Category: Peterloo Poets

In the wet-faced hours of the night

~ oxfordbrookesuni

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

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

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

by Ann Alexander

from Nasty, British and Short (Peterloo, 2007)

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

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

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

Female Nude, circa 1916

~ oxfordbrookesuni

North of the Somme, the birds stop
Singing, sensing silence is the anthem
Fit for no-man’s-land, for foetal
Bodies drowned in mud, draped
Like weekend washing across lines
Of viper wire.  Spent shells

Nest in craters, nothing blue
And speckled waiting for a tapping break
But everywhere the litter of limbs
And bayonets red with stranger’s blood.
In frontline trenches, lovesick
Soldiers pencil notes as time

Ticks towards the whistles
For over-the-top commands, about
The time a police commissioner
On the Rue Taitbout is
Tearing down Modigliani nudes,
Affronted by full frontal pubic hair.

by Tim Cunningham

from Unequal Thirds (Peterloo, 2006)

Tim Cunningham’s poem “Female Nude, circa 1916” comes from his second collection Unequal Thirds (Peterloo, 2006).  His first collection was Don Marcelino’s Daughter (Peterloo, 2001) which was favourably reviewed in the TLS by Peter Reading.  Adrian Mitchell has written “Tim Cunningham’s poems are as various and fascinating as the animals in Noah’s Ark.  He has a most musical ear, a keen eye and an open heart.”  Tim Cunningham was born in Limerick in 1942 and has lived in Limerick, Tipperary, Dublin, the U.S.A. and London.  At present he lives in Billericay.

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

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

In Praise of Aunts

~ oxfordbrookesuni

I conjure Aunts, sly laughers,
Aunts not of the blood
but of the spirit; invite
from their cold cots for scones and tea
Aunts who could cheat
and fib for fun, playing Old Maid
in silent riot, keeping a card
up a knickerleg; Aunts who would never
hurt a child to do it good;

Aunts without men, good sports,
bachelor Aunts eternally retired
who liked dogs, who could whistle,
Aunts with pockets, pocketsful
of small timely treats,
and not wincing at stickiness
nor at blood as they strode
through the war, through the wards,
voluntary servant goddesses.

You women long at peace,
rooted in sycamore scrub
beneath St. Peter’s topsyturvy stones
without memorial: I will praise
your names, your dented hats and bulging shoes,
who pedalled across my dream
last night with shining spokes and hubs
and cracked halloos and glimpse of knees,
old children in your upright childless bones.

by M.R. Peacocke

from In Praise of Aunts (Peterloo, 2008)

M.R. (Meg) Peacocke’s poem “In Praise of Aunts”  is the title poem of her new collection (Peterloo, 2008).  Her previous volumes are: Marginal Land (Peterloo, 1988), Selves (Peterloo, 1995) and Speaking of the Dead (Peterloo, 2003).  All her volumes have received exceptionally favourable national review coverage.  Reviewing her first volume for London Magazine, Stephen Knight wrote “Like Larkin, Peacocke has that all-too-rare gift of knowing how to make a memorable poem”, and reviewing her second volume for Stand, John Lucas wrote of her “truly inventive elegance, wit, and immaculately-controlled feeling” and described Selves as “a gem of a collection”.  Her third collection received full-page coverage in Guardian Saturday Review. 

Meg Peacocke was born in 1930 and grew up in South Devon.  She read English at Oxford and after teaching, travelling, marriage and bringing up a family of four, a training in counselling and work in a children’s cancer unit she moved to a small hill farm in Cumbria where she still lives.

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

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

On a Photograph of Air Raid Wardens, taken after All-Night Bombing of the West End: 1940

~ oxfordbrookesuni

It could almost be a detail from Vermeer
as could the catch-light of their helmets
domed and gleaming, pictured here
among the ravaged London streets:

two wardens, one with a decorated china jug
and pouring tea out for the other
who warms rough hands around his mug
as if either might have asked Shall I be mother?

At any moment anything may happen –
somebody’s world become a heap of stone
or something precious be forever broken,
an orphaned child found wandering alone –

as it still happens, as we check the TV screen
for daily close-ups and a body count
rather more Goya than Vermeer, obscene
in every detail he’d record in paint.

This is what we witness, surrogate wardens
of remote streets, far enough removed
to keep watch from our homes and gardens,
feeling our tender consciences reproved

by unknown victims of a different war,
of ideologies beyond the reach
or comprehension of this decent pair
who stand here in the street together, each

intent on what they celebrate, those small
residual habits, tender domesticity
incongruous and brief, a welcome interval
allowed for kindness, pouring a mug of tea.

by John Mole

John Mole writes for both children and adults. “On a Photograph of Air Raid Wardens after All-Night bombing of the West End: 1940” comes from his latest collection for adults The Other Day (Peterloo, 2007), his first volume since the warmly-received Counting the Chimes: New and Selected Poems 1975-2003 (Peterloo, 2004) which includes the poet’s own selection from nine previous collections plus 30 new poems.  Writing in the T.L.S., Bernard O’Donoghue praised John Mole for having written “some of the most engaging poems of the past quarter-century.”  John Mole is a jazz clarinettist and is currently the City of London’s Poet-in-Residence.

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

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