Category: Pavilion Poetry

He’s

~ oxfordbrookesuni

just about the size of a goldfish
and doesn’t even look like a child.
When did he arrive? I don’t remember –
the pain must have made me forget.
Anyway, now I have a son
that lives in my cupped-together hands
in a small pool of water I think he needs.
I spend my hours closely watching him,
nervous he’ll slip between my fingers
and vanish down some drain forever,
or worse yet, he’ll try and swim away.

Each day he gets a little bigger,
till he no longer needs my hands.
I carry him around like a baby,
buy him PJs with yellow ducks,
and little booties to keep his feet warm.
He smells like the sweetness of a baby,
and smiles at me; I cautiously smile back.
Now he’s growing faster by the hour –
and I can no longer handle the weight.
My arms start to tire – I must tell him.
I put his soft cheek on mine, and say
he simply cannot grow any bigger,
he must promise me to always stay small –
so that I know I can love him.

by Jodie Hollander

We’re delighted to say that our poet this week, Jodie Hollander, will be visiting Oxford Brookes from the US this Wednesday lunchtime to read from her new book My Dark Horses, which is just out from Pavilion Poetry (Liverpool University Press). Jodie will be reading alongside our colleague in the School of Education, Jane Spiro, whose most recent book is Playing for Time (2015). You can find more details here. Jodie will also be reading on Tuesday evening with Ben Parker and Harry Man at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Jericho.


The Poetry Centre would be delighted to see you at ‘moments/that stretch horizons’: an international poetry symposium for practitioners, a collaboration between the Poetry Centre, the University of Reading, and theInternational Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) at the University of Canberra. We will explore one theme current in contemporary writing, poetry about the environment, and two concerns of poetics: prose poetry and the lyric and poetry and publishing. Each panel set up to discuss these issues will be composed of a mixture of UK-based academics and writers and academics/poets from IPSI. The symposium will take place at Oxford Brookes University, and places will be limited. Tickets for the day (including refreshments and lunch) cost £10 (£7.50 for postgraduates). All poets, critics, and readers of poetry are welcome, and you can sign up here.

The Poetry Centre recently launched the Oxford Brookes 2017 International Poetry Competition, which is judged this year by award-winning poet Helen Mort. 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.

‘He’s’ is copyright © Jodie Hollander, 2017. It is reprinted from My Dark Horses (Liverpool University Press, 2017) by permission of Liverpool University Press.

Notes from Pavilion Poetry:

Jodie Hollander, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was raised in a family of classical musicians. She studied poetry in England, and her poems have appeared in journals such as The Poetry Review, PN Review, The Dark Horse, The New Criterion, The Rialto, Verse Daily, The Best Australian Poems of 2011, and The Best Australian Poems of 2015. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in South Africa, a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant in Italy, a Hawthornden Fellowship in Scotland, and attended the MacDowell Colony in February of 2015. Her debut publication, The Humane Society, was released with Tall-Lighthouse (London) in 2012, and her full-length collection, My Dark Horses, is published with Liverpool University Press (Pavilion Poetry). She currently lives in Avon, Colorado. Read more about Jodie’s new book on the Pavilion website, and find out more about her work on her own site.

Pavilion Poetry is a contemporary poetry series from Liverpool University Press, edited by Deryn Rees-Jones, which seeks to publish the very best in contemporary poetry. Always international in its reach, Pavilion Poetry is poetry that takes a risk. Whether by new or established and award-winning writers, this is poetry sure to challenge and delight. Launched in 2015, Pavilion has already enjoyed considerable success, with Mona Arshi’s book, Small Hands, winning the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection at the 2015 Forward Prizes, and Ruby Robinson’s Every Little Sound being shortlisted for the same prize in 2016. You can read more about the series on the Liverpool University Press 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.

Cannibal

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Once I was so hungry, I tore the skin in strips from my feet
and ate it – a masseuse asked if I was burned?
There was protein there. I ate stories too,
tales of survival in the shell of planes.

People are said to taste like pork,
the Polynesians called white folk long pigs –
Did you know we’d all taste ourselves
all day long, if we could; that’s what poems are for.

I’d never eat a child.
I’d sooner die than eat a sibling.
Pork meat is white, fatty, fibroud
with the same strings that animate human days.

I’d like to think I could stay alive
on rain and my own dermis, beads of breast milk,
crusts of wax. My heart quietly consuming itself,
cardiac walls breaking down.

by Sarah Westcott

Today (Monday 5 December), the Poetry Centre presents a double dose of poetry from Steven Matthews, Kelley Swain & John Barnie. The three current poets in residence at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History will read from 12-1pm in JHB 208 at Oxford Brookes University, and then in the evening at The Albion Beatnik Bookshop from 7.30pm. All are welcome to either – or both! – events. You can find more details on the Poetry Centre website.

‘Cannibal’ is copyright © Sarah Westcott, 2016. It is reprinted from Slant Light (Liverpool University Press, 2016) by permission of Liverpool University Press.

Notes from Pavilion Poetry:

In her first full-length collection, Slant Light, Sarah Westcott immerses the human self in the natural world, giving voice to a remarkable range of flora and fauna so often silenced or unheard. Here, the voiceless speaks, laments and sings – from the fresh voice of a spring wood to a colony of bats or a grove of ancient sequioa trees. Unafraid of using scientific language and teamed with a clear eye, Westcott’s poems are drawn directly from the natural world, questioning ideas of the porosity of boundaries between the human and non-human and teeming with detail.

Sarah Westcott’s debut pamphlet Inklings was the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice for Winter 2013. Her poems have been published in journals including Poetry Review, Magma and Poetry Wales and in anthologies including Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt). Sarah grew up in north Devon, on the edge of Exmoor, and has a keen interest in the natural world. She holds a science degree and an MA in poetry from Royal Holloway, University of London. Sarah lives on the London/Kent borders with her family and, after a spell teaching English abroad, works as a news journalist. You can find out more about Sarah and her work on her website, and follow her on Twitter.

Pavilion Poetry is a new contemporary poetry series from Liverpool University Press, edited by Deryn Rees-Jones, which seeks to publish the very best in contemporary poetry. Always international in its reach, Pavilion Poetry is poetry that takes a risk. Whether by new or established and award-winning writers, this is poetry sure to challenge and delight. Launched in 2015, Pavilion has already enjoyed considerable success, with Mona Arshi’s book, Small Hands, winning the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection at the 2015 Forward Prizes, and Ruby Robinson’s Every Little Sound being shortlisted for the same prize in 2016. You can read more about the series on the Liverpool University Press 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.

Reader, listener,

~ oxfordbrookesuni

come in. I’m opening my door to you – the trap
door of a modern barn conversion with lots of little rooms,
vast paintings on the bare brick walls, a daring colour scheme,
sofas and awkward plastic chairs for interrogating guests

in that looking way. There’s soup. Bread in the oven to warm.
Take off your shoes. Take some spare socks – I know your own feet
offend you. I know your deepest thread, like a baked-in hair.
You wish someone would think of you, spontaneously

in the middle of the night; call you out of the dark like a comet
landing on your duvet. Come in, make yourself at home.
The walls here don’t have eyes. They’re dumb surfaces
onto which shadows of stags are cast like stalking giants.

by Ruby Robinson

Happy National Poetry Day! We hope that wherever you are you’ll have time to enjoy some poetry today, starting with this poem! The Poetry Centre will be handing out free poetry postcards in the John Henry Brookes Building at Oxford Brookes today for you to mail to friends and family who need poetry. You might also be interested to know that we have just announced the winners of our International Poetry Competition, and you can find more details on our website. There will be a special awards ceremony on 25 November, and all are welcome to attend.

And next Friday sees the first of our lunchtime readings at Brookes for the semester, featuring Seán Street and Jennifer Wong. All are welcome!

Finally, there are just a few places left on the workshop led by Tamar Yoseloff entitled ‘The Space of the Poem’ on Saturday 22 October. Inspired by the exhibition by Pan Gongkai running at Brookes’ Glass Tank, we will look at examples of Chinese painting, concrete poetry and text-based sculpture as a way of generating new poems – participants will be encouraged to share their first drafts during the session. You can read more about the workshop on the Brookes website, where you can also book your place. There is a reduced price for Brookes students and staff.‘Reader, listener,’ is copyright © Ruby Robinson, 2016. It is reprinted from Every Little Sound (Liverpool University Press, 2016) by permission of Liverpool University Press.

Notes from Pavilion Poetry:

Drawing from neuroscience on the idea of ‘internal gain’, an internal volume control which helps us amplify and focus on quiet sounds in times of threat, danger or intense concentration, Ruby Robinson’s brilliant debut, Every Little Sound, introduces a poet whose work is governed by a scrupulous attention to the detail of the contemporary world. Moving and original, her poems invite us to listen carefully and use ideas of hearing and listening to explore the legacies of trauma. The book celebrates the separateness and connectedness of human experience in relationships and our capacity to harm and love. You can read more about the collection on the Pavilion Poetry webpages.

Ruby Robinson was born in Manchester in 1985 and lives in Sheffield. She studied English Literature at the University of East Anglia and has an MA from Sheffield Hallam University where she also won the Ictus Prize for poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry (Chicago) and elsewhere. You can follow Ruby on Twitter.

Pavilion Poetry is a new contemporary poetry series from Liverpool University Press, edited by Deryn Rees-Jones, which seeks to publish the very best in contemporary poetry. Always international in its reach, Pavilion Poetry is poetry that takes a risk. Whether by new or established and award-winning writers, this is poetry sure to challenge and delight. Launched in 2015, Pavilion has already enjoyed considerable success, with Mona Arshi’s book, Small Hands, winning the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection at the 2015 Forward Prizes, and Ruby Robinson’s Every Little Sound being shortlisted for the same prize in 2016. You can read more about the series on the Liverpool University Press 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.

The Cruel Mother

~ oxfordbrookesuni

after the ballad


Amongst the leaves I lie
teeth-bared,

raw as the sundown.
Scattered skins hang on the trees

like prayer flags – I am demon,
I am the bad-one.

I am the wild, edible bark.
You bit my tongue and made me roar.

I will barren you, bust up your eye,
scratch at damp dirt with these claws.

Where are you? Nest of twigs,
den in the woods,

hut with smoke at the door.
The home burns its riches.

My young slide onto the forest floor like eels.
They writhe –

branches hold them. Swaddle
small forms with dirt. They call

on into the blistering night.
Sky bubbles and caws.

Trees like dogs lick at the sun,
wide as horizon, large as moon.

The oak I lean on leans back,
bark like a spine.

Over the fence on the well-kept lawn
I hear them talk –

O there is nothing to be done,
Nothing, nothing to be done.

And hear him say
It is not his fault.

And they all agree
it was all up to me.

In the green wood
I sing to hope of rain.

I sing to blood
which falls and pours;

in the garden they sit, drink wine
and thunder, wonder

where I have travelled towards
but don’t stand and search

but talk, and worse they sigh,
O there is nothing, nothing to be done.

I will eat these babies,
cook them one by one.

The green wood says I should stay the night.
The green wood casts a curse

on those who say nothing can be done
and leave me, a wild cat, to run

into their sleep in hot damp beds,
into their eyes in the dark.

I am a clawed mother
and he will not have them back.

O the cruelty he weighed on me.


by Eleanor Rees

Over the next fortnight, we will be featuring two poems drawn from the new collections of Eleanor Rees and Sarah Corbett, and published by Pavilion Poetry. Both Sarah and Eleanor will be visiting Oxford on Friday 23 October – a super opportunity to hear two of the most exciting voices in contemporary poetry. The reading will take place at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Jericho from 7.30pm, and all are very welcome! More details can be found via Facebook.

The Poetry Centre has announced the winners of its Wellbeing Poetry Competition! Thank you to all who entered. You can see the shortlist and read the winning poems on the Poetry Centre website.

‘The Cruel Mother’ is copyright © Eleanor Rees, 2015. It is reprinted from Blood Child (Liverpool University Press, 2015) by permission of Liverpool University Press.

Notes from Liverpool University Press:

Eleanor Rees was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside in 1978. Her pamphlet collection Feeding Fire (Spout, 2001) received an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and her first full-length collection Andraste’s Hair (Salt, 2007) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Glen Dimplex New Writers Awards. Her second collection
was Eliza and the Bear (Salt, 2009), and her most recent, Blood Child (Liverpool University Press, 2015). Rees has worked extensively as a local poet in the community and has a PhD from the University of Exeter in this practice. She often collaborates with other writers, musicians and artists and works to commission. She lives in Liverpool. You can read more about Eleanor’s book on the LUP website, on her own site, and follow her on Twitter.

Pavilion Poetry is a new contemporary poetry series from Liverpool University Press, edited by Deryn Rees-Jones, which seeks to publish the very best in contemporary poetry. Always international in its reach, Pavilion Poetry is poetry that takes a risk. Whether by new or established and award-winning writers, this is poetry sure to challenge and delight. Launched in 2015, Pavilion’s first three books are by three exciting voices: Sarah Corbett, Eleanor Rees, and Mona Arshi. Pavilion has already enjoyed considerable success, with Mona Arshi’s book, Small Hands, winning the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection at this year’s Forward Prizes. You can read more about the series on the Liverpool University Press 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.