Category: ignitionpress

Endearments

~ oxfordbrookesuni


I have itemized
your   oak leaf   long limb   wild              

& have begun to name you things like
“summer eclipse 

in my offline calendar” or even “sleeping
under the stars 

in a Wal-Mart parking lot”
& honestly 

that kind of romance is okay with me
because secretly I have also named you “river of pine” 

& “blossoming spring flower along the path to
Mount Yamnuska.” 

There is also my skin and yours,
there is also the way skin & skin are two 

vastly different things
that this language has difficulty 

capturing:
“every constellated mole” & 

“pillar of shade.”                
How all of these names describe the way 

we coexist                                                                     
& exist within one another— 

the way you disappear into the trees
& I follow.

 
by Alycia Pirmohamed 

Listen to Alycia read the poem here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

The Poetry Centre is excited to share with you the second selection from our forthcoming pamphlets – a poem from Alycia Pirmohamed’s new pamphlet Hinge, published this month by ignitionpress. Alongside Alycia’s pamphlet we are also delighted to publish Mia Kang’s City Poems and Hush by Majella Kelly, whose work we featured in the previous Weekly Poem. We will be sharing a poem from Mia’s pamphlet next week before we launch all three pamphlets at the Poetry Café in London on 20 February and at Waterstones in Oxford on 21 February. We’ll also be appearing at the Poetry Book Fair on 22 February (with a reading by Alycia and fellow ignitionpress poet Joanna Ingham), so do join us on one of these dates! You can find more details about tickets for the launches here. 

‘Endearments’ is copyright © Alycia Pirmohamed, 2020. It is reprinted from Hinge (ignitionpress, 2020) by permission of ignitionpress. The poem was first published in the April 2018 issue of Glass: A Journal of Poetry.

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet currently living in Scotland. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh, where she is studying figurative homelands in poetry written by second-generation immigrant writers of South Asian descent. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Oregon. In 2018, Alycia’s chapbook Faces that Fled the Wind was selected by Camille Rankine for the BOAAT Press Chapbook Prize. Her other awards include the 92/Y Discovery Poetry Contest, the Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest in Poetry, the Adroit Journal’s Djanikian Scholars program, and the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in publications internationally, including The Paris Review Daily, Prairie Schooner, Best Canadian Poetry, Gutter Magazine, and The London Magazine, among others. Alycia is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets, co-founder of The Scottish BAME Writers Network, and a submission reader for Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She has received support from The Royal Society of Literature, and from Calgary Arts Development via The City of Calgary. Find out more about Alycia’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press from Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects. 

The first eight pamphlets to be published by ignitionpress, featuring work by Lily Blacksell, Mary Jean Chan, Patrick James Errington, Natalie Whittaker, Belinda Zhawi, Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro are available from our online Shop. Each pamphlet costs £5 and you can buy three for £12. You can find out more about the poets and their work on our dedicated page.

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.

Hymn

~ oxfordbrookesuni

It’s Sunday morning and you are moving
inside me like a song that begins
in the syrinx of a lark, invisible
to the eye, silky and golden
on the ear. No promises have I made
yet I thee worship with my body. Me,
a sinner, unwelcome to receive the body
of Christ. I breathe you in as the curtains
of our church fall open on a Pink Lady
sky and the Owenriff river rushes past
the window, breathless and unrepentant
for its winter swell. My hymn hovers
—oh god oh god oh god—then rises again
to beat its milk-warm wings against the glass.


by Majella Kelly

Listen to Majella read the poem here.

‘Hymn’ is copyright © Majella Kelly, 2020. It is reprinted from Hush (ignitionpress, 2020) by permission of ignitionpress.

The Poetry Centre is excited to share with you a poem from Majella Kelly’s new pamphlet Hush, published this month by our ignitionpress. Alongside Majella’s pamphlet we are also proud to publish Mia Kang’s City Poems and Hinge by Alycia Pirmohamed. We will be sharing poems from these two pamphlets over the next fortnight before we launch all three pamphlets at the Poetry Café in London on 20 February and at Waterstones in Oxford on 21 February. We’ll also be appearing at the Poetry Book Fair on 22 February, so do join us on one of these dates! You can find more details about tickets here.

Before that, the Poetry Centre is involved in two events this week as part of Oxford Brookes’s Think Human Festival. On Tuesday evening at the Old Fire Station we’ll be showcasing some of the poetry produced through our military veterans’ poetry workshops and reflecting on what it means to be a veteran. It will feature contributions from poet and veteran Jo Young, Dr Jane Potter (an expert on the writing of the First World War), psychologist Dr Rita Phillips, who has researched public perceptions of veterans in the UK and US, and poet Susie Campbell, who led the creative elements of the workshops. Tickets are free but register here.

Then on Thursday evening we’ll be taking part in ‘Poetry and Constitutions’ as we consider what effect constitutional laws and changes have on creativity and national identity. We’ll be welcoming Welsh poet Llŷr Gwyn Lewis, former Manx Bard Stacey Astill, and Scots Gaelic poet Niall O’Gallagher along with academics Professor Peter Edge and Dr Catriona Mackie. Join us at the Friends’ Meeting House by reserving your place here.   

Majella Kelly is an Irish writer from Tuam, Co. Galway. In 2019 she won the Strokestown International Poetry Competition. She was shortlisted for the Rialto Pamphlet Competition and the Listowel Poetry Collection Award. She was also shortlisted for the inaugural Brotherton Prize at Leeds University and her poems will be published by Carcanet in a Brotherton anthology alongside the winner and the other three shortlisted poets.

In 2018 she won the Ambit Poetry Prize, came second in the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted by The Irish Times for a Hennessy Literary Award. In 2017 she was nominated by Crannóg for a Pushcart Prize and selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. In 2016 she came third in the Resurgence Eco Poetry Prize (now the Ginkgo Prize). Her poetry and short fiction has been published in such places as The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword, Ambit, The Well Review, Cyphers, The Pickled Body, Quarryman, Best New British & Irish Poets 2017, and Aesthetica’s Creative Writing Annual 2017 & 2018. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford.

ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press from Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects.

The first eight pamphlets to be published by ignitionpress, featuring work by Lily Blacksell, Mary Jean Chan, Patrick James Errington, Natalie Whittaker, Belinda Zhawi, Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro are available from our online Shop. Each pamphlet costs £5 and you can buy three for £12. You can find out more about the poets and their work on our dedicated page.

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.

Doing the heart in Lower Five

~ oxfordbrookesuni


We try not to think of the cows, the empty churches
of their chests. Their hearts are grey now, filmed
and tubed, bigger than two fists and the air smells
like we’ve swallowed money, like we’ve licked
the edge of a knife. My partner retreats to the sickroom
so I probe alone, fingers where the blood should be, 
aorta a handless glove. The valves are bell tents
like Christian Union camp in the RE teacher’s garden,
each ventricle a mouth that opens again and again
when I squeeze it, the preacher from St Matthew’s
telling us he can help us speak in tongues. It’s heavy,
this meat, this site of love we haven’t felt yet
and I wonder if the cow did, if the beating quickened
for the bull, for the wet slicked nose of its calf.
The notes in my drawing are neat – mitral, tricuspid,
inferior venal cava – as if I’m striking a bargain
with knowledge, like the words will keep me safe.
Then it’s break and we can wash our hands, drop
our hearts in a bucket like the babies in the abortion
video they made us watch, let the portacabin,
its swollen walls, pump us out into the light.

by Joanna Ingham

You can hear Joanna read the poem here (scroll down).  

The Poetry Centre’s ignitionpress is very pleased to share with you a poem from the final one of its three new pamphlets to be published imminently! After we featured ‘Love Token’ from Jennifer Lee Tsai’s Kismet, and Sarah Shapiro’s poem ‘When I Turn Thirty, I Have an Epiphany’ from her pamphlet The Bullshit Cosmos, this week we feature work by Joanna Ingham that is included in her pamphlet Naming Bones. All three pamphlets will be available on Monday from the Brookes Shop and will be launched in London on 22 July and in Oxford on 23 July. Please join us for those by signing up here!

And don’t forget that we have launched our International Poetry Competition for 2019! This year we are delighted to say that our judge is the internationally-acclaimed writer Jackie Kay! There are two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language, and the winners in each category receive £1000. The competition is open until 2 September, and full details can be found here.

‘Doing the heart in Lower Five’ is copyright © Joanna Ingham, 2019. It is reprinted from Naming Bones by permission of ignitionpress. 

Joanna Ingham grew up in Suffolk and now lives in Hertfordshire. Her work has been published in Ambit, Brittle Star, Envoi, The Fenland Reed, Iota, Lighthouse, Magma, Mslexia, The North and Under the Radar. Her poems have also appeared in the anthology The Best British Poetry 2012 (Salt) and in ‘Poet’s Corner’ in The Sunday Times. She won second prize in BBC Wildlife magazine’s Wildlife Poet of the Year Competition 2008. She studied creative writing at Birkbeck College and was awarded the Michael Donaghy Prize for Poetry on graduating. In 2017 she was a poet-in-residence at London Open Garden Squares Weekend. 

Joanna also writes fiction and is represented by Thérèse Coen of Hardman & Swainson. She has facilitated creative writing workshops in a wide variety of settings including schools, day-centres for older people, prisons, drop-in centres for homeless and vulnerable adults, and with young and adult carers.

In Naming Bones, her engrossing debut pamphlet, Joanna Ingham writes of the things it is difficult to say – about bodies, love, motherhood, the past. Drawing on nature, and a tangible sense of place, she explores the relationships and moments that make us what we are. These are poems of the tongue and the heart, of finding voice and speaking revealingly about what we think we shouldn’t feel.

ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press from Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects. Our latest pamphlets are by Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro, and they will be published in July 2019. The first five pamphlets to be published by ignitionpress: There’s No Such Thing by Lily Blacksell, A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan (Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice, 2018), Glean by Patrick James Errington, Shadow Dogs by Natalie Whittaker and Small Inheritances by Belinda Zhawi, are available from our online Shop. Each pamphlet costs £5, and you can buy three for £12. You can find out more about the poets and their work on our dedicated page.

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.

When I Turn Thirty, I Have an Epiphany 

~ oxfordbrookesuni


*

I will forever be in second grade    acutely aware my classmates’ gold star
reading comprehension    voices sliding over words like snakes slither grass
great at self-flagellation    no one can hurt me like me    I deserve my
teachers’ neglect    my classmates’ sneers and taunts    I am not good enough
pretty enough    smart enough    to learn to read    each day my failure
reteaches me    the depths of my inabilities    my (dys)abilities
                                                                 

**

When I turn thirty, I still stumble aloud, mind ever split
between recognizing letters and

processing meaning, in tandem. What’s wrong
with me? stings the old shame.

I continue to try and out-chess my falterlurch,
my vocal careen, but I also lift

my chin and push my pawn
two daring spaces forward:

I ask myself how
do I think,

how do I get the
answer.

  

***

 

This year, I question friends on their hows of reading
and understanding. My classroom curse word 

reading comprehension is examined,
thought through, discussed.

Epiphany lands casually
one Tuesday afternoon:

reading out loud,
with ease and grace,
has nothing to do
with understanding.

  

****

 

It took me all these years to divine this    travel outside my own head
shame and into others’ vocality    others’ processors and understandings   

so I write this to remind myself to smile    when others read smoothly
and smile when I falter for you here and now    because
when I read    I comprehend    

  

by Sarah Shapiro

You can hear Sarah read the poem here.

The Poetry Centre’s ignitionpress is excited to share with you a poem from another one of its new pamphlets. After we featured ‘Love Token’ from Jennifer Lee Tsai’s Kismet last week, this week’s offering is from Sarah Shapiro’s pamphlet The Bullshit Cosmos. The pamphlet will be available later this month and will be launched in London on 22 July and in Oxford on 23 July. Please join us to celebrate the launch of Sarah’s pamphlet and the pamphlets by Joanna Ingham and Jennifer Lee Tsai. Sign up here  for the launches. 

Don’t forget that we recently launched our International Poetry Competition for 2019! This year we are delighted to say that our judge is the internationally-acclaimed writer Jackie Kay! There are two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language, and the winners in each category receive £1000. The competition is open until 2 September, and full details can be found here .

Sarah Shapiro was born in Chicago and lives in Somerville, MA. She is a poetry MFA candidate at University of Massachusetts Boston. Sarah also holds an MA in Place, Environment, and Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, and a BA in Environmental Studies from Mount Holyoke College. Sarah’s academic career was not a guarantee; she grew up with learning (dys)abilities and did not begin to read until the age of eight. Now, her poems for this project explore the gap between those who read with ease and those who struggle to read.

Sarah believes that as many people as possible should have access to reading and writing poetry. She teaches university analysis and writing at Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Boston, undergraduate writing and the environment at UMass Boston, and an itinerant writing workshop at the Osher Longlife Institute for adult education at UMass Boston. She has completed a residency with Cove Park, and had an audio-text poem published in TIMBER. Her poems have also appeared in glitterMOB, SheGrrrowls, Bunbury, and Poetica Magazine.

The Bullshit Cosmos is a highly distinctive pamphlet that celebrates triumph over adversity, defiance against the system, success over predicted failure. The poems explore the gap between those who read with ease and those who struggle to read. Honestly written, they provide a starkly refreshing approach to our language in a poetry that is provocative and challenging, compassionate and engaging.

ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press from Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects.

Our latest pamphlets are by Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro, and they will be published in July 2019. The first five pamphlets to be published by ignitionpress: There’sNo Such Thing by Lily Blacksell, AHurry of English by Mary Jean Chan (Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice, 2018), Glean by Patrick James Errington, Shadow Dogs by Natalie Whittaker and Small Inheritances by Belinda Zhawi, are available from our online Shop. Each pamphlet costs £5, and you can buy three for £12. You can find out more about the poets and their work on our dedicated page.

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.

Love Token

~ oxfordbrookesuni

after Andrés Cerpa

If anything, I’m a witchy vagrant locked inside an
endless hall of mirrors, patterns and repetitions,
wandering. I’ve often been in the wrong place at the
wrong time, my wasted youth traded for a ghostly
ride in a fairground, crazy merry-go-round music
haunting my memories. Family, friends, ancestors and
spirits: light a candle when I’m gone, so the pretty
moths can come closer to the flame but not be burnt.
I don’t want to go, just yet. The moon is so elegant
tonight. All week long shit storms and hailstones
raged. Thank you for the damned and wild beauty
you have given me here, though most days I couldn’t
find the words to tell you, the way a Chopin
nocturne plays inside my head every time I think of
you. It remains unknown. I smash through the glass.
I leave you the key.

by Jennifer Lee Tsai

You can hear Jennifer read the poem here.

The Poetry Centre’s ignitionpress is delighted to share with you a poem from one of its new pamphlets, Kismet by Jennifer Lee Tsai. The pamphlet will be available later this month and will be launched in London on 22 July and in Oxford on 23 July. Please join us to celebrate the launch of Jennifer’s pamphlet and pamphlets by Joanna Ingham and Sarah Shapiro, whose poems will feature in the next two Weekly Poems. Sign up here for the launches.

Don’t forget that we recently launched our International Poetry Competition for 2019! This year we are delighted to say that our judge is the internationally-acclaimed writer Jackie Kay! There are two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language, and the winners in each category receive £1000. The competition is open until 2 September, and full details can be found here.

Jennifer Lee Tsai is a poet, editor and critic. She was born in Bebington and grew up in Liverpool. An alumna of St Andrews and Liverpool Universities, she holds an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from the University of Manchester. Jennifer is a fellow of The Complete Works III and a Ledbury Poetry Critic.

Her poems are featured in Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe, 2017) and have been published in Oxford Poetry, The Rialto, SMOKE, Soundings, Ambit, Wild Court and elsewhere. Her poetry reviews are published by The Poetry School, the Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Modern Poetry in Translation, Ambit and Poetry Review. Jennifer is an Associate Editor for SMOKE magazine and a Contributing Editor to Ambit. She was a runner-up in Poetry in the 2018 Bi’an Writing Awards. Follow Jennifer on Twitter here.

Kismet opens with the poet as ‘the only Oriental at a primary school in Birkenhead’, a state of isolation – and rupturing of identity – intensified by the unfolding of both personal and ancestral traumas. But this is ultimately a work of hope and renewal. Jennifer Lee Tsai shows us how taking control of our own stories can create a profound sense of connection to life that transcends individual suffering.

ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press from Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects.

Our latest pamphlets are by Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro, and they will be published in July 2019. The first five pamphlets to be published by ignitionpress: There’s No Such Thing by Lily Blacksell, A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan (Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice, 2018), Glean by Patrick James Errington, Shadow Dogs by Natalie Whittaker and Small Inheritances by Belinda Zhawi, are available from our online Shop. Each pamphlet costs £5, and you can buy three for £12. You can find out more about the poets and their work on our dedicated page.

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.

96

~ oxfordbrookesuni

A chicken box ricochets down the aisle: Hot
& Tasty – just the way you like it! Tonight,
the pigeon-shit town washes by, under a cold
and tasteless sky; this place where we’ve wasted
our lives like two spiders circling a sink.
And the plastic seats swing through the streets
and the STOP button shrieks at you to STOP,
but the silver trace of everyone’s day has fogged
the top deck windows, and you dare to wipe
your name in the breath that’s censed a hundred
rain-bedazzled hoods; knowing that the cost
of those letters in condensation – your
wet syllables ghosting sodium light –
is the use of all of those strangers’ breaths.

by Natalie Whittaker 


Listen to Natalie read the poem on our website.

This week we will be sharing two poems from our newest ignitionpress pamphlets which are being launched in London on Thursday (we’ll also be at the Woodstock Poetry Festival on 10 November).

We are delighted to introduce you first of all to Natalie Whittaker, whose pamphlet is called Shadow Dogs. Writing about the pamphlet, John Stammers notes: ‘[t]here is so much to admire in this collection, the reader will surely return repeatedly to the poems to find more to enthral them. The current poetry scene has gained a fresh, exciting voice.’ We very much hope that you’ll be able to join us at the Poetry Café in London to launch Natalie’s pamphlet and Small Inheritances by Belinda Zhawi. We’ll be sharing a poem from Belinda’s pamphlet later this week, and the pamphlets will be available to buy via our online Shop very soon.

Natalie Whittaker is from South East London, where she works as a secondary school teacher. She studied English at New College, Oxford. Her poems have been published in Poetry News, Brittle Star, Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual, #MeToo: A Women’s Poetry Anthology and South Bank Poetry. Natalie was awarded second place in the Poetry on the Lake short poem competition 2018 and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2017. You can follow Natalie on Twitter.

ignitionpress, based at Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre, is a poetry pamphlet press with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects. The Managing Editor of the press is Les Robinson, who was the founder and director of the renowned poetry publisher tall-lighthouse until 2011. The first group of pamphlets, by Lily Blacksell, Mary Jean Chan, and Patrick James Errington, were published in February 2018. Mary Jean’s pamphlet, A Hurry of English, was selected by the Poetry Book Society as its Summer Pamphlet Choice 2018. You can learn more about the press and buy the pamphlets on the  Poetry Centre website.

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.

Practice

~ oxfordbrookesuni

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


by Mary Jean Chan

Hear Mary Jean read the poem by clicking here

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

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

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

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

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.

Still Life with Approaching Crow

~ oxfordbrookesuni

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

by Patrick James Errington

Hear Patrick read the poem by clicking here

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

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

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

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

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.