Wild Boars

February 14, 2022March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

What we come to believe is what we want to believe
when the streets are paused to a standstill,
the surrounding hills our only retreat. For me,
the snapping of beech, the stirring of foliage,
was more real than the light that shone,
late afternoon, across from Marriage Wood.

When the two of them ran, we thought they were dogs –
at first – from the sound of their movement alone.
How quickly they made their way, one behind the other,
a maverick convoy of muscle and flesh
passing steadfastly to a destination only they knew.

Through the cover of branches, nothing was certain.
I could swear there was the lowering of bird song
and the sudden glint of an eye as they gathered pace,
surging uphill where no way seemed possible.

Still at that point of half believing they were dogs,
we waited patiently for their owner walking behind,
for a call at least. In the moments afterwards, the birds
regained their confidence but no voice was heard.

by Christopher Horton

You can hear Christopher Horton read the poem on the tall-lighthouse website.

As we mentioned in last week’s e-mail, this semester the Poetry Centre is showcasing the research being carried out by Dr Eric White into the American avant-gardes. Join us for ‘Shaking the Lights’, a series of free digital events, open to all, and beginning on Thursday 24 February with an online lunchtime discussion group looking at poetry by Langston Hughes. You can find details of that event and the others in the series on the Poetry Centre website.

And if you’re near London, head along to the Rugby Tavern in Great James Street on Saturday 26 February to hear this week’s poet, Christopher Horton, read at the launch of his new pamphlet. He’ll be reading alongside Sonya Smith, Alan Buckley, Declan Ryan, Mark Wynne, Jon Stone and Kirsten Irving, plus other readers. To sign up for this free event and for more details, visit the Eventbrite page.

‘Wild Boars’ is copyright © Christopher Horton, 2021, and is reprinted here from Perfect Timing (tall-lighthouse, 2021) by permission of tall-lighthouse. You can read more about the pamphlet and buy a copy from the tall-lighthouse website.

Notes from tall-lighthouse:

The poetry in Perfect Timing is, at times, unsettling and surreal but for the most part transformative. Christopher Horton writes about what endures among the ephemera of the city, the suburb, the village, office-life, whilst simultaneously peeling back layers of the ‘everyday’ to expose the eccentricity and hypocrisy that lies there. Read more on the tall-lighthouse website.

Christopher Horton studied English Literature and American Studies at University of Wales, Swansea, and subsequently taught in China before working as a Housing Officer and then as a Town Planner. His poetry has been widely published (including in Stand, Iota, Ambit, Magma, Poetry Wales, Poetry London) and he has been a prize-winner in the National Poetry Competition, the Verve Poetry Festival Competition, the South Downs Poetry Festival Competition (for the poem featured this week) and the Bridport Prize. Find out more about Christopher on his website.

tall-lighthouse, established in 1999, is an independent poetry press publishing full collections of poetry, pamphlets and anthologies with over 100 titles issued from more than 60 poets. The press has a reputation for publishing new talent, being the first in the UK to publish Helen Mort, Sarah Howe, Liz Berry, Adam O’Riordan, Rhian Edwards, Emily Berry, Kate Potts and many others. You can find out more about the press via the tall-lighthouse 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

two perspectives on a landscape

September 17, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Now you find yourself in the country,
in the same country where you were born.

Tooth-first, you, a knobbled branch, your hand.
You want reasons for the engine. There are none.

But how it rusts, thinking, listless in the grass,
while you have a mouth of blood and wind.

Spit out the trees, each one you’ve planted,
with nobody else around. Now they stand

on hillsides that always meant a window,
though it slanted slightly in its frame.

Though now you wonder of the window’s
high, neglected corners, you cannot run to –

now you realise you have found yourself
in a landscape you no longer understand.

There are new things you can understand
in the old way.

There are old things you can understand
in a new way.

You sometimes think of you as the où
without location,

carrying yourself, your own bouquet, to bed-
rooms and searching
for a place to put it down.

You sometimes think about the old,
frittering away, unread
books lining their shelves:

an apartment, a bedroom like your own
palm, fingering the curtains.

You sometimes think about the old ways,
the old things –

in the garage
of what you think,
the new things are all
hopeless.

by Joshua Calladine-Jones

Our annual competition is closing soon! The Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, judged by Will Harris, closes for entries this Monday (20 September) at 23.00 BST/22.00 GMT. There are two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language. This year, thanks to the generosity of poet Isy Mead, we also have a limited number of free entries available for BAME poets who have been state-educated in the UK. You can find out more about the competition on our website.

‘two perspectives on a landscape’ is copyright © Joshua Calladine-Jones, 2021. It is reprinted from Constructions [Konstrukce] (tall-lighthouse, 2021) by permission of tall-lighthouse. You can read more about the pamphlet on the tall-lighthouse website.

The poems in this sometimes surreal and experimental pamphlet were influenced by the conditions of the pandemic, with its renewed focus on video-conferencing and other forms of digital technology. Konstrukce is a Czech word, meaning construction and the poetry is assembled from fragments, sentences noted down during online conversations with speakers who use English as a second-hand language, replete with faults, slips, and narratives both intentional and accidental. There are distortions, too, in the sequences, where the poet uses a technique of retranslation to revise literary form, using his own poetic discipline to create a justly memorable pamphlet.

You can find out more about the pamphlet and listen to Joshua read poems from it on the tall-lighthouse website, where you can also buy a copy.

tall-lighthouse has a reputation for publishing exciting new poetry, being the first to publish Sarah Howe, Helen Mort, Liz Berry, Jay Bernard, Ailbhe Darcy, Rhian Edwards, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Emily Berry and many others. Learn more about the press on the tall-lighthouse website and follow tall-lighthouse on Facebook and Twitter.

When I Read Diagnostic under CONFIDENTIAL

May 14, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I think it’s related to esoteric mystical knowledge
like predicting rain from moisture in moss
or life through the aleph bet of gematria

should you wear a raincoat in this new
world of extreme weather but the word
is just a fancy way to say test
say people spent their careers devising methods
to organize minds on a bell curve

what is the etymology of evaluation
now that’s a better word all about worth
about value dependent on people’s subjectivity
to get it going and together diagnostic
and evaluation are the appraisal and catalog
so what’s your price.

by Sarah Shapiro

News from the Centre: we are pleased to say that our new online course, Fire Up Your Poetry Practice: Professionalising Your Poetry, has proved very popular, and just one place remains on the session on 22 June entitled ‘Working with other people’. This session is led by poet and researcher Susie Campbell and will explore alternative routes into publication through collaboration and creative projects. To sign up for this event, please visit the Brookes Shop. If you would like to join the waiting list for any other session (listed on our website), please e-mail us at poetrycentre@brookes.ac.uk

‘When I Read Diagnostic under CONFIDENTIAL’ is copyright © Sarah Shapiro, 2021. It is reprinted from being called normal (tall-lighthouse, 2021) by permission of tall-lighthouse. You can read more about the pamphlet on the tall-lighthouse website.

Notes from tall-lighthouse:

This engaging sequence is written as a direct response, through poetry, to the clinical experiences of the poet in how the ‘system’ accepts and treats (or doesn’t) children with (dys)abilities. As a poet, Sarah Shapiro has strived to be called normal whilst growing up with ‘reading issues’. The poems are a dialogue between her documented psycho-educational evaluations and her reaction to the analysis and words used. Interspersed between these ‘conversations’ are heartfelt poems that expose the tribulations of people who are carelessly labelled (dys).

Read more about the pamphlet and hear Sarah read two of the poems from it on the tall-lighthouse website.

Sarah Shapiro was born in Chicago and now lives and works in Boston. She has an MFA from UMASS Boston, an MA from Royal Holloway University, London and a BA from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts. She did not start to read until she was eight, so her success is well earned. Her poetry has been widely published in magazines and on-line and her debut pamphlet The Bullshit Cosmos was published by ignitionpress and you can read more about it on the Poetry Centre website.

Primrose Hill

November 30, 2020March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I’m reading too much
into everything

(old women and dogs
take pity)

I take bus rides
all over town

the razed cityscapes
comfort me…

after months & months
a secret geometry

finally emerges
over Primrose Hill

my life illuminated
by a lie

a yellow zigzag pissed
against an unfinished sky

by Mark Wynne

News from the Centre! We are delighted to say that one of our recent ignitionpress pamphlets, Hinge by Alycia Pirmohamed, has been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award! The winner from the five pamphlet shortlist will be announced on 14 December, and you can register for the free online event via the Michael Marks website, where you can also find more details of the pamphlet and publisher shortlists. You can find out more about Alycia’s pamphlet on our website (scroll down the page).

Our latest poetry podcast is now live and features poet Chris Beckett discussing his new book Tenderfoot (Carcanet, 2020), which explores his years growing up in Ethiopia. You can listen via the website or find the podcast on the usual podcast providers – just search for Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre Podcast.

Many thanks to all of you who attended our two recent events: the launch of three new ignitionpress pamphlets by Isabelle Baafi, Daniel Fraser, and Kostya Tsolakis, and the International Poetry Competition Awards. If you missed them, you can watch them again on our YouTube channel. There is more about the pamphlets on our website.

‘Primrose Hill’ is copyright © Mark Wynne, 2020. It is reprinted from Frank & Stella (tall-lighthouse, 2020) by permission of tall-lighthouse. You can read more about the book on the tall-lighthouse website.

Frank & Stella by Mark Wynne marks the return to the pamphlet form for tall-lighthouse in the first of a series. These powerful, intimate poems use Frank Auerbach’s work as a biographical mirror to tell the truth without confessing. Weaving extracts of letters, interviews and art commentary from Auerbach’s world, together with fragments of the poets own life, creates a stunningly evocative sequence of poetry that lingers in the mind long after each page has been turned.

Mark Wynne has been published in Magma, South Bank Poetry, The Moth and Ambit. Frank & Stella is his debut pamphlet. You can read more about Mark’s pamphlet and the thinking behind it on the tall-lighthouse website, where you can also hear Mark reading some of his poems. You can follow him on Twitter.

House, Kept

May 27, 2020April 12, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

The oil tank sputters out of time
with the radio rumbling out its soft
jazz provocations, out of sync
with the slo-mo drip in the roof
(which soaks ceiling tiles and
makes them fragile as sandcastles).
The house has been stripped
and deloused like an inmate, but
still the mice leave their turds in
the cookware. It’s been gutted
and prepped for sale, and again,
but who wants to buy a shell,
a mean ghost? Even full of couches
from 1985, it’s empty. The lone
kid who stayed turns the radio
up full blast, smells old Avon
tubes she finds, watches the spot
on the kitchen ceiling as it spreads.

by Sadie McCarney

The Poetry Centre is delighted to announce the online publication of the e-anthology ‘My teeth don’t chew on shrapnel’: an anthology of poetry by military veterans. This anthology features exciting, moving, and provocative work by US and UK veterans who were participants in workshops held by the Poetry Centre in 2019-20. It also includes short essays about veterans in literature and life by Dr Jane Potter and Dr Rita Phillips, an introduction by Dr Niall Munro, and reflections on the workshop by the main facilitator, poet and researcher Susie Campbell. Susie has also provided some excellent writing prompts for anyone interested in working on their own poetry. The anthology is free to download from the Poetry Centre website and we would very much welcome your feedback! E-mail us or fill out the short form on the site.

Live Ones reads like a tomboy with its pockets full of rhinestones, placing them lovingly on the graves of the dead. The poems in Live Ones are intensely honest, photographic in detail yet frequently surreal. This rewarding debut collection grapples with mourning, coming of age, and queer identity against the backdrop of small-town and rural Canada. According to poet Lily Blacksell, it is ‘work scratched with wit, and warmth where you least expect it.’

Find out more about the book and hear Sadie read her sequence ‘Steeltown Songs’ on the tall-lighthouse website.

Sadie McCarney is a Canadian poet who grew up in Nova Scotia. She now lives on Prince Edward Island where she also writes fiction. Her work has been widely published in a variety of publications including Plenitude, Grain, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, The Puritan, Room and The Best of The Best Canadian Poetry in English among other places. Read more about her work here and follow Sadie on Twitter.

tall-lighthouse has a strong reputation for publishing exciting new poetry, being the first to publish Sarah Howe, Helen Mort, Liz Berry, Jay Bernard, Ailbhe Darcy, Rhian Edwards, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Emily Berry and many others.

Learn more about the press on the tall-lighthouse website and follow the press on Facebook and Twitter.

Stanford’s Rank

November 25, 2019March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I dream of Stanford’s Ranch
white sheets on the tracks

rows of shutters & tripwires
& Sallie Gardner galloping

then in a swerve no more blurs
& Stanford wins his bet

like he nearly did with Occident
the first flying horse

all four hooves flying
unsupported transit

in my dream of Stanford’s Ranch
& the slow motion action replays

& the Video Technology
& the Surveillance cameras

& the dust cascading
under Sallie Gardner trotting

riding in future maps
into the Cowboy films

into the science books
into tomorrow’s sad years

so yes horses do fly
I have to remind myself

everytime I wake up
from my dream of Stanford’s Ranch

by Brendan Cleary

This is the first of two Weekly Poems for the week – on Thursday we’ll be featuring a poem from Mariah Whelan’s new book the love I do to you, which she will be launching in Oxford on Friday when she will be reading with visiting Canadian poet, Doyali Islam, whose recent book is called heft.

This week also sees our International Poetry Competition Awards Evening, which will be taking place on Thursday here at Oxford Brookes. We recently announced the winners, commended poets, and shortlistees in this year’s competition and we’re delighted that some of them will be joining us to read. Also joining us will be our judge, the internationally-acclaimed writer Jackie Kay! All are very welcome – please sign up here to attend.

Do Horses Fly? is a sequence of poems inspired by the photographic work of Eadweard Muybridge. The poems reflect on the images created by Muybridge and his life and times. You can read more about the book on the tall-lighthouse website.

Stanford’s Ranch. *Multi-camera setup, Palo Alto.*

Muybridge used 24 cameras to photograph sequential images of moving subjects in 1877-79.

The image was taken at Palo Alto where Muybridge worked on sequences of his motion photography in 1877-79.

These images are reproduced with permission from Kingston Museum’s Muybridge Collection, whose support made the book possible. The Museum holds one of the largest Eadweard Muybridge collections worldwide. Find out more here.

Brendan Cleary’s poetry has been published for over 30 years. Previous collections include The Irish Card and Sacrilege (Bloodaxe), Stranger in the House (Wrecking Ball Press), goin’ down slow – selected poems 1985-2010 (tall-lighthouse) and the highly-acclaimed Face (Pighog Press). Originally from County Antrim, Brendan spent a number of years in the North East before moving to Brighton where he currently lives and works as a poetry tutor.

tall-lighthouse press has a reputation for publishing new talent being the first to publish Helen Mort, Sarah Howe, Liz Berry, Ailbhe Darcy, Rhian Edwards, Jay Bernard, Emily Berry, Vidyan Ravinthiran and many others. Brendan’s book marks a return to publishing for tall-lighthouse with its original owner/director Les Robinson. Find out more about the press here.

Landscape

May 15, 2019March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

there is no turf where I’m from
no sponge fertile ground
my landscape is a tarmacadam road
at the foot of the Dublin Mountains
my childhood home a four-bed semi

I remember the progression
of cars

Montego
Peugeot
Renault
Prius

and the day my mom arrived
with her very own
ancient Opel Bluebird
the same colour as the Loreto nuns
and the same age as me
in my final year of secondary school

I sat up front with her
pleased as punch not to be biking home
past the throngs of teenage boys from the other school
in my brown skirt
and long gabardine coat

when we pulled up to the drive-thru
my heart sang for a cheeseburger
we sat on woolly seats
munching fries in the car park
of a suburban shopping mall

unaware of the blue-grey tint
poised by the mountains
just behind our backs

by Julie Morrissy

This week’s poet, Julie Morrissy, will be launching her new tall-lighthouse collection, Where, the Mile End, on Monday 20 May at the Poetry Café in London alongside another tall-lighthouse poet, Brendan Cleary, whose book Do Horses Fly? is inspired by the images created by the photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Find out more about the event here.

If you happen to be in Oxford rather than London on Monday (20 May), join the Poetry Centre and the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture as we welcome acclaimed poet Gillian Allnutt to Oxford. Spaces for this event are limited, so please register here.

Looking forward, 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 on 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.

Julie Morrissy is an Irish poet, academic, and critic. She is a recipient of the Next Generation Artist Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. Her debut pamphlet I Am Where (Eyewear, 2015) was shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet in the Saboteur Awards. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing at Ulster University, and she is the Newman Fellow in Creativity at University College Dublin.

Where, the Mile End, publishedin conjunction with Book*hug Press, Canada, sees tall-lighthouse return to publishing under its original owner/director, Les Robinson. This is poetry with an edge, employing an energetic lyric that follows the poet through Europe, the US, and Canada. Morrissy introduces a deft awareness of image, rhythm, and poetic realisation. The poems intimately link the vitality of two continents, tightly holding the reader to the snow, the streets, and the sensual memories embroidered throughout. Find out more about the book here.

tall-lighthouse has a strong reputation for publishing new talent, and was the first in the UK to publish Helen Mort, Sarah Howe, Liz Berry, Ailbhe Darcy, Adam O’Riordan, Rhian Edwards, Emily Berry, Vidyan Ravintharan, Kate Potts and many others. Find out more on the tall-lighthouse website, or find the press on Facebook and Twitter.

ii rye lane (foul ecstasy)

October 27, 2018March 29, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

black girls don’t do drugs
said the bouncer
at Bussey,
without searching
me. Well, let
me tell it, some
of us sit smug
in our youth.
Full of white
silver powders
in cold smoking
areas, waiting
for the come up
to hit us;
chase the cold
that’s set in
our bones.

We gurn
on hand rolled cigs;
pray for the peak.
Our mouths dressed,
tongues, the taste
of the foul
ecstasy
curdled in our
gums. We sink in
this. Buzzed smiles
under drooped eyes
sharpened towards
blue lights
which flood the wet
dance floor.

Our skins
stay open, each
touch from the bass
sending us
in upward spirals
of bright starlight.

We beg
the night not
to end, plead
with it to spend
its morning cloaked
in darkness.
We want to stay
alive in
this wide blackness
our pupils
become; in this ache
of clenched jaws.

by Belinda Zhawi

You can hear Belinda read this poem on our website.

This is the second of two poems this week from our two newest ignitionpress pamphlets (on Monday we shared a poem by Natalie Whittaker). We are excited now to share with you a poem by Belinda Zhawi, which comes from her pamphlet Small Inheritances. Writing of the work, Kayo Chingonyi says: ‘Small Inheritances is a masterclass in what a poem is and can be for in the present moment. There is protest in these pages, but also a glimpse of what healing might look like, whether in a moment of intimacy or in different kinds of intoxication. There are intergenerational kinships and echoes in these poems that illuminate a poetics that so many of us have been crying out for.’

The pamphlets were launched on Thursday at the Poetry Café in London, and we’ll also be at the Woodstock Poetry Festival on 10 November. Do join us there if you can! You can buy the pamphlets via our website.

Finally, if you haven’t yet booked to come and see the award-winning poet Jay Bernard at Brookes this coming Wednesday, please visit this link to register (for free). Jay will perform from and talk about their extraordinary work Surge. This is an event not to be missed!

Belinda Zhawi is a Zimbabwean-born writer and educator. She is an alumnus of the University of Westminster and Goldsmiths, University of London, where she studied on the BA in Politics and the Writer/Teacher MA, respectively. Belinda was a 2015/16 London Laureate and the 2016/17 Institute of Contemporary Arts Associate Poet. She is co-founder of BORN::FREE – a community-based literary movement and zine press. She currently lives and works in South East London. You can follow her work 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 is the founder and director of the renowned poetry publisher tall-lighthouse. 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.

The Last Words of the Love-Sick Time Machine Pilot

April 1, 2016April 4, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

And would you ever know if I had
snatched the keys from under the mat,
and unlocked the nucleus of our parents’ old Astra
with its quarks of petrol and spent Silk Cut packs

and taken my younger self for a spin
past the shutters lit blue from within –
the freezer light of Kennedy’s fishmonger’s
not Frankenstein’s lab after all – sorry,

and told you, Donny, this one’s important:
do what you were going to do and ask Susie Whitlow
on a date— yes, like last Wednesday when you tried
at Latchmere slides, feeling doubly sick from the height

and your nerves on the ladder to the diving board –
I shouldn’t remind you – but in ten years’ time,
over a bottle of wine, she’ll tell you she’s got
a new boyfriend, whose name, you joke, sounds

like a make of saucepan, which isn’t so funny
for you, so much as a blow but sometimes
a little hurt is worth a heartful – like baking
with Dad while nursing a broken foot

from that casserole dish you failed to lift,
and don’t leave for Dover without matches,
and put a couple more quid on Little Polveir
at the Grand National this year, but still

slip the winnings into the lining of Mum’s Dorla purse
like you were planning and when pulling up home again
I say, this is my last visit, I’m restoring the timeline,
so you should go and tip-toe inside and pause for a beat

on the third stair, and when the past’s within walking distance
try not to startle all three of your selves on the landing,
or you’ll wake everyone up and we won’t make it,
and Mum wants answers and Dad gets sick

and don’t recall our talk to anyone,
over time it will blur, and merge;
let’s call me the best of a good conscience
and say these things, and only these things

meaning when you test the Tipler core in Culham
after the press conference, you keep curious,
stride into the temporal displacement unit,
feeling in your atoms you might never know?

by Harry Man

This is the second of a special trio of poems being posted this week by writers who are featuring in one of the two Poetry Centre events in the upcoming Oxford Literary Festival. Harry Man will be reading alongside Sarah Hesketh and Claire Trévien on Tuesday 5 April at 4pm, whilst Helen Mort and Alan Buckley will be performing their poetry show ‘The Body Beautiful’ on Sunday 3 April at 2pm. We hope to see you there!

Harry Man was born in Buckinghamshire in 1982. He won the 2014 Struga Poetry Evenings UNESCO Bridges of Struga Award, and his pamphlet, Lift, was shortlisted for the ‘Best Pamphlet’ in the 2014 Saboteur Awards. Harry has taught Creative Writing workshops in a wide-range of settings. His poetry has appeared in many publications, including New Welsh Review, Fuselit, Poems in the Waiting Room, And Other Poems, as well as in Anthologies such as Coin Opera 2 and Rewiring History.

Harry has collaborated with the dancer & choreographer Jennifer Essex on a production for the London College of Fashion, with Kirsten Irving for ‘Auld Enemies’ curated by SJ Fowler, and with illustrator Sophie Gainsley on Finders Keepers, which examines Britain’s disappearing wildlife. Harry also narrates children’s books for HarperAudio and was selected to be the voice of many of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s books. In 2016, Harry was Poet-in-Residence at the StAnza Poetry Festival. Harry Man’s first pamphlet of poems, Lift (2013) is published by Tall Lighthouse in English and by Struga Poetry Evenings in Macedonian. You can read more about Harry on his website, more about Lift on the Tall Lighthouse site, and follow Harry on Twitter.

Tall Lighthouse is an independent publishing house in the UK, established in 1999 by Les Robinson. It publishes full collections of poetry as well as pamphlets, and has featured work by Maurice Riordan, Hugo Williams, Daljit Nagra, Helen Mort, Roddy Lumsden, and Sarah Howe, amongst others. The press has established itself as a leading light on the small press poetry scene, and its pamphlet publications have received the Poetry Book Society‘s Pamphlet Choice Award on a number of occasions. The current Director and Editor of the press is Gareth Lewis, who took over after Les Robinson stepped down from those roles in 2011. You can read more about the publisher on its website.

The Talking Tree

May 18, 2015April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

My Father once told me about a talking tree,
a tree that spoke only to children, a tree
I never heard speak, but still it must have spoken
to my father, because he was always talking
to someone, but there was never anyone there.

I’d often see Father arguing with that tree;
he’d pace the whole length of the living room,
twitching and sweating through his undershirt,
muttering things I didn’t understand
about mother, or perhaps Rachmaninoff.

The tree must have also told my father what to wear,
because he’d often perform in mismatched socks,
his ears still white with bits of shaving cream,
People said look at this man— look at this man!
People said my father was a genius:

he’d lean back in the piano bench
and hum something that must have made its way
from another world, then close his eyes and dream.
Soon his head was swaying, his long arms sprouting
magical hands, moving across the keys.

by Jodie Hollander

Weekly Poem for 18 May 2015

The Talking TreeMy Father once told me about a talking tree,
a tree that spoke only to children, a tree
I never heard speak, but still it must have spoken
to my father, because he was always talking
to someone, but there was never anyone there.I’d often see Father arguing with that tree;
he’d pace the whole length of the living room,
twitching and sweating through his undershirt,
muttering things I didn’t understand
about mother, or perhaps Rachmaninoff.The tree must have also told my father what to wear,
because he’d often perform in mismatched socks,
his ears still white with bits of shaving cream,
People said look at this man— look at this man!
People said my father was a genius:he’d lean back in the piano bench
and hum something that must have made its way
from another world, then close his eyes and dream.
Soon his head was swaying, his long arms sprouting
magical hands, moving across the keys.by Jodie HollanderThe Poetry Centre recently launched its International Poetry Competition! There are two categories: Open and English as a Second Language. The winner of each category receives £1000, and second prize is £200. Our judges are Bernard O’Donoghue and Hannah Lowe. Find out more information about the competition, read the terms and conditions, and enter on the Poetry Centre website. Please spread the word!‘The Talking Tree’ is copyright © Jodie Hollander, 2015. It is reprinted from The Humane Society (Tall-Lighthouse, 2012) by permission of the author and Tall-Lighthouse.

Jodie Hollander, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was raised in a family of classical musicians. She studied poetry in England and has published her work in journals such as The Poetry Review, Stand, Poet Lore, The Dark Horse, The Manchester Review, Verse Daily, Ambit, The Warwick Review, Agenda, and Australia’s Best Poems, 2011, edited by John Tranter. You can follow Jodie’s work via her website. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in South Africa, a Hawthornden Fellowship in Scotland, and was awarded a MacDowell Colony fellowship in February of 2015. Her debut publication, The Humane Society, was released with Tall-Lighthouse in 2012. Tall-Lighthouse is an independent publishing house in the UK, established in 1999 by Les Robinson. It publishes full collections of poetry, pamphlets, and the anthology City Lighthouse, a collection of poems by established and emerging poets alike, having featured work by Maurice Riordan, Hugo Williams, Daljit Nagra and Roddy Lumsden, among others. The press has established itself as a leading light on the small press poetry scene, four of its pamphlet publications having received the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice Award in Spring 2006, Summer and Winter 2008, and Spring 2009. The current Director and Editor of the press is Gareth Lewis, who took over after Les Robinson stepped down from those roles on 1 October 2011. Poets published by Tall Lighthouse include Helen Mort, Aoife Mannix, Baden Prince, Pierre Ringwald, Heather Taylor, Alan Buckley, Ben Parker and Jodie Hollander. Find out more about the press from its 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.