viii

~ oxfordbrookesuni

the war had ended and we, the survivors
all rotten-toed and trench-tired went home safe
to the Kansas base and we had survived the war
survived the sinking mud and shells and 

just when we thought the war had ended safe
and heading back home from Kansas sick, a cough
of relief we said we spread across the states
to the arms of our families coughing a bit 

but just a bit we said and not that bad and then
we were dying they were dying dying and nobody
knew the flu had dogged our footsteps home
all those hungry ghosts still out there entrenched 

and they say that we were the victors in coffins
and urns they say that we were the victors

by Jamie Hale

This week’s poem is taken from Jamie Hale’s new pamphlet Shield, and you can sign up for the launch of the pamphlet on 31 March, when Jamie will be reading alongside three other Verve poets who also have new pamphlets out with Verve: Hannah Hodgson, Marina Sánchez, and Natalie Whittaker, whose work we shared last week. We’ll be featuring work by Hannah and Marina as upcoming Weekly Poems.

‘viii’ is copyright © Jamie Hale, 2021. It is reprinted from Shield (Verve Poetry Press, 2021) by permission of Verve Poetry Press. You can read more about the pamphlet and order a copy on the Verve website.

Notes from Verve Poetry Press: 

As the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, Jamie was told by their GP that, due to their underlying health condition, they would not be a priority for critical care treatment.

Using the compressed form of a sonnet, Jamie wrote and re-wrote the experience of facing their own mortality, sometimes in their own voice, sometimes from the perspectives of others – a nurse working during the pandemic or the first carriers of the Spanish Flu – capturing the crisis from all angles. This work became a pamphlet, Shield, 21 sonnets following Jamie through the grief of facing death while newly married, and into a place of resilience, resistance, and a commitment to creation against mortality.

Jamie Hale is an artist, curator, poet, writer, playwright, actor, and director. They create poetry, comedy, scriptwriting, and drama for page, stage, and screen. They have performed their work at the Barbican, Invisible Fest, Tate Modern, the Southbank Centre and with Graeae, and have written for publications including the Guardian and Magma. Their pandemic poetry pamphlet, Shield, was published in January 2021. They are also an expert in disability and health and social care policy: They are CEO of Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance, chair of Lewisham Disabled People’s Commission, and are studying for a Master’s degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Health at UCL.

Find out more about Jamie’s work on their website or follow them on Twitter.

Verve Poetry Press is a Birmingham-based publisher dedicated to promoting and showcasing Birmingham and Midlands poetic talent in colourful and exciting ways – as you would expect from a press that has grown out of the giddy and flamboyant, annual four days of poetry and spoken word that is Verve Poetry Festival, Birmingham. Added to this is a colourful and prize-winning pamphlet series featuring poets who have previously performed at our sister festival and a debut performance poetry series, which has seen us working with the brightest rising stars on the UK spoken word scene. We also assert our right to publish any poetry we feel needs and deserves to find print wherever we find it. Verve was awarded the Saboteur Award for Most Innovative Publisher in 2019 and the Michael Marks Publisher’s Award 2019. Find out more about Verve Poetry Press on the publisher’s website and follow the press on Twitter and  Instagram.

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.

tree

~ oxfordbrookesuni

on the path to the station
there’s a tree      that marks the seasons
look baby       blossom
look baby       leaves
look baby       autumn
next year I’ll show you autumn    and it will be so beautiful
the world is      so beautiful
I will show you 

one day I wake up      and it’s November
bare branches are faulty umbilical cords
failing to implant the sky 

tree

medical students perch around the room
drawn to our rare        and bitter fruit

the consultant sketches     winter branches
in biro blue        to explain what connects

me to you      what’s not getting through


by Natalie Whittaker

This week we are very pleased to share two poems by Natalie Whittaker from her second pamphlet, Tree, which is being published by Verve Poetry Press on 15 March. These two pieces appear at either end of Natalie’s new pamphlet. As some readers will know, we published Natalie’s first pamphlet, Shadow Dogs, in 2018 through our ignitionpress, and it’s great to see Natalie continuing her publication success with this latest, very moving and powerful collection.

Do sign up for the launch of Tree on 31 March, when Natalie will be reading alongside three other Verve poets who also have new pamphlets out with Verve: Hannah Hodgson, Marina Sánchez, and Jamie Hale. We’ll be featuring work by Hannah, Marina and Jamie as upcoming Weekly Poems.

‘Tree’ and ‘Tree’ are copyright © Natalie Whittaker, 2021. They are reprinted from Tree (Verve Poetry Press, 2021) by permission of Verve Poetry Press. You can read more about the pamphlet and pre-order a copy on the Verve website.

Notes from Verve Poetry Press:

In Tree, Natalie Whittaker is writing about her personal experience of stillbirth and the mental illness that can follow such a traumatic event. It is a subject that is still rarely addressed in poetry, writing or conversation. That she is able to do so here, in eighteen intricate, carefully crafted poems, in a way that is engaging, communicative, distressing and yet also beautiful, is a testament to her abilities as a poet, her strong grasp on the power of language and the power of her imagination.

With these powers, she brings a harrowing subject close up and enables the reader to truly feel, to see, to understand, to share. It is a brave and necessary work, wonderfully and heartbreakingly realised. Read more about the pamphlet on the Verve Poetry Press website.

Natalie Whittaker is a poet and secondary school teacher from South East London. Her debut pamphlet Shadow Dogs was published by ignitionpress in 2018. Natalie is one of the London Library’s emerging writers for 2020 / 2021. Her poems have been widely published in UK magazines and anthologies; she was commended in the Verve poetry competition 2020, and won second place in the Kent and Sussex poetry competition 2020. You can follow Natalie on Twitter and Instagram.

Verve Poetry Press is a Birmingham-based publisher dedicated to promoting and showcasing Birmingham and Midlands poetic talent in colourful and exciting ways – as you would expect from a press that has grown out of the giddy and flamboyant, annual four days of poetry and spoken word that is Verve Poetry Festival, Birmingham. Added to this is a colourful pamphlet series featuring poets who have previously performed at our sister festival – Natalie’s pamphlet is the latest addition to this prize-winning series – and a debut performance poetry series, which had seen us working with the brightest rising stars on the UK spoken word scene. We also assert our right to publish any poetry we feel needs and deserves to find print wherever we find it. Verve was awarded the Saboteur Award for Most Innovative Publisher in 2019 and the Michael Marks Publisher’s Award 2019. Find out more about Verve Poetry Press on  the publisher’s website and follow the press on Twitter and Instagram.

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.

COMPLAINING

~ oxfordbrookesuni

After Terrance Hayes
                       

If it wasn’t for your constant moaning,

I may have taken you seriously. You ask me if oiling

engines would have been more worthwhile. There is still so long

for you to go, and you’re stuck trying to be honest and plain

in your work, wondering if your lamp

is worth the match that failed to light it, mapping

your way through your mental list of excuses. Your peers are icons

not because they are valuable and you are a failing coin,

but because they are good at carrying on. Yet here you are, nailing

yourself to a spaghetti stick cross, impaling

your loins with a toothpick. Child, behave. Stop pretending your task is the mouth of a lion.
                                                           

by Gabriel Àkámọ́

News from the Poetry Centre: one of our recent ignitionpress pamphlets, Ripe by Isabelle Baafi, was selected as the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice for Spring 2021! You can read more about the pamphlet, hear Isabelle talk about it, and buy a copy on our website. Ripe was launched alongside two other pamphlets: Lung Iron by Daniel Fraser and Kostya Tsolakis’s Ephebos – they are also both available from our site.

‘COMPLAINING’ is copyright © Gabriel Àkámọ́, 2020 and is reprinted here from At the Speed of Dark (Bad Betty Press, 2020) by permission of Bad Betty Press. You can read more about the pamphlet and buy a copy on the Bad Betty website.

Notes from Bad Betty Press:

In At the Speed of Dark, Gabriel Àkámọ́ pits the mind’s chiaroscuro against the many shades of grey that make up our reality. These questioning poems hold empiricism and faith, gravity and progress in the balance. Formally expansive, they play on the equivocation of white space, its ‘faux-quirky false irony’. Like an epiphany lost on waking, they entreat us to slow down, ‘reclaiming time, clawing back at the clearness of sky.’ Read more about the pamphlet and buy a copy on the Bad Betty website.

Gabriel Àkámọ́ is a Nigerian-British poet, actor, facilitator, and creative producer. He has worked with organisations including Rich Mix, Roundhouse and WIRED Next Generation, been commissioned by institutions such as the Southbank Centre, St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Academy of Arts, and been a speaker at Gresham College. Festival performances include Lovebox and Bestival, and Festival Kometa in Riga, Latvia. He is a proud Barbican Young Poet alumnus, National Youth Theatre alumnus, and a former Roundhouse Resident Artist (2016-17) with Spit the Atom Poetry Collective. You can read more about Gabriel’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Bad Betty Press is an independent publisher of new poetry, founded in 2017 by Amy Acre and Jake Wild Hall. We love writing that is bad (in the Foxy Brown sense) and beautiful (‘a Betty’ in 90s slang). We love the strange, raw and risk-taking. We believe strongly in art’s capacity to challenge its own definition, to curve away from the norm, making space for more and varied voices. Find out more about our books on  our website and follow Bad Betty on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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.

Pharmacopoeia

~ Thomas

And suddenly the plagues
are the most interesting parts
of a city’s history.

1635 stands out as the year
Yersinia Pestis took another tithe
from Amsterdam’s population
and Doctor Tulp published his pharmacopoeia
to counter all the bad plague literature. 

Later, he made a Book of Monsters,
wherein blacksmith Jan de Doot
sharpened his knife
and cut out his own bladder stone. 

Tulp signed the fitness reports
for the first Manhattan settlers,
whose ancestors are still singing
Trip a Trap a Tronjes
(The father’s knee is a throne)
four hundred years on –
the old rhyme meaning as much
or as little
as Ring a Ring a Roses.

I imagine a hotel bed,
two plane seats,
empty, waiting.

A space in front of ‘Wheatfield with Crows’,
where he will be overwhelmed by beauty
in a way I am trying to understand
while I brim with dark blue connective ribbons
obscuring, or highlighting,
the place where the path
meets the horizon.

by Kate Fox

News from the Poetry Centre: tune in now to hear ignitionpress poet Belinda Zhawi imagine life as a southern African plains zebra in the Becoming Animal series on Radio 3’s The Essay programme. It’s available to listen to on the BBC website.

‘Pharmacopoeia’ is copyright © Kate Fox, 2021 and is reprinted here from The Oscillations (Nine Arches Press, 2021) by permission of Nine Arches Press. You can read more about the book on the Nine Arches website, and register for free to attend the book launch on Eventbrite (please sign up by 12pm on Thursday). If you can’t register in time, you can still watch the launch by visiting the Nine Arches YouTube channel from 7.30pm.

Notes from Nine Arches Press:

The poem ‘Pharmacopoeia’ begins poet Kate Fox’s distinctive new collection The Oscillations. The book explores distance and isolation in the age of the pandemic, refracted through the lenses of neurodiversity and trauma in poems that are bold, often frank and funny but also multifarious, dazzling and open-hearted in their self-discoveries. Fox’s poetry explores difference and community, silence and communication, danger and belonging – and a world that has been distinctly broken into a ‘before’ and ‘after’ by the pandemic. Throughout, a strong voice sings of what it means to be many things at once – autistic, creative, northern, a woman. Fox measures not only distances, social or otherwise, but how we breach them, and what the view might be from beyond them. 

Read more about the collection on the Nine Arches website, and register to attend the online launch on 25 February via Eventbrite (or tune into the Nine Arches YouTube channel from 7.30pm).

Kate Fox is a poet based in Northern England who has made two comedy series for Radio 4 and written and performed numerous broadcast poetry commissions as a regular on Radio 3’s The Verb and Radio 4’s Saturday Live. She won the Andrew Waterhouse Award for poetry from New Writing North in 2006. Her previous publications include We Are Not Stone (Ek Zuban, 2006), Fox Populi (Smokestack, 2013) and Chronotopia (Burning Eye Books, 2017). She completed a PhD in performance in 2017 from the University of Leeds, researching Northernness and comedy. She loves swimming outside, spaniels, Doctor Who and big skies. You can read more about Kate’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

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 published over ninety poetry publications. Read more about the press here and follow Nine Arches on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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.

Maps

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Thanks be to the map-makers that they have devised
Signs, a whole system, intelligible to all comers
To denote what’s locally there. Leave the B road
At a level crossing, head north, enter a mixed wood

Catch hold of its stream and in less than a mile
You will emerge on a steepening slope. Outcrop
Scree, a small lake… Thank them for that
But more still for the space they let you into

Through every pictogram. Two hundred miles away
You can tell whether the church in question
Has a tower, a spire or neither, but not
Whether listening to the sermon you’d have been distracted

By mermaids and green men. Behind the sign
Into the vacancy, oh the inrush of presence
The holy particulars! The map-makers have represented
Some of the many incarnations of water

But not my drying your chilled feet in a handkerchief
Nor the licks of salt. Reading the map afterwards
Assures us of our hinterland, all we got by heart
Through our boot-soles from the braille of the terrain

And all that our fingers learned by digging in
And hauling up our bodyweight. There it is
Our route, very public, anyone can follow it
But only the walkers know it for a song-line

With undertones. Thanks be then to the makers
Of agreed markers, conventional signs
Among the current place names. In any company
I can say aloud, Yes, she is my friend.


by David Constantine  

Some news from the Centre: the Poetry Centre recently announced that pamphlets by three new poets will be published by our ignitionpress in the summer. The poets are: Katie Byford, Zein Sa’dedin, and Fathima Zahra, and you can find out more about them on our website. You can also read about – and buy! – the fourteen pamphlets we have previously published (including Isabelle Baafi’s Ripe, the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice for Spring 2021) on this page. 

‘Maps’ is © David Constantine, 2020 and is reprinted with permission from Belongings (Bloodaxe Books, 2020). Find out more about the collection on the Bloodaxe site, where you can read further sample poems. You can also watch David read from his collection.

Like the work of the European poets who have nourished him, David Constantine’s poetry is informed by a profoundly humane vision of the world. The title of his eleventh collection, Belongings, signals that these are poems concerned both with our possessions and with what possesses us. Among much else in the word belongings, the poems draw on a sense of our ‘co-ordinates’ – something like the eastings and northings that give a map-reference – how you might triangulate a life. You can read more about the collection and buy a copy on the Bloodaxe website.

David Constantine was born in 1944 in Salford, Lancashire. He is a freelance writer and translator, a Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford, and was co-editor of Modern Poetry in Translation from 2004 to 2013. He lives in Oxford and on Scilly. In December 2020 he was named winner of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry for 2020. He will be presented with the award in 2021. 

He has published eleven books of poetry, five translations and a novel with Bloodaxe. His poetry titles include Something for the Ghosts (2002), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award; Collected Poems (2004), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Nine Fathom Deep (2009); Elder (2014); and Belongings (2020). His Bloodaxe translations include editions of Henri Michaux and Philippe Jaccottet; his Selected Poems of Hölderlin, winner of the European Poetry Translation Prize, and his version of Hölderlin’s Sophocles, combined in his new expanded Hölderlin edition, Selected Poetry (2018); and his translation of Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s Lighter Than Air, winner of the Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation. His other books include A Living Language: Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures (2004), his translation of Goethe’s Faust in Penguin Classics (2005, 2009), his monograph Poetry (2013) in Oxford University Press’s series The Literary Agenda, and his co-translation (with Tom Kuhn) of The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (W.W. Norton, 2018).

David has published six collections of short stories and won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award in 2013 for his collection Tea at the Midland (Comma Press), the first English writer to win this prestigious international fiction award.

Bloodaxe Books was founded in Newcastle by Neil Astley in 1978 and has revolutionised poetry publishing in Britain over four decades. Internationally renowned for quality in literature and excellence in book design, our authors and books have won virtually every major literary award given to poetry, from the T.S. Eliot Prize and Pulitzer to the Nobel Prize. And books like the Staying Alive series have broken new ground by opening up contemporary poetry to many thousands of new readers. Find out more about Bloodaxe on the publisher’s website and follow the press on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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.

nonrestorative sleep

~ oxfordbrookesuni


& sometimes this sick can be beautiful
I suck in air wake up all stomach all breath 

                                          can I tell you
how each minute of dead quiet morning
will taste of course I can I have
almost all night awake in my lungs
I am a space I practice expanding
often I make rooms I fill them up
with pain can I fill you 

             up to survive
is to name everything you own 

if it hurts name it
                                  beautiful 

pain flowers in my back

all night all over
a beautiful boy exists    

his breath filling me
    up to name him 

beautiful beautiful boy

by William Gee

This is the final Weekly Poem before a Christmas break. We wish you and your family all the very best for the holidays and look forward to sharing more poems with you from early January!

We were delighted to learn recently that one of our new ignitionpress pamphlets, Ripe by Isabelle Baafi, has been selected as the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice for Spring 2021! You can read more about the pamphlet, hear Isabelle talk about it, and buy a copy on our website. You can also still watch the online launch of Ripe, which we featured alongside two other exciting pamphlets: Lung Iron by Daniel Fraser and Ephebos by Kostya Tsolakis. Find out more about them on the website.

‘nonrestorative sleep’ is copyright © William Gee, 2020. It is reprinted from Rheuma, published by Bad Betty Press by permission of the publisher. You can read about the pamphlet on the Bad Betty Press website. 

William Gee’s breathtaking, disruptive debut is written in the language of the body. A song from somewhere deep within, it sings of what the body remembers, how it rebels. These are dizzying poems, opening up and obscuring, primal and elusive. To read them is to understand the precariousness and the violence of love, of living with secrets, of being in a body that won’t conform. The pamphlet was chosen as the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice for Winter 2020.

You can read more about William’s pamphlet and buy a copy on the Bad Betty Press website, and follow William on Twitter.

Bad Betty Press is an independent publisher of new poetry, founded in 2017 by Amy Acre and Jake Wild Hall. We love writing that is bad (in the Foxy Brown sense) and beautiful (‘a Betty’ in 90s slang). We love the strange, raw and risk-taking. We believe strongly in art’s capacity to challenge its own definition, to curve away from the norm, making space for more and varied voices. Find out more about our books on our website and follow Bad Betty on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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 Gift of the Lotus/Liánhuā

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Penang Island

At the equator, night falls as suddenly
as a plane can land. The whirr of the wing flap  

shifts its tone, as my father’s boyhood
reels past on the runway, new lights and factories 

in a fluorescent glare where rice fields used to be,
and the roadside food stall  

he liked to stop at
for fish congee after a long flight. 

December may seem an empty month for her,
who radiantly came across the ferry from Mainland 

as his bride one Christmas day.
Now there is no moon to chart the tide  

that ebbs and flows around her feet.
A grief that never leaves her – 

as ghosts of the past always seem to,
though they wash up abandoned 

on beaches, silver
in the thick, hot dark. 

Alone too, I can only offer kinship,
marzipan, M&S fruitcake, faint carols,  

mixed spice of winter, holly-wreathed.
A foreign daughter come home 

who must remind herself to unfold as a quiet lotus,
silent character of my father’s mother’s name. 

Touchdown into this deep silt, hold on for dear life,
into the muck of it. When the monsoon thunders  

overhead, zen circle zen circle is a whisper
round-leaved to myself. A perfect brushstroke  

lightning-fast, gathering
enough strength  

to lift my face up waiting –
for the balm of rain.

by Pey Oh

Many congratulations to our ignitionpress poet Alycia Pirmohamed for being shortlisted for this year’s Michael Marks Award for Poetry. In last night’s awards, Alycia’s pamphlet Hinge was named in second place behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, who won the award for his sonically-similar pamphlet Binge! You can find out more about Alycia’s pamphlet on our website. 

Our latest podcast features the poetry anthologist Ana Sampson. Ana recently edited She Will Soar: Bright, Brave Poems about Freedom by Women (Pan Macmillan, 2020) and in the podcast she talks about how she goes about editing anthologies, how she chooses poems, and why it has been particularly important for her to edit two anthologies that include only works by women. You can listen to the podcast on our website and find it via the usual podcast providers – just search for ‘Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre’. We are delighted to say that this podcast also features a very special guest reader: the internationally-acclaimed actress Romola Garai, who reads an extract from Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘The Sea-Shore’ by Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and ‘Sonnet XXXI’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

‘The Gift of the Lotus/ Liánhuā’ is copyright © Pey Oh, 2020. It is reprinted from Christmas Presents: Ten Poems to Give and Receive published by Candlestick Press (November 2020) by permission of Candlestick. You can read about the pamphlet and buy a copy on the Candlestick website. 

Pey Oh is a Bath-based poet from Malaysia. She has an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of South Wales. Her first pamphlet, Pictograph, was published by Flarestack Poetry in 2018. Her recent work can be found in Long Poem Magazine, and The Scores – A Journal of Poetry and Prose and Butcher’s Dog. You can follow Pey on Twitter.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press publishing sumptuously produced poetry pamphlets that serve as a wonderful alternative to a greetings card, with matching envelopes and bookmarks left blank for your message. Their subjects include Clouds, Walking, Birds, Home and Kindness. Candlestick Press pamphlets are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, galleries and garden centres nationwide and available to order online. In 2019 Candlestick sold over 100,000 pamphlets, supporting its nominated charities with donations equivalent to around 49% of pre-tax net profit. Since 2008 nearly 600,000 pamphlets have been sold, which means that some six million poems have been read via its publications. Find out more about the press from the Candlestick website and follow the press on 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.

from Aurora Leigh

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret-room
Piled high with cases in my father’s name;
Piled high, packed large, – where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books! At last, because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets.
                                         As the earth
Plunges in fury, when the internal fires
Have reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing flat
The marts and temples, the triumphal gates
And towers of observation, clears herself
To elemental freedom – thus, my soul,
At poetry’s divine first finger touch,
Let go conventions and sprang up surprised,
Convicted of the great eternities
Before two worlds.


by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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 details of the pamphlet and publisher shortlists. You can learn more about Alycia’s pamphlet and buy a copy on our website (scroll down the Pamphlets page).

This week’s choice of poem is a bit of a departure for the Weekly Poem, since we normally feature contemporary writing. However, this excerpt from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s verse novel Aurora Leigh is one of the pieces featured in our latest podcast, in which we meet the poetry anthologist Ana Sampson. Ana recently edited She Will Soar: Bright, Brave Poems about Freedom by Women (Pan Macmillan, 2020) and in the podcast she talks about how she goes about editing anthologies, how she chooses poems, and why it has been particularly important for her to edit two anthologies that include only works by women. You can listen to the podcast on our website and find it via the usual podcast providers – just search for ‘Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre’.

We are delighted to say that this podcast also features a very special guest reader: the internationally-acclaimed actress Romola Garai, who reads this extract, ‘The Sea-Shore’ by Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and ‘Sonnet XXXI’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

This extract from Aurora Leigh (1856) is in the public domain. It appears in She Will Soar: Bright, Brave Poems about Freedom by Women (2020), edited by Ana Sampson.

Pan Macmillan writes: ‘With poems from classic, well-loved poets as well as innovative and bold modern voices, She Will Soar is a stunning collection and an essential addition to any bookshelf. From the ancient world right up to the present day, it includes poems on wanderlust, travel, daydreams, flights of fancy, escaping into books, tranquillity, courage, hope and resilience. From frustrated housewives to passionate activists, from servants and suffragettes to some of today’s most gifted writers, here is a bold choir of voices demanding independence and celebrating their hard-won power. Immerse yourself in poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Christina Rossetti, Stevie Smith, Sarah Crossan, Emily Dickinson, Salena Godden, Mary Jean Chan, Charly Cox, Nikita Gill, Fiona Benson, Hollie McNish and Grace Nichols to name but a few.’

Elizabeth Barrett Browning received an excellent education at home from her adoring but overprotective father, and published poetry from her teens onwards. Despite living as an invalid and recluse – perhaps devastated at her brother drowning, perhaps injured in a fall from a horse – her poetry was hugely popular. She attracted fan mail from Robert Browning – then an aspiring poet, six years her junior – and their relationship revived her sufficiently to elope with him to Italy, get married and have a son. Her father never forgave them. A greater celebrity than her husband during their lifetimes, Elizabeth also involved herself in contemporary politics. She was a passionate critic of slavery and child labour, and her epic poem Aurora Leigh was remarkable for its strong heroine and contemporary setting.

Ana Sampson is Deputy Publicity Editor at Quercus Books and a poetry anthologist. By the end of 2021, she will have edited eleven poetry anthologies, including I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud, that came out in 2009 and was the third bestselling poetry title that year; Ten Poems for Breakfast, a pamphlet published by Candlestick Press; Poems to Learn by Heart, published by Michael O’Mara Books in 2013; and – most recently – two anthologies of poems by women, published by Pan Macmillan: She is Fierce: Brave, Bold and Beautiful Poems by Women, which contains 150 poems and came out in 2018, and She Will Soar: Bright, Brave Poems about Freedom by Women, which was published in September this year and includes 130 poems. Ana’s books have sold over 230,000 copies and she makes frequent appearances in the media and at book festivals to talk about poetry and women’s writing. Ana lives with her husband, two young daughters and two middle-aged cats. You can find out more about Ana’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

Primrose Hill

~ 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. 

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.

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.

Athenian Light

~ oxfordbrookesuni


I was born into it
in late September,
when it’s sweet and hued at sunset
like the seeded flesh of figs.
Smog meddled with it,
hanging over Athens
like bad history. 

Growing up,
what use was lyrical light
when stuck two hours every day
in an airless school bus,
gum spat in my hair
by the back row boys? 

After half a lifetime in England,
I bathe in it by a rooftop pool,
swallows above me
like musical notes,
the broken jawline
of the Parthenon within sight,
and I love how it brings out
the veins in marble
and the arms of men. 

I watch the child in the pool
learn how to swim,
wearing, just like I did,
orange inflatable arm bands,
remember my father’s insistence
that you can drown
even in the clearest light. 
 

by Kostya Tsolakis

Listen to Kostya Tsolakis reading ‘Athenian Light’

This week’s poem by Kostya Tsolakis is the final one in a trio of poems by our new ignitionpress authors! Last week we featured Daniel Fraser’s poem ‘Hebden Bridge’, and before that Isabelle Baafi’s ‘PG Tips’. We are very excited to be launching three new pamphlets by Isabelle, Daniel, and Kostya online on Friday 6 November. Please join us! The event will be live streamed to our YouTube channel and you can find more details about the launch and sign up to attend it here . You can buy copies of the pamphlets via the Brookes Online Shop. 

We recently announced the winners of this year’s Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, and you can read the winning poems here . Our awards event this year will be held online and everyone is welcome to attend! It will feature readings by the winning poets in both the Open and EAL categories, and a short reading by this year’s judge, Fiona Benson. To register your attendance, please visit this Eventbrite page .

‘Athenian Light’ is copyright © Kostya Tsolakis, 2020. It is reprinted from Ephebos (ignitionpress, 2020) by permission of ignitionpress. 

Reflecting on this poem, Kostya writes: ‘“Athenian Light” closes Ephebos, but is one of the oldest poems in the pamphlet. Having spent a lonely, closeted adolescence in Athens – much of it in my room, playing video games or reading – I didn’t notice how beautiful its intense light is until I started visiting home again as a happier adult. By celebrating it, I feel this poem reconciles me with the city I grew up in.’

Kostya’s new pamphlet, Ephebos, explores what it is like to be young, Greek and gay. It maps a fragile coming of age, exploring the shame, courage and yearning of emergent sexuality. From a sun-drenched Athenian adolescence to adulthood in England, this exquisitely wrought pamphlet confronts an abiding sense of ‘falling short’ – of being Greek, conforming to ideas of masculinity, being a good son, of communicating fully with loved ones and strangers. Above all, these poems deal with the pursuit of happiness on one’s own terms. You can buy the pamphlet here.

Kostya Tsolakis is a London-based poet and journalist, born and raised in Athens, Greece. A Warwick Writing Programme graduate, his poems have been published in Magma, perverse, The Scores, Under the Radar and Wasafiri, among others. In 2019 he won the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition (EAL category). He is founding editor of harana poetry, the online magazine for poets writing in English as a second or parallel language, and is poetry co-editor at Ambit. You can find out more about Kostya and his work on his website and follow him 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.

Since its establishment in 2017, two pamphlets (A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan and Hinge by Alycia Pirmohamed) have been selected by the Poetry Book Society as their Pamphlet Choices, and all the pamphlets still in print are available to buy 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.

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.