This Last Year

May 5, 2019March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Between those Alps and Apennines
on a walk towards the Po,
there are tall, spaced, roadside poplars,
planted fields of silver birch…
At sunset, here, church cupolas
interrupt surrounding darkness
streaked with red hopes for good weather;
but then a so-called super moon
emerges from horizon trees—
their fragile threads of branches
like violent scratch-marks on a ruddy face.

We’re threading through an after dusk
along the wide, slow-flowing river,
are lost in conversation
on wherever best to live
late days, or else discreetly wonder
about a greener charm in distance
on the far bank’s fertile side,
or at whatever may appear
over deepened skylines this last year.

Higher, whiter, blurred in mist
floated from warm earth, that moon
might be the common coinage
of our coming separation—
but breaking up is hard to do,
and the best part’s even harder
now migrants go on envying
rights to be taken at the border
closing ahead as we pace on.

Ahead, through twilight, can you see
outlines of their fainting country?
Where, next year, they’ll good as tell you
not to lament that loss of value
others envy? Abandon rage, outrage
at shames come from a muddy spring?
And why? Because, sans everything,
you’ll reach that other country, age?

2 January 2018

by Peter Robinson

This week’s poet, Peter Robinson, is one of the speakers at an exciting symposium, ‘Our Poetry and Our Needs’, which is being held at the University of Reading on Tuesday 9 July. The event features an international group of poets and academics, is open to all and free to attend. To see the provisional programme and to register, please visit the Eventbrite page here.

Also coming soon, don’t miss the chance to hear the acclaimed poet Gillian Allnutt in Oxford when she reads for us on Monday 20 May in an evening co-organized with the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture. Tickets are free, but register here.

Finally, look up our Eventbrite listings to find readings by Ilya Kaminsky and Shara Lessley on 26 June and our three ignitionpress poets who will be launching their new pamphlets on 22 and 23 July.

Ravishing Europa, Peter Robinson’s eleventh collection, marks a wholly unexpected development in the poet’s work, prompted, as evident throughout, by the fissures exported from a political party to an entire country and beyond by the 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union. Its consequences cast crucial events for this poet, both personal and public, into unforeseen fresh lights. Prompted by a televised debate to wonder in the title poem upon what impulse the founding European myth is based, Robinson’s new poems search through his individual and cultural memory to offer, as the book unfolds, an answer. Read more about the book on the Worple website.

Peter Robinson was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1953, and grew up mainly in Liverpool. He co-edited the magazines Perfect Bound and Numbers while helping organize various Cambridge Poetry Festivals and a Poetry International at the South Bank Centre. His many volumes of poetry include a Collected Poems, 1976-2016 (2017), Ghost Characters (2006) and The Look of Goodbye (2008). He was awarded the Cheltenham Prize for This Other Life (1988). Both The Great Friend and Other Translated Poems (2002) and The Returning Sky (2012) were recommendations of the Poetry Book Society. A translator of poetry, mainly from the Italian, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni (with Marcus Perryman) appeared in 2006. Other publications include his aphorisms, Spirits of the Stair (2009), five volumes of literary criticism, the most recent being The Sound Sense of Poetry (2018), various edited collections, anthologies, The Complete Poems, Translations & Selected Prose of Bernard Spencer (2011) and The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry (2013). A collection of essays on his work, The Salt Companion to Peter Robinson edited by Adam Piette and Katy Price, appeared in 2007. Peter is also the poetry editor for Two Rivers Press and Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Reading. You can read more about Peter’s work on his website.

Worple Press was founded by Peter and Amanda Carpenter in 1997 and publishes books by new and established poets: collections, pamphlets, works in translation, essays, interviews. Early authors included Iain Sinclair, Joseph Woods, Beverley Bie Brahic, Kevin Jackson and the acclaimed American nature poet Peter Kane Dufault. Recent collections include Andy Brown’s Bloodlines, The Tree Line: Poems for Trees, Woods, and People, edited by Michael McKimm, Rockabye by Patricia McCarthy, and The Watching Stair by Diana Hendry. More information can be found at the publisher’s website, and on Facebook and Twitter.

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.

St. Peter and the Storm Petrels

July 6, 2015April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Footsteps on water.

Dawn clear as prayer.
Bodies hanging over water

like small, dark beads.

How long have they been out there
treading slowly across the bay,
staring down into the salt-clear distances,
scrying for storms?

There was a time when a saint walked on water.
We saw him – a bright light crossing the bay
leaving a trail of taut, still water
marked with footprints.

He left long ago, turning west
on his weightless march,
leaning into the heft of the waves
like a restless ship.

We still wait for him to return,
but perhaps, lost or driven mad
by such winds, such distances,
this is what he has become –

a petrel hanging over water,
staring down as if in wonder
and pattering its ragged dance

to the distant, scudding footfall of storms.

by Ben Smith

A reminder that the deadline for submissions to the Poetry Centre’s International Poetry Prize is 31 August. There are two categories: Open and English as a Second Language, and First Prize in each category is £1000. The competition will be judged by Bernard O’Donoghue and Hannah Lowe, and you can enter by visiting this page.

The poet Clare Pollard is currently touring a staged version of Ovid’s Heroines, in which she reads, recites and performs her astonishing poems against a backdrop of Mediterranean light and sound. Produced by Jaybird Live Literature, the show visits the Burton Taylor Studio Theatre in Oxford this Thursday 9 July. For more details and for tickets, visit the Oxford Playhouse website.

‘St. Peter and the Storm Petrels’ is copyright © Ben Smith, 2014. It is reprinted from Sky Burials (Worple Press, 2014) by permission of Worple Press.

Notes from Worple Press:

Ben Smith’s poetry, criticism and short fiction has been published in a wide range of magazines, anthologies and journals. He completed a PhD on Environmental Poetry at Exeter University and currently lives in Devon. The poems in his debut pamphlet Sky Burials map shifting environments, strange ecological events and dubious auguries. Told through the voices of birds, unreliable seers and broken bones found in rivers and museums, these dark, playful poems explore prophecy and ritual, science and uncertainty in the era of climate change. Read more about the pamphlet on the Worple site, and another poem from the collection (as well as work from Worple poet Isabel Galleymore) on The Clearing website.

Worple Press was founded by Peter and Amanda Carpenter in 1997 and publishes 6-8 books a year by new and established poets: collections, pamphlets, works in translation, essays, interviews. Early authors included Iain Sinclair, Joseph Woods, Beverley Bie Brahic, Kevin Jackson and the acclaimed American nature poet Peter Kane Dufault. Recent collections (2014/2015) include Andy Brown’s Exurbia, Isabel Galleymore’s Dazzle Ship, Martyn Crucefix’s A Hatfield Mass, Julian Stannard’s The Street of Perfect Love, and Clive Wilmer’s Urban Pastorals. More information can be found at the publisher’s website, and on Facebook and Twitter.

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.

Wood

June 15, 2015April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

When you reach the trees
the apple’s rotted
on the golden bough,
– canker grown, fly-blown –

depths are still depths
but the way swirls in shallows,
the rough hint of path runs
up only to bramble.

But this last look, wake-up
pinch, hollow laugh, sorrow –
might be a fork’s touch,
a fresh furrow.

by Olivia Byard

As part of the MCS Arts Festival Oxford (20 June-5 July), the highly-acclaimed poet Roger McGough will be reading on 30 June. You can find more details on the festival site. On 27 June, the festival will also host a youth poetry slam, featuring a wide range of students from across Oxfordshire, and an Illumination Poetry Workshop with Penny Boxhall, Tuesday 30th June, Old Library, University Church of St Mary the Virgin.

Notes from Worple Press:

Olivia Byard was born in South Wales and grew up on the Cotswolds and in Montreal, Canada. Her debut collection From a Benediction (1998) was short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and was followed by Strange Horses (2011). Her various roles have included factory worker, academic researcher, community organiser, children’s book writer, book controller, phone advisor for Mind, and, for the last twenty-one years, creative writing tutor. She is politically engaged, especially on Green issues. She comments online and her letters regularly appear in the Guardian. You can read more about her latest book on the Worple website, and follow her work on her own site.

Allegory of the Navigation Canal

April 27, 2015April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Something like Blake’s daughters of Albion:
flame and shadow, the moment and the thought
set into each other, rack and pinion
against this slope of time. And time is caught
lightly between the teeth. Here on the Weald
where gypsum inculcates the groundwater
with elemental hardness, water’s held;
time is channelled through it into colour:
seams that run obliquely to the surface
mapping time in arcs through matter’s prism,
each plumbed depth explored, resplendent, poly-
chromatic like spilt oil. Time, that folly,
hollows out its cave of solipsism,
leaving earth infected with its darkness.

by James Brookes

‘Allegory of the Navigation Canal’ is copyright © James Brookes, 2015. It is reprinted from MAP: Poems After William Smith’s Geological Map, edited by Michael McKimm (Worple Press, 2015) by permission of Worple Press. Notes from Worple Press:

James Brookes grew up in rural Sussex before reading English & Creative Writing at the University of Warwick and a postgraduate degree at the College of Law. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2009 and published a pamphlet, The English Sweats, with Pighog Press in the same year. His first collection Sins of the Leopard (Salt, 2012) was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. You can find out more about James Brookes’s work on Michelle McGrane’s poetry blog, Peony Moon, and follow him on Twitter.

Worple Press was founded by Peter and Amanda Carpenter in 1997 and publishes 6-8 books a year by new and established poets: collections, pamphlets, works in translation, essays, interviews. Early authors included Iain Sinclair, Joseph Woods, Beverley Bie Brahic, Kevin Jackson and the acclaimed American nature poet Peter Kane Dufault. Recent collections (2014/2015) include Andy Brown’s Exurbia, Isabel Galleymore’s Dazzle Ship, Martyn Crucefix’s A Hatfield Mass, Julian Stannard’s The Street of Perfect Love, and Clive Wilmer’s Urban Pastorals. More information can be found at the publisher’s website, and on Facebook and Twitter. 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 only proper way to go on a fossil hunt is in a minibus

April 20, 2015April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

She was always glad to be taken along, liked
the dirt, the students’ laughter.
Once, in the pale grey slope of a road cutting,
she found an ammonite, big as a skull.

Having learned that the earth is made of layers
she began to put her feet down differently
so as not to disturb the pattern, dreamed
of shapes vibrating in the seams,

found she was torn between the wish to preserve
and a digging desire to excavate,
cover the landscape in mountains of rubble,
unearth old life or an ancient ore.

She longed for a map that could pinpoint
a likely place to look, spare her
the lung-blighting spade work. Better to lie still
with her ear in the cool grass, listen

to the coal,
to the trilobites singing.

by Ailsa Holland

‘The only proper way to go on a fossil hunt is in a minibus’ is copyright © Ailsa Holland, 2015. It is reprinted from MAP: Poems After William Smith’s Geological Map, edited by Michael McKimm (Worple Press, 2015) by permission of Worple Press.

Notes from Worple Press:

Ailsa Holland’s poems have been published in print and online in such places as Nutshell, Angle, Ink Sweat & Tears and And Other Poems. She won second prize in the Open Category of the 2014 Hippocrates Award. Under Silk Wood, a Maxonian homage to Under Milk Wood, was written and performed by Ailsa with Jo Bell for Macclesfield’s Barnaby Festival 2014.

MAP is a new anthology from WorplePress which celebrates the first geological map of Britain, created single-handedly 200 years ago by the engineer and geologist William Smith. Edited by Michael McKimm, this groundbreaking anthology collects new work by over thirty poets inspired by William Smith, his revolutionary map, and the foundation of a science. There are poems in this anthology that tell the story of Smith’s genius and his misfortune; poems about fossil hunting and map making; poems about the drive of the Industrial Revolution and our continuing reliance on fossil fuels. They illustrate not only the vibrancy and variety of contemporary poetry but also poetry’s unique ability to take on uncharted territory with vision: the poems here make Smith’s map anew in moving and surprising ways. You can read more about the anthology on the Worple website.

Worple Press was founded by Peter and Amanda Carpenter in 1997 and publishes 6-8 books a year by new and established poets: collections, pamphlets, works in translation, essays, interviews. Early authors included Iain Sinclair, Joseph Woods, Beverley Bie Brahic, Kevin Jackson and the acclaimed American nature poet Peter Kane Dufault. Recent collections (2014/2015) include Andy Brown’s Exurbia, Isabel Galleymore’s Dazzle Ship, Martyn Crucefix’s A Hatfield Mass, Julian Stannard’s The Street of Perfect Love, and Clive Wilmer’s Urban Pastorals. More information can be found at the publisher’s website, and on Facebook and Twitter.

The Necropolis

March 23, 2015April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

When I walked into the necropolis
at Genoa I saw that every grave

had been allocated a panettone
and because the Council was in

broad terms a coalition of the left
every panettone was in a red box

and because every panettone
was in a red box I had a hunch

the old Maoist-Leninist-Stalinist
front were calling a meeting

with the dead and because the
dead were bored of being dead

they clapped and shouted
like nuns who have discovered

the libido and because nuns
have discovered the libido

I am going to bring the poem
to a sudden end. Sleep well!

by Julian Stannard

Notes from Worple Press:

Julian Stannard spent many years teaching American and English Literature at the University of Genoa. He has a PhD from UEA and is now a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Winchester. Previous publications include Rina’s War (Peterloo, 2001), The Red Zone (Peterloo, 2007) and The Parrots of Villa Gruber Discover Lapis Lazuli (Salmon, 2011). He co-edited The Palm Beach Effect: Reflections on Michael Hofmann (CB Editions, 2013). He was awarded the Troubadour Prize in 2010 and reviews for the TLS, the Guardian and Poetry Review.

To read more about Julian’s new chapbook, visit the Worple website. You can also follow Julian on Twitter, and read more of his work on the Poetry Foundation website.

The Last Thatch

March 9, 2015April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

for Thomas Lynch

The sun had dried the haggard to a crust,
whilst up on Riley’s roof they hammered slates.
The donkey’s hooves were puffing up the dust

as we listened to the roofers’ repartee – they cussed
each time their new apprentice made mistakes.
The sun had dried the haggard to a crust.

‘You need to watch your bloody work. A hefty gust
might see you boost the unemployment rates…’
The donkey’s hooves were puffing up the dust

below, tired of the heat and apparently nonplussed
that soon he’d face the derby’s starting gates.
The sun had dried the haggard to a crust.

Racing themselves, the roofers said they must
‘Get the whole shebang finished before eight’,
when donkey hooves would puff the racetrack dust.

The thatch was gone; the new slates ‘more robust’;
the starter’s gun discharged on real estate.
The sun had dried the racetrack to a crust
where donkey hooves were puffing up the dust.

by Andy Brown

This Friday from 6pm at IES in London, three fantastic poets will be giving a free reading: Ian Duhig, Patience Agbabi, and Hannah Lowe. Sign up to attend via Eventbrite.

The public reading is part of the New-Next Generation contemporary poetry conference on Friday and Saturday, organized by the Poetry Centre and the IES, which features more readings (from Helen Mort and Nick Drake), and discussions about the publishing and reviewing of contemporary poetry. Register separately for the conference on the IES site. All are welcome.

‘The Last Thatch’ is copyright © Andy Brown, 2014. It is reprinted from Exurbia (Worple Press, 2014) by permission of Worple Press.

Notes from Worple Press:

Andy Brown’s most recent book of poems is Exurbia (Worple Press 2014). He also collaborated with David Morley on the Worple Press collection Of Science. Previous books include The Fool and the Physician, Goose Music (with John Burnside), and Fall of the Rebel Angels (all Salt). A selection of his poems appears in the Bloodaxe anthology Identity Parade. He recently edited The Writing Occurs As Song: A Kelvin Corcoran Reader (Shearsman, 2014) and is co-editing, A Body of Work: Poetry and Medical Writing, with Corinna Wagner, for Bloomsbury (2015). He is Director of the Exeter University Creative Writing Programme and was formerly an Arvon Foundation Centre Director. Read more about Andy Brown’s new book on the Worple website, and you can find out more about his academic work on the University of Exeter site.

Worple Press was founded by Peter and Amanda Carpenter in 1997 and publishes 6-8 books a year by new and established poets: collections, pamphlets, works in translation, essays, interviews. Early authors included Iain Sinclair, Joseph Woods, Beverley Bie Brahic, Kevin Jackson and the acclaimed American nature poet Peter Kane Dufault. Recent collections (2014/2015) include Andy Brown’s Exurbia, Isabel Galleymore’s Dazzle Ship, Martyn Crucefix’s A Hatfield Mass, Julian Stannard’s The Street of Perfect Love, and Clive Wilmer’s UrbanPastorals. More information can be found at the publisher’s website, and on Facebook and Twitter.

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.

Stones

February 23, 2015April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

for Dave Billings

I nearly went arse over tip on the footpath to Lundy Bay
where violets, primrose and spring squill were jostling
in the last of the sun with scurvygrass and speedwell.

I clambered over the boulders, with half an eye on the tide
that sucked and slopped in the hollows, as I looked for pretties
and paperweights – for stones are a comfort in sorrow.

And I turned up granite and quartz, flat skimmers of shale,
limestone smoothed by the ebb and flow, and a slew
of coppery pebbles tumbling down to the foam;

then heaved myself back up the cliff, pockets bulging with rocks,
as a stonechat sang in the tangled gorse and alder swayed
in the wind, while the boats out at sea held their course.

So I bring you nothing but stones and I let these stones
speak for me, that hold their own in the storm, keep faith
with the tide and the land; for we measure in millions
the years they have been here, and the years till they turn to sand.

by Stephen Boyce

This Friday, The Archway Foundation, UK, in partnership with Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre, presents Rhyme to Change, a free poetry and music event in support of Time to Change, the national campaign to end mental health discrimination. The event takes place at the Barracks Lane Community Garden from 7.30pm, and features Dan Holloway, Matt Sewell (Charms Against the Evil Eye), Hugh McManners and George Edward Chopping. For more details, visit Archway’s Facebook page.

‘Stones’ is copyright © Stephen Boyce, 2014. It is reprinted from The Sisyphus Dog (Worple Press, 2014) by permission of Worple Press.

Notes from Worple Press:

Stephen Boyce lives in Hampshire and works as an advisor to arts and heritage bodies. His poems have appeared in Magma, Staple, The Interpreter’s House, Frogmore Papers, Smiths Knoll, Tears in the Fence, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Acumen and other journals, as well as in various anthologies. He has been a prizewinner in the Kent & Sussex, Leicester, Ledbury, Ware Poets and Plough Prize competitions. His collection Desire Lines (Arrowhead Press 2010) was described by Katherine Gallagher as ‘intelligent, sophisticated, formally assured… a truly exciting new voice’. He is a trustee of Winchester Poetry Festival. You can read more about his work on his website and on Twitter. You can find out more about his book on the Worple website.

Worple Press was founded by Peter and Amanda Carpenter in 1997 and publishes 6-8 books a year by new and established poets: collections, pamphlets, works in translation, essays, interviews. Early authors included Iain Sinclair, Joseph Woods, Beverley Bie Brahic, Kevin Jackson and the acclaimed American nature poet Peter Kane Dufault. Recent collections (2014/2015) include Andy Brown’s Exurbia, Isabel Galleymore’s Dazzle Ship, Martyn Crucefix’s A Hatfield Mass, Julian Stannard’s TheStreet of Perfect Love, and Clive Wilmer’s Urban Pastorals. More information can be found at the publisher’s website, and on Facebook and Twitter.

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.

Enda’s Letter

February 2, 2015April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Your second letter arrived this week,
green edged air mail. The only place in the world
to have these envelopes, I’ll bet,
and in case that’s not enough, a small printed
shamrock and Bronze Age jewellery on the stamp,
Tobair an Choir on the post mark: my address
in royal blue. You don’t seem too bothered
about countries, England’s an afterthought
in the corner. With your own you get as far
as Gurteen but no further. What are
states and nations your writing seems to say?
Four Easter eggs and holldays from school,
two kisses and a heart.

Aren’t there laws against letters as young
as this travelling on their own by air?
You’ve only been around five years. Hardly time
to learn to clean your teeth, and here you are
sending a whole page of proper sentences
thousands of miles, getting foreign post codes
right, being taken seriously by postmen,
addressing me as Ms. and, no doubt, by now
learning like a grown up to wait for a reply.

by Mary Woodward

Mary Woodward was born in Hammersmith to Irish and Welsh parents. As a child she lived in bomb-damaged Shepherd’s Bush, grew up on a council estate in Hertfordshire, and then studied in Liverpool. She has an English degree and a Master’s degree for research on William Morris’s early poetry from the University of Liverpool. She has worked in the Department of Education, and from 1979 to 2002 as a teacher in a comprehensive school; in 1993 she won the TES Teaching Poetry prize. After teaching HND Fashion students she went on to win the Guardian Jackie Moore Award for Fashion Writing in 2003. In 1993 she won the Poetry Business poetry competition and published Almost Like Talking (Smith Doorstep). In 2008 she was awarded a place on a Poetry Trust First Collection seminar at Bruisyard Hall. Her poems have been in many magazines and frequently placed in competitions. Her poem ‘White Valentine’ was Highly Commended in the Forward Prize for Poetry 2014. She also has published short fiction. Read more about the book from Worple’s website.

3. Reclining Figure, Angles

December 8, 2014April 5, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

credo

If there must be a word
and believe me there must
then it is the word alert

and drawn to what moves
beyond her—where she lies
draped about the knees

with fabric pulled taut again
a way of explaining time
to the eternal moment

as her left leg declines
though no longer passive—
the turn of her left shoulder

towards a strong focal point
leaves the body twisted
on the thrust of her flatplanted

right foot—image
of awareness repeatedly
alertness of an interest in

though there’s nothing
here of the egotistical—
in these graceful airs

in what passes through
as it has through these others
the flex and curve

of self-confident pride
yet hollowed and smoothed
and though the head

is shaped to a feature
still the magisterial gaze
is blankly all-seeing

staring beyond shock
or surprise or pleasure
or anger or envy forever

beyond grief—this curious
taking notice and if it ever
comes to be diminished

I mean the head on its stump
it’s the body that senses
and nothing’s let slip
by Martyn Crucefix

This Friday 12 December, join The Archway Foundation, local poets George Chopping, Kate Byard, and Dan Holloway, and musician Matt Sewell for ‘Rhyme to Change’, a free poetry and music event in support of the Time to Change mental health campaign. The event takes place at 7.30pm at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop on Walton Street in Oxford. All are welcome!

Notes from Worple Press:

Martyn Crucefix has won numerous prizes including a major Eric Gregory award and a Hawthornden Fellowship. He has published 5 collections of poetry; the latest, Hurt, was published by Enitharmon in 2010. His translation of Rilke’s Duino Elegies in 2006, shortlisted for the Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation, was hailed as “unlikely to be bettered for very many years” (Magma). His new translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus appeared in 2012. You can read more about A Hatfield Mass on the Worple website, and follow Martyn’s work on his website or on Twitter.