July 24th

March 26, 2020March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Eighty-six years ago today
the Serpentine opened to women
to swim without fear of arrest

I’m lost on the Heath searching
for these ponds, it’s thirty-degrees
in Hampstead, what’s with all the beards?

Two girls in front are talking
about their exes, how they’re okay
now they’re with new men

Don’t tell me fullness is found
from a man, I’ll shoot myself
or dehydrate, a more feasible option

There’s a lot of holding of hands
and leads, my palms are empty
if my mother were here she’d say

Find a good book, easy
for her with a husband and a spaniel
now I’m in the water I relish

The freedom, no one knows I’m here
I could just bob under (not
to get all Virginia Woolf about it)

At lunchtime today we spoke
on the phone, big literary things
are happening for you, how apt

I was sat in Bloomsbury Square
remember Southease, cider
along the Ouse, Monk House

All our Sussex hours? If love
was just lunchtimes of erudite chat
we would have worked completely

But I have this need to swim
with ducks and reeds, you said
it was sweet. It was wild

by Roxy Dunn

Roxy Dunn’s debut pamphlet Clowning, published by Eyewear in 2016, is their highest-selling pamphlet to date and was described by PN Review as ‘quick-fire, appealing, lit by humorous warmth.’ Her poetry has appeared in The Rialto, Orbis and Ofi Press, and a selection of her poems are also printed in the anthology Podium Poets #2, published by Nasty Little Press. She lives in North London and works as an actor and writer. Follow Roxy on Twitter.

Big Sexy Lunch is an irreverent, entertaining account of millennial philosophy and relationships. Roxy Dunn’s observational wit and reflective self-doubt muse on sex, singledom, and falling in and out of love. There’s a directness and an honesty to these poems which humorously scrutinises the conflicts and contradictions of being attached to someone and our ongoing appetite for fulfilment. Read more about the pamphlet and get hold of a copy here.

Verve Poetry Press is a fairly new and already award-winning press focussing hard on meeting a need in Birmingham – a need for the vibrant poetry scene here in Brum to find a way to present itself to the poetry world via publication. Co-founded by Stuart Bartholomew and Amerah Saleh, it is publishing poets from all corners of the city – poets that represent the city’s varied and energetic qualities and will communicate its many poetic stories.

Added to this is a colourful pamphlet series featuring poets who have previously performed at our sister festival – and a poetry show series which captures the magic of longer poetry performance pieces by poets such as Polarbear and Matt Abbott. Like the festival, we will strive to think about poetry in inclusive ways and embrace the multiplicity of approaches towards this glorious art. Find out more here.

In 2019 the press was voted Most Innovative Publisher at the Saboteur Awards and won the Publisher’s Award for Poetry Pamphlets at the Michael Marks Awards.

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.

Compassion, the life blood of the NHS

March 18, 2020March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

We are here for you 24/7, in your darkest, most vulnerable and weakest moments.
We are the holding of a hand to show you we are here through it all.
We are people who make porridge at 4am for that eight-year-old boy whose beloved
granddad just died and was in need of distraction.
We are the first people you see when you wake up after surgery and tell you it all went
well.
We are the ears who listen to that 90-year-old lady recite from memory her favourite poem
perfectly because no family comes to visit.
We are the eyes you show your wounds to which we dress without batting an eyelid.
We are the assistants who help you learn to walk again, and who motivate you to try again
after failing.
We are the people who make you a cup of tea after you find out the child you were
carrying will never be born alive.
We are the carers who shave you when you can’t, so you look smart for your wife even in
your hospital bed.
We are the staff who learn to sign their name so they can communicate in a way you
understand.
We are the staff that turn up every day and see so much. In this neverending battle we still
try. A little compassion goes further than you may ever know.
We are the NHS.

by Sarah Quinn

This week we are very pleased to share a poem by a nursing student at Oxford Brookes, Sarah Quinn. At a moment when the National Health Service is being given more attention and under even more pressure than usual, it’s great to be able to hear from someone like Sarah who is able to reflect on the challenges and rewards that come from working in the NHS. We’d like to thank Sarah for sharing the poem and send our grateful thanks also to all health workers for everything they are doing during such a difficult time.

Sarah Quinn is a second-year Master’s student in Adult Nursing at Oxford Brookes and lives in Oxford. In addition, she is a nursing assistant – a role which she thoroughly enjoys. She also a keen interest in art, especially how this can be used as a medium for mental health promotion. She is an avid photographer with an eagle eye for seeing the beauty in the everyday.

Sarah writes: ‘The prompt for writing this poem, ‘Compassion, the life blood of the NHS’, was a call to arms by an artist who wished to roll out an art project putting up posters in staff break rooms across the whole of the NHS (you can find the artist on Instagram: @notestostrangers). He asked for inspiration of what it was like to work within the NHS and why we do what we do.

At the end of a very busy, stressful and emotionally-tolling twelve-hour shift I was walking home mulling over my day (nearly in tears). In this moment of reflection I started to write on my phone to remind myself I am there for those patients and how lucky I am to be surrounded by such amazing colleagues.

Now more than ever the NHS is a symbol of hope and needs to be protected. I have personally looked after patients suffering with COVID-19 and seen both sides of this pandemic: the pressure that this puts on family, friends, businesses and people’s way of life. So for people out there reading this, know that your everyday sacrifices are making a difference on the front line. Together we can get through this and a little compassion goes a long way.’

You can find out more about nursing at Oxford Brookes here.

Canal Street, 1984

March 5, 2020March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

He watched me for half an hour
from the jukebox. Chain-smoking,
a gold band flashed against a yellowed finger.
Through a haze of aftershave
Dire Straits’ ‘Money for Nothing’
assaulted the room.

Lips pursed at the choice of music,
a leather queen sluggishly combed his black
moustache. A fuchsia handkerchief
stuck out its tongue
from his precision-ripped
left back pocket.

Jukebox man sunk a double scotch
and three strides later, leaned over my table.
One knuckle was thick with sovereigns,
his cigarette – limp with an inch of ash –
jabbed at a beer mat, spat out
small silver rings

as he spoke. See this sheepskin coat
I’m wearing? he said to my half-a-cider.
You like it? I can get you one
if you come back to my hotel.
It was November
and I was cold.

We can become
the clothes on our bones.
The boys in the youth group
named that man ‘wolf’. He circled us
for a month of Thursday nights, dressed
in shadows and counterfeit skin.

by Ian Humphreys

The Poetry Centre’s ignitionpress recently published three new pamphlets: Hush by Majella Kelly, City Poems by Mia Kang, and Hinge by Alycia Pirmohamed. Thanks to all who attended our launches! You can find out more about the pamphlets and buy them here.

The Centre has two more events coming up next month: we’re very excited to be bringing together seven of our ignitionpress poets for a special ignitionpress Collective reading at the Poetry Café in London on Thursday 2 April. The event features Lily Blacksell, Mary Jean Chan, Patrick James Errington, Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, Natalie Whittaker, and Belinda Zhawi. It is free to attend and not to be missed! Please register here in advance.

On Thursday 23 April at Waterstones here in Oxford, join us to hear from André Naffis-Sahely, James Attlee & Hasan Bamyani, This event is also free to attend, but do register here. Thank you!

In Zebra, a boy steps tentatively from the shadows onto a strobe-lit dancefloor. Ian Humphreys’ much-anticipated debut shimmers with music, wit and humour while exploring mixed identities, otherness, and coming-of-age as a gay man in 1980s Manchester. These acutely-observed, joyful poems pay homage to those who took the first steps – minority writers, LGBT civil rights activists, 70s queer night-clubbers and the poet’s own mixed-race parents.

Ian Humphreys lives in West Yorkshire. He has been widely published in journals and anthologies, such as The Poetry Review, The Rialto, Ambit, Magma and The Forward Book of Poetry 2019. Awards include first prize in the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize. In 2018, he was highly commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry. Ian is a fellow of The Complete Works, which promotes diversity, quality and innovation in British poetry. In 2017, a portfolio of his poems was published in Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe Books). Read more about Ian’s work on his website.

Since its founding in 2008, Nine Arches Press has published poetry and short story collections (under the Hotwire imprint), as well as Under the Radar magazine. In 2010, two of our pamphlets were shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet prize and Mark Goodwin’s book Shod won the 2011 East Midlands Book Award. In 2017, All My Mad Mothers by Jacqueline Saphra was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize. Our titles have also been shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Prize, and in 2016 David Clarke’s debut poems, Arc, was longlisted for the Polari Prize. To date we have now published over ninety poetry publications. Read more about the press here and follow Nine Arches on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

New Haven, August 8, 2017

February 17, 2020March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I lack the libido to write city poems,
writes Cam, and I

now lack the city
and its popular synecdoches:

straphangers, manholes
grids and bridges.

I despise Whitman
and Brooklyn, and gatherings

of euphonic youngthings
about whose oratorios

he and I would then
dash to pieces

our two heads, ambulatory
and intransitive,

standing on the pier
in the freezing cold

on Halloween
every night of the year,

the city a ship or a crazy castle
across this or that river, dark

moving line we mark
with pleasure

objecting indirectly
and hardly holding hands.

by Mia Kang

Listen to Mia read the poem here (scroll to the link towards the bottom of the page).

The Poetry Centre is excited to share with you the final selection from our newest pamphlets – a poem from City Poems by Mia Kang, just published by ignitionpress. Alongside Mia’s pamphlet we are also very pleased to be publishing Hush by Majella Kelly and Hinge by Alycia Pirmohamed, whose work we featured in previous Weekly Poems.

We will be launching all three pamphlets this week! Join us at the Poetry Café in London on Thursday (20 February) and at Waterstones in Oxford on Friday (21 February). We’ll also be appearing at the Poetry Book Fair on Saturday 22 February (with a reading by Alycia Pirmohamed and fellow ignitionpress poet Joanna Ingham). Register for free tickets for the launches here and buy the new pamphlets here.

We have also just released the latest episode of our Poetry Centre Podcast which features Oxford-based poet Mariah Whelan, whose novel in sonnets, the love i do to you, was recently published by Eyewear Publishing. Listen to Mariah talk about the book here or subscribe to our podcast via iTunes or other podcast providers.

Mia Kang writes poems and other perversions. Named the 2017 winner of Boston Review’s Annual Poetry Contest by Mónica de la Torre, her writing has appeared in journals including POETRY, Washington Square Review, Narrative Magazine, and PEN America.

A Brooklyn Poets Fellow and runner-up for the 2019 and 2017 Discovery Poetry Contests, she is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ 2016 Catalina Páez and Seumas MacManus Award, among others. Mia is a PhD student in the history of art at Yale University, where she studies the contested rise of multiculturalism and its failures. Find out more about Mia’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press from Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects.

The first eight pamphlets to be published by ignitionpress, featuring work by Lily Blacksell, Mary Jean Chan, Patrick James Errington, Natalie Whittaker, Belinda Zhawi, Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro are available from our online Shop. Each pamphlet costs £5 and you can buy three for £12. You can find out more about the poets and their work on our dedicated page.

Endearments

February 11, 2020March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I have itemized
your oak leaf long limb wild

& have begun to name you things like
“summer eclipse

in my offline calendar” or even “sleeping
under the stars

in a Wal-Mart parking lot”
& honestly

that kind of romance is okay with me
because secretly I have also named you “river of pine”

& “blossoming spring flower along the path to
Mount Yamnuska.”

There is also my skin and yours,
there is also the way skin & skin are two

vastly different things
that this language has difficulty

capturing:
“every constellated mole” &

“pillar of shade.”
How all of these names describe the way

we coexist
& exist within one another—

the way you disappear into the trees
& I follow.

by Alycia Pirmohamed

Listen to Alycia read the poem here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

The Poetry Centre is excited to share with you the second selection from our forthcoming pamphlets – a poem from Alycia Pirmohamed’s new pamphlet Hinge, published this month by ignitionpress. Alongside Alycia’s pamphlet we are also delighted to publish Mia Kang’s City Poems and Hush by Majella Kelly, whose work we featured in the previous Weekly Poem. We will be sharing a poem from Mia’s pamphlet next week before we launch all three pamphlets at the Poetry Café in London on 20 February and at Waterstones in Oxford on 21 February. We’ll also be appearing at the Poetry Book Fair on 22 February (with a reading by Alycia and fellow ignitionpress poet Joanna Ingham), so do join us on one of these dates! You can find more details about tickets for the launches here.

‘Endearments’ is copyright © Alycia Pirmohamed, 2020. It is reprinted from Hinge (ignitionpress, 2020) by permission of ignitionpress. The poem was first published in the April 2018 issue of Glass: A Journal of Poetry.

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet currently living in Scotland. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh, where she is studying figurative homelands in poetry written by second-generation immigrant writers of South Asian descent. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Oregon. In 2018, Alycia’s chapbook Faces that Fled the Wind was selected by Camille Rankine for the BOAAT Press Chapbook Prize. Her other awards include the 92/Y Discovery Poetry Contest, the Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest in Poetry, the Adroit Journal’s Djanikian Scholars program, and the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in publications internationally, including The Paris Review Daily, Prairie Schooner, Best Canadian Poetry, Gutter Magazine, and The London Magazine, among others. Alycia is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets, co-founder of The Scottish BAME Writers Network, and a submission reader for Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She has received support from The Royal Society of Literature, and from Calgary Arts Development via The City of Calgary. Find out more about Alycia’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

Hymn

February 3, 2020March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

It’s Sunday morning and you are moving
inside me like a song that begins
in the syrinx of a lark, invisible
to the eye, silky and golden
on the ear. No promises have I made
yet I thee worship with my body. Me,
a sinner, unwelcome to receive the body
of Christ. I breathe you in as the curtains
of our church fall open on a Pink Lady
sky and the Owenriff river rushes past
the window, breathless and unrepentant
for its winter swell. My hymn hovers
—oh god oh god oh god—then rises again
to beat its milk-warm wings against the glass.

by Majella Kelly

Listen to Majella read the poem here.

The Poetry Centre is excited to share with you a poem from Majella Kelly’s new pamphlet Hush, published this month by our ignitionpress. Alongside Majella’s pamphlet we are also proud to publish Mia Kang’s City Poems and Hinge by Alycia Pirmohamed. We will be sharing poems from these two pamphlets over the next fortnight before we launch all three pamphlets at the Poetry Café in London on 20 February and at Waterstones in Oxford on 21 February. We’ll also be appearing at the Poetry Book Fair on 22 February, so do join us on one of these dates! You can find more details about tickets here.

Before that, the Poetry Centre is involved in two events this week as part of Oxford Brookes’s Think Human Festival. On Tuesday evening at the Old Fire Station we’ll be showcasing some of the poetry produced through our military veterans’ poetry workshops and reflecting on what it means to be a veteran. It will feature contributions from poet and veteran Jo Young, Dr Jane Potter (an expert on the writing of the First World War), psychologist Dr Rita Phillips, who has researched public perceptions of veterans in the UK and US, and poet Susie Campbell, who led the creative elements of the workshops. Tickets are free but register here.

Then on Thursday evening we’ll be taking part in ‘Poetry and Constitutions’ as we consider what effect constitutional laws and changes have on creativity and national identity. We’ll be welcoming Welsh poet Llŷr Gwyn Lewis, former Manx Bard Stacey Astill, and Scots Gaelic poet Niall O’Gallagher along with academics Professor Peter Edge and Dr Catriona Mackie. Join us at the Friends’ Meeting House by reserving your place here.

Majella Kelly is an Irish writer from Tuam, Co. Galway. In 2019 she won the Strokestown International Poetry Competition. She was shortlisted for the Rialto Pamphlet Competition and the Listowel Poetry Collection Award. She was also shortlisted for the inaugural Brotherton Prize at Leeds University and her poems will be published by Carcanet in a Brotherton anthology alongside the winner and the other three shortlisted poets.

In 2018 she won the Ambit Poetry Prize, came second in the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted by The Irish Times for a Hennessy Literary Award. In 2017 she was nominated by Crannóg for a Pushcart Prize and selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. In 2016 she came third in the Resurgence Eco Poetry Prize (now the Ginkgo Prize). Her poetry and short fiction has been published in such places as The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword, Ambit, The Well Review, Cyphers, The Pickled Body, Quarryman, Best New British & Irish Poets 2017, and Aesthetica’s Creative Writing Annual 2017 & 2018. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford.

When It Snowed

December 16, 2019March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

you made it sound simple:
how wild geese flying south

over Grizedale forest is a sign,
how ice used to paralyse Esthwaite lake

where Wordsworth skated
in his black coat, how winters fall

like prayers, how snow stitches
and mends all that is broken.

Through the pale hospital window
I watch roofs blanket white, cars

balancing great hats, footprints healing
themselves as if to trick me into believing

it’s just another of your winter days
and everything will recover.

by Kerry Darbishire

The Poetry Centre has just announced its programme of events for the first half of 2020! It features a reading by American poet Maya Popa; the launches of our latest ignitionpress pamphlets by Mia Kang, Majella Kelly and Alycia Pirmohamed; two events as part of the Think Human Festival – The Poet as Soldier and Veteran and Constitutions and Poetry – and a reading by André Naffis-Sahely, James Attlee & Hasan Bamyani. For more details and to book (free) tickets, visit our website.

The Weekly Poem will now take a short break until after Christmas. We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a great start to 2020! Thank you for reading!

‘When It Snowed’ is copyright © Kerry Darbishire, 2019. It is reprinted from Ten Poems about Snow, selected and introduced by Carole Bromley (Candlestick Press, 2019) by permission of Candlestick. You can read more about the pamphlet here.

Kerry Darbishire, a songwriter and poet, grew up in the Lake District and continues to live and write in a remote area of Cumbria. Her poems have appeared widely in anthologies and magazines and have won several competition prizes. She has published two full poetry collections with Indigo Dreams: A Lift of Wings (2014) and Distance Sweet on my Tongue (2018). She co-edited the Handstand Press Cumbrian Poetry Anthology, This Place I Know. Handstand Press also published Kay’s Ark, an account of Kerry’s mother’s life. Kerry regularly reads her work at poetry events and is a member of Dove Cottage Poets. Follow Kerry on Twitter here.

Candlestick is a small, independent press based in Nottingham and has been publishing its sumptuous ‘instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets since 2008. Subjects range from Birds and Cricket to Tea, Kindness, Home and Puddings. Candlestick Press titles are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, as well as by galleries, museums and garden centres. They can also be ordered online at Candlestick’s website where you can find out more about the full range of titles. You can follow Candlestick on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. In 2018 Candlestick sold over 75,000 pamphlets.

December began with shopping

December 2, 2019March 28, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

for the exotic: mint and apple sauce,
imported rosemary, cranberries, candied
peel and blocks of English butter.

It began with baking, the Christmas cake
drenched daily with dark brandy
until it oozed from the lightest finger-flick

and emptying jar after jar
of Robertson’s mincemeat into pastry.
Cinnamon gold-dusted everything.

After the final Advent window,
we opened all our doors,
welcoming hungry occupants, their cars

filling up the driveway, aunts and uncles,
cousins in greater and lesser iterations,
the generations dressed in batik, bearing gifts.

The kitchen was ever at the heart of it.
My parents cooked together.
Crackling, perfection an inch thick

on the side of pig that Dad roasted
while Mum beatified the oven-pan,
red wine gravy, bliss of roux.

Cheerful, family sat where we could,
plates heavy in heady heat, heaped
meat, golden potatoes, peas, carrots too.

Our hands were full. Still there was more,
glasses, cups, Anchor beer and Sunkist,
hot kopi, Cointreau, joyful chatter,

mince pies with cream, walnuts
to crack and chocolates to unwrap.
Dad asked again, again and

again if we’d enough to eat
until decidedly replete, my extended family
levered to their feet, departed noisily.

Day cooled to a close. Dusk drifted quiet
through rooms to settle on stacks
of washing up glinting in the sink.

It was always good, that stillness,
sky kissed with flecks of light,
night unbuttoning its mysteries.

by L. Kiew

‘December began with shopping’ is copyright © L. Kiew, 2019. It is reprinted from Christmas Spirit: Ten Poems to Warm the Heart (Candlestick Press, 2019) by permission of Candlestick. You can read more about the pamphlet here.

L. Kiew lives in London and is of Chinese-Malaysian descent. She works as an accountant but finds time for poetry and her work has been widely published in magazines including The Scores and The North. Her debut pamphlet The Unquiet was published by Offord Road Books in 2019. Find out more about her work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

52 Malcolm Street, Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne

November 29, 2019April 20, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

When I was three, Dad took us out to see the shoals
glittering off Warrenpoint. I remember the rhythms
of water, peering into the grey sea, the cruel way
they left their catch to die, each scale a prism.

Back on shore he told me, “Keep one, son” trawled
a blade through its gills, the sun a chrism on the open
wound. Even though I was so small I knew
I couldn’t cry: my lips went numb with biting.

When we made love, I dipped my head in memory.
Held tight, trying to concentrate on pillowcase, sheet-seams,
fish limbs flat against the dock, trying to control myself,
haul our small boat across the fathoms.

I didn’t know what you needed. Whatever it was
for the love of God, I wished you’d take it.

by Mariah Whelan

This is our second Weekly Poem of the week (after Monday’s poem from Brendan Cleary) to tie in with this evening’s reading at the Society Café in Oxford by the poet Mariah Whelan and visiting Canadian poet, Doyali Islam. Mariah and Doyali will both be reading from their new collections. Do join us if you can! More details and tickets here. Look out for podcasts coming soon which will feature both Mariah and Doyali.

In this genre-bending debut Mariah Whelan tells the love story of ‘He’ and ‘She’. Once lovers and now… something else, in this collection of sonnets the poems roam across the UK, Europe, Japan and South Korea to explore the oldest of lyric subjects – love, desire, friendship and betrayal. By turns painful, playful and sensual these poems explore the bonds that tie lovers and friends together in a collection of startling formal energy and emotional candour. You can find out more about the book on the Eyewear website.

Mariah Whelan is a poet, teacher and interdisciplinary researcher from Oxford. Her debut collection, a novel-in-sonnets called the love i do to you has just been published by Eyewear. Poems from the novel were shortlisted for The Bridport Prize, The Melita Hume Prize and the manuscript won the AM Heath Prize. A second collection of poems the rafters are still burning which explores writing, constructions of whiteness and museum archives is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2020.

Mariah is currently finishing a PhD in The Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester where she is writing a second collection of poems, researches trauma and representation in contemporary Irish fiction and also teaches Creative Writing. Mariah is a co-Creative Director of ‘Truth Tellers’ an interdisciplinary research project funded by King’s College London that brings artists and academics together to develop collaborative methodologies in the social sciences. Mariah also co-edits bath magg, an online magazine of new poetry that is a space for excellent writing from established and emerging poets. Find out more about Mariah’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

The Black Spring Eyewear Publishing Group is an independently-funded publishing group (made up of a little press or three) based in London, UK. Our books have been well-reviewed in The TLS, The Sewanee Review, The Times, Poetry(Chicago), PN Review, Poetry Review and Poetry London; and have won major prizes for criticism (The Pegasus Award) and for poetry and been longlisted and shortlisted for others, including The Forward Prize and the Somerset Maugham award from the Society of Authors. Our poets have appeared in the annual Forward anthologies, and been PBS Choices and Recommendations. For more about the press, visit the website.

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.