Looking At Late Rembrandts After Leaving Dad At The Nursing Home

September 15, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Bodies strained upright
in upright
straight-backed chairs;
struggle to stay
still,
clawing hands
grappling arm rests to brace;
their skin-shrunk
rounded
skulls
concentrated
by some inexpressive
thought,

the life that has lived them,

the eyes stunned
by seeing the what
is not there,
the foreseeable
that has happened
to them;
the eyes in the
struck faces
of the painter’s sitters

alone
alive
with a titanium

glint of light.
by Steven Matthews

Notes from Waterloo Press:

Steven Matthews’s first book of poetry, Skying, emerges from an engagement with the landscape and seascape of North Essex and the Suffolk border, where Steven Matthews was brought up, and which he has always been drawn back to. It combines moments of illumination with voices remaking family and local stories, and so tunes into oral histories of place. The book’s often local voices associate themselves with, but also diverge amazingly from, national versions of trauma and threat. There are also poems here about childhood, being a father, and about grief and loss.

But the collection also sets those particular voices within and against the history of poetry and art which has been similarly engaged. A sequence, ‘Places of Writing’, and related work, explore the relation of a gallery of writers to their locale. As the title of the collection, which uses a word coined by the artist indicates, the painter John Constable stands as presiding spirit behind Skying’s related concerns.

Steven Matthews was born and brought up in Colchester, Essex. Various of his poems have been published in magazines and journals including Stand, Versus, Kunapipi, Oxford Magazine, Poetry and Audience, and Moving Worlds. He has been a regular reviewer for Poetry Review, and Poetry Editor for Dublin Quarterly Magazine. The former Director of the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre, Steven Matthews is now Professor in English Literature (Modernism) at the University of Reading.

Waterloo Press offers readers an eclectic list of the most stimulating poetry from the UK and abroad. We promote what’s good of its kind, finding a commonality amongst the poets we publish. Our beautifully designed books range from lost modernist classics, translations and vibrant collections by the best British poets around. Our translation list is growing to 25% of our output. Waterloo Press brings radical and marginalised voices to the fore, mirroring their aesthetics in outstanding book design, including dust jackets; large font; and original artwork. With its growing list, Waterloo Press promotes at last a permeable membrane between contemporary schools, quite apart from archiving a few sacred vessels for good. WP fosters a poetics based on innovation with respect for craft, bloody-mindedness and as founder Sonja Ctvrtecka put it: ‘An elegant unstuffiness – a seagull perched on a Porsche.’ Now the major poetry publisher of the south-east, we also believe strongly in a community of like-minded independent presses. We’ve become a land.

Find out more about Waterloo Press via its website, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook.

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.

Francisco Goya Self-Portrait [Oil on Canvas, c.1815, Prado, Madrid]

August 11, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Terrors are eyes’ dust
of my dogs and monsters,
giants and catholics and kings;
their internecine wars
growl into my dead ears’
cloven expectations,
climb up the very walls
to hive the time again
towards existence
and the almost possible.

Thus can I show the horror vision grants
behind the tremor of our sight and skin,
draw out the dark that age has patterned.
Knuckle lead white and carbon
sour on bones’ illusions
now beyond all courts and favours
can I step back into the shadows’ mysteries
and dear God’s hopes of favours;
fight back in dark oils and stark
against the blank and surface of the world
that etches past the brain’s protective bones
as dry and marrowed out of copper
into the aqua vita black and resurrections
pressed through the arc of devils and their dams
in silence just behind the hum of pain
throbbing again from out my mother’s
body of light gave life to the bright earlier beings
of pastel pales and greens under blue clouds
that scattered into sight and silence
just behind the scream.

It will be saved
as I
without the need of sound
that vision hides behind
and drags the horrors into
the beautiful
even without the mind’s
obedience to its call.

by David Pollard

A reminder that The Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre is inviting all members of the local 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.

Notes from Waterloo Press:

David Pollard has been furniture salesman, accountant, TEFL teacher and university lecturer. He has published The Poetry of Keats, A KWIC Concordance to the Harvard Keats’ Letters, a novel, Nietzsche’s Footfalls, and four volumes of poetry: patricides,Risk of Skin, Self-Portraits and bedbound. Find out more about David Pollard’s work from his website, follow him on Twitter, and read more about his latest collection from the Waterloo website.

Find out more about Waterloo Press via its website, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook.

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.

Frame for an abacus

July 14, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

An early April morning,
outside that door where dad
swooped down and scooped me up,Don’t go in. Mum is sleeping.

I started counting windows.

ii.

I have grown into a good mathematician.
Today I am studying Pi, prime numbers, angles,
how the light from those windows
formed a perfect Isosceles triangle.

iii.

Calculate the degree of diffracted light
If a door is:

one, open,
two, closed,
three, start again.by Maggie Sullivan

This Wednesday July 16^th from 7-8.30pm, Blackwell’s Oxford presents: Four Poets Reading. The evening features Susie Campbell, Amira Thoron, Claire Trévien, and Jennifer Wong (one of our PhD students in poetry at Brookes). A free evening of poetry, with drinks and books for sale.

Maggie Sullivan has been a trustee of the Poetry Society, a workshop tutor for CoolTan Arts and is a mentor for Survivors’ Poetry. Her first collection, near death {domestic}, was published by Tall Lighthouse Press. ‘Frame for an abacus’ comes from her second collection, the remote, published by Waterloo Press in 2013. You can read another selection from the remote on the Waterloo website.

Find out more about Waterloo Press via its website, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook.

Full Moon at Little White Alice

May 19, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

In spite of hats, coats and candles, we’re cold and fear
is in the frosty air: for our own health, that of others,
for the planet, our families, businesses and love affairs,
paintings or projects. We’re afraid of moving and changing,

the process by which butterflies leave the chrysalis,
a new-born baby first cries, tearing open her lungs.
Stagnating’s not an option. Time taunts us: the ticking clock
mocking our bodies, no longer young, a slow decoupling

from our sister moon. We walk in silent meditation round
the high, granite-strewn pool, seeing, as we step with care,
a frill of thin ice form in the reeds along the edge, watch,
amazed, as Rosie suddenly sheds all of her clothes. She dives,

spine curved in a crescent, breaks the black water, sending
courage, like a scatter of stars, up into the still January air.

by Victoria Field

The Weekly Poem is off on holiday for a couple of weeks! The Poetry Centre wishes you a very good start to the summer, and thanks you for reading. The poems will begin again on 9 June.

‘Full Moon at Little White Alice’ is copyright © Victoria Field, 2012. It was first published in Quadrant (Australia) in the January-February 2012 issue, and is collected in The Lost Boys by Victoria Field, published by Waterloo Press in 2013, and reprinted by permission of Waterloo Press.

Notes from Waterloo Press

Note: Little White Alice is a granite-quarrying area of Cornwall.

The Lost Boys enlarges Victoria Field’s scope and her poetics with freshness and ambition, whilst drenching her growing readership with the light of place, person and belief. Penelope Shuttle writes: ‘Less pessimistic than R.S. Thomas, T.S. Eliot or Elizabeth Jennings, Victoria Field is that rara avis, the religious poet. Her spiritual realities are firmly anchored in contemporary reality. Her poems illuminate the heart, and shine with richness of compassion and understanding of human predicament and travail.’

Victoria Field is a writer and poetry therapist, now living and working in Canterbury, Kent after many years in Cornwall. The Lost Boys is her third full collection of poetry. She is a previous writer-in-residence at Truro Cathedral and Associate Artist at Hall for Cornwall who produced two of her plays. Her new play, BENSON was showcased at The Marlowe Theatre Canterbury in April 2014. You can read more about her work on her blog, and read further samples of her work on the Waterloo website.

Waterloo Press offers readers an eclectic list of the most stimulating poetry from the UK and abroad. We promote what’s good of its kind, finding a commonality amongst the poets we publish. Our beautifully designed books range from lost modernist classics, translations and vibrant collections by the best British poets around. Our translation list is growing to 25% of our output. Waterloo Press brings radical and marginalised voices to the fore, mirroring their aesthetics in outstanding book design, including dust jackets; large font; and original artwork. With its growing list, Waterloo Press promotes at last a permeable membrane between contemporary schools, quite apart from archiving a few sacred vessels for good. WP fosters a poetics based on innovation with respect for craft, bloody-mindedness and as founder Sonja Ctvrtecka put it: ‘An elegant unstuffiness – a seagull perched on a Porsche.’ Now the major poetry publisher of the south-east, we also believe strongly in a community of like-minded independent presses. We’ve become a land.

Find out more about Waterloo Press via its website, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook.

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.

Wooden Bird

March 24, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

What about the soldiers? What of them?
When the later ones came, how did they seem to you?
They were grown-ups. I don’t know.
They had rabbit fur ushankas and heavy coats.
Yes, they sat in the square. That’s it?
They wanted bread.
Did you give them any? My mother gave me some
to hand them.
They were carving birds.
Out of lime wood, I think, because it’s softer.
I gave one of the soldiers some bread
in return for a wooden bird.
I used to run with it, my arm stretched
high above my head.
One of its wings broke off.
But all through the war, through grey sky,
over blue oceans, over green lakes and rivers,
red dots of capital cities, brown bumps
of the mountains around and around
the astonishing globe we flew together.

by Maria Jastrzębska

Ever wondered how the Weekly Poem got started? Find out by reading this article on the Poetry Centre website, and encourage your friends to sign up!

The Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre is collaborating with the Oxford-based mental health charity, The Archway Foundation, on an 18-month project funded by Time to Change. The project is aimed at reducing stigmas around mental health issues. The first of a series of multimedia creative arts events takes place this Saturday afternoon at the Asian Cultural Centre on Manzil Way, off the Cowley Road. Please feel free to come along. You can find more details on the Archway website.

Notes from Waterloo Press:

Maria Jastrzębska was born in Warsaw, Poland and came to the U.K as a child. At the Library of Memories (Waterloo Press 2013) is her third full length collection. She co-translated Elsewhere by Iztok Osojnik (Pighog Press 2011) and her drama Dementia Diaries toured nationally in the same year. She is co-editor of Queer in Brighton (New Writing South 2014). You can read more about her work on her blog.

Waterloo Press offers readers an eclectic list of the most stimulating poetry from the UK and abroad. We promote what’s good of its kind, finding a commonality amongst the poets we publish. Our beautifully designed books range from lost modernist classics, translations and vibrant collections by the best British poets around. Our translation list is growing to 25% of our output.

Waterloo Press brings radical and marginalised voices to the fore, mirroring their aesthetics in outstanding book design, including dust jackets; large font; and original artwork. With its growing list, Waterloo Press promotes at last a permeable membrane between contemporary schools, quite apart from archiving a few sacred vessels for good. WP fosters a poetics based on innovation with respect for craft, bloody-mindedness and as founder Sonja Ctvrtecka put it: ‘An elegant unstuffiness – a seagull perched on a Porsche.’ Now the major poetry publisher of the south-east, we also believe strongly in a community of like-minded independent presses. We’ve become a land.

Find out more about Waterloo Press via its website, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook.

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.

Knitting Time

February 3, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

She sings those star-garments into shape
in her sleep on nights when there is light
enough to birth a new universe.
But now, her melody won’t settle.

Like Lot’s wife she looks back at glass dripping upwards,
hears the movement whisper,
the pane slipping slowly into sand
as echoes yield an unflinching moment.

Inhabiting a raw time, of all tomorrows, yesterdays,
she breathes, but nothing will hold;
and once the terror takes, Hell takes over
with a host of illusions, tenebrous voices
cutting the belly of her self-belief.

And so back to the knitting vessel
carrier of her soul into the living land,
the safe place of cross stitch, cable and twist
where the breath can be measured
just one step, one small step, beyond fear.

by Colin Hambrook

News of an upcoming poetry event: ‘People and Places: a poetry reading at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop’, on Sunday 9 February from 6.00-7.30pm, Walton Street, Oxford. There will be readings by David Attwooll, Kayo Chingonyi, Pey Colborne, Catherine Faulds, Lucy Ingrams, Jenny Lewis, Rachel Piercey, and Lyn Thornton.

Notes from Waterloo Press:

Knitting Time recounts the author’s experience of growing up in a household dominated by religious beliefs, where the world was scheduled to end in 1975. Hambrook charts his mother’s deterioration after being expelled from the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith, as she descended into psychosis. A series of striking black and white drawings by Hambrook complement the texts, adding extra depth and dimension to this compelling collection. With echoes of William Blake, Ted Hughes, Spike Milligan, and Jeanette Winterson, Knitting Time provides powerful insights into millenarianism, psychosis, and the bonds of love when they are tested by trauma and loss.

Colin Hambrook is a writer, editor and artist. He established DAO in 2004 and continues to develop the journal as a platform giving a voice to arts practitioners who identify with disability and the issues which underpin arts practice from a disability perspective. In 2013 he produced Knitting Time – a project exploring concerns around psychosis – and exhibited the resulting body of work at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester in November 2013. His second illustrated collection Knitting Time, published by Waterloo Press, was one of the bodies of work, which came out of this research and development project. You can follow his work on his blog.

Waterloo Press brings radical and marginalised voices to the fore, mirroring their aesthetics in outstanding book design, including dust jackets; large font; and original artwork. With its growing list, Waterloo Press promotes at last a permeable membrane between contemporary schools, quite apart from archiving a few sacred vessels for good. WP fosters a poetics based on innovation with respect for craft, bloody-mindedness and as founder Sonja Ctvrtecka put it: ‘An elegant unstuffiness – a seagull perched on a Porsche.’ Now the major poetry publisher of the south-east, we also believe strongly in a community of like-minded independent presses. We’ve become a land.

Find out more about Waterloo Press via its website, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook.