the future has planned

by Guillaume Apollinaire

Welcome back to the Weekly Poem series after its summer vacation. This week’s publisher, CB editions, organises a highly successful annual poetry book fair called ‘Free Verse’, and this year’s event will take place in Conway Hall in London on Saturday 7 September. More than fifty publishers will be represented, and there will be free readings and workshops. Entry is free too. For more details, visit the the Free Verse website.

And a reminder that the Poetry Centre is offering a PhD Studentship in Poetry. This is a three-year, full-time PhD studentship in any aspect of Poetry and Poetics. More details can be found on the Brookes website. Please share this link with anyone you think might be interested. The deadline for applications is 6 September.

Notes from CB editions:

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) – whose writings ranged from plays to experimental poetry, from art criticism to erotica – was a central figure in the literary and artistic life of early 20th-century Paris. In 1914 he swapped the high life of avant-garde Paris for the mud and desolation of war in the trenches, but in The Little Auto, Beverley Bie Brahic, the translator and a poet in her own right (and whose poem ‘PS: Book of Eve’ was a Weekly Poem selection in January), has chosen poems that are wholly different from those that for English readers have come to exemplify the genre of war poetry. In Apollinaire, juxtaposed with the orgy of destruction are nostalgia for antiquity and impatience for the future, melancholy and exuberance. You can read further excerpts from the book at CB editions’ site.

CB editions publishes no more than six books a year, mainly poetry and short fiction and including work in translation. Since 2008 its poetry titles have twice won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and have twice been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize. In 2011 CBe put on Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in September 2012 with over 50 publishers taking part. Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

A British Summer

July 1, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

My boredom chock-a-block
with furniture – the desk
in bits, the sofa cushions
cluttering the bed, drawers
shoved beneath the dresser
– I stare at Wimbledon
while listening to the man
restretch then clean
the carpets in two rooms.
Suds rumbling in their drum,
the smell of pine detergent
creeping up to me.

Two hours of plucky Brits,
mauve clouds, the covers on,
or grim-faced teenagers
washed up before their spots
have cleared, then I descend
like Norma Desmond,
out of touch, magnanimous;
and all the little dents
where chairs and tables stood
have disappeared, as though
the years of being here
had never happened.

by Stephen Knight

From 1-7 July, this week’s Weekly Poem publisher, CB editions, will be running a pop-up poetry shop at 201 Portobello Road in London. The Shop will be filled with books (from CBe, Eyewear, Arc, Five Leaves, Flipped Eye, and more), photographs by Ken Garland, and other things, and an excellent selection of writers will be calling in to do brief pop-up readings through the week. You can find out more from Charles Boyle’s Sonofabook blog here.

Notes from CB editions:

The Prince of Wails is Stephen Knight‘s first collection of poems since Dream City Cinema (1996), which – like its predecessor, Flowering Limbs (1993) – was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and was selected by Robert Potts in the Guardian as a Book of the Decade: ‘A masterpiece in miniature, packed with surprisingly enthusiastic and musical treatments of entropy, whether universal or personal, by a top craftsman with a quirky and disconcertingly loveable voice.’ Stephen Knight’s novel Mr Schnitzel (2000) won the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Award. Born in Swansea, Stephen Knight now lives in London. Read more selections from the collection on the CB editions website.

CB editions publishes no more than six books a year, mainly poetry and short fiction and including work in translation. Since 2008 its poetry titles have twice won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and have twice been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize. In 2011 CBe put on Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in September 2012 with over 50 publishers taking part. Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.