To our surprise the island was well watered.
The fishes were strangely easy to catch
And the little pigs that gambolled around
In the interior provided nourishment,
As well as fun for my fellow castaways.

The weather was persistently benign,
Stroking our hair and murmuring white noise.
Though my spyglass had suffered from the sea
I could still use it for scanning the waves,
Hoping for a sail or even a monster.

Meantime I memorised our days in paradise
And the little that happened, looking forward
To the book I should write when we were rescued –
A more or less truthful tally of events,
Spiced up or embroidered as need might be.

At night the land crabs rattled round the palms
And the waves were bored by the same old beach.
Peterkin snored guilelessly in our hut
While Jack dreamed in silence about his pig-sticking
And I stared out to sea with an empty mind.

That was before the coming of the cannibals
And our unforeseen arrival at manhood,
When things that should not be seen were seen
And could not be unseen, and our green Eden
Receded into a book for small boys.

by Fergus Allen

Together with the Institute of English Studies in London, the Poetry Centre is organizing a conference from 13-14 March 2015 at the IES to address the three initiatives: New Generation Poets (1994), Next Generation Poets (2004), and Next Generation Poets 2014. It aims to examine important concerns of contemporary poetry arising from these projects, such as the relationship between poetry and the public, the promotion of poetry through initiatives such as these, and what the selection of the particular poets on these lists can tell us about the state and direction of British poetry at various stages over the past twenty years. For more information and the call for papers, please visit the IES website.

‘Coral Island’ is copyright © Fergus Allen, 2013, and is reprinted from New & Selected Poems, introduced by Christopher Reid (CBeditions, 2013).

Fergus Allen was born in 1921; his father was Irish, his mother English. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, he moved to England during the Second World War. He was Director of the Hydraulics Research Station and ended his professional career as First Civil Service Commissioner. In 2000 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He published his first book (with Faber) at the age of seventy-two; the poem here is one of several recent poems that comprise the first section of his New& Selected Poems, which also includes work from five previous collections. You can read more poems from the book on the CBe website, read more about Allen’s work from the CBe blog, and hear him read at the Poetry Archive.

CB editions, founded in 2007, publishes poetry alongside short fiction and other writing, including work in translation. Its poetry titles have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize three times (in 2009, 2011 and 2013), and have been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize.

In 2011 CBe inaugurated Free Verse , a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in 2012, 2013, and this year too, with over 60 publishers taking part.

Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

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.

After dark she handed round the confectionery
and the rustle of the papers excited me.
As well as the comforting chocolate colours
there were staring greens, lumps of grainy yellow
and white fondant homunculi, whose feet
were the first items to be bitten off.
I would nibble my way up through the body,
thinking about the organs I’d consumed
and which had yet to come. The head when reached
was crunched between my remorseless milk teeth.

Now there’s unwelcome knocking at the door
and parents’ voices in the social mode.
No, I will not come home! This is my home –
from now on and forever. I have left you
and shall be colonising this chaise longue,
where Phyllis sits, warm thigh pressed against mine,
biting into dusted Turkish delight
with regular little ivory teeth
and squeezing the pieces against her palate
with a pink, unspeakably catlike tongue.

by Fergus Allen

If you are in Oxford or visiting the city soon, and haven’t yet seen the exhibition Where We Begin to Look. Landscape and Poetry, there is still time! Where We Begin to Look is a collaborative exhibition by the artist Zoe Benbow and the poet, Deryn Rees-Jones, and is presented by the Poetry Society and Small World Theatre, Ceredigion. It will be at the Glass Tank at Oxford Brookes until 5 November, and you can find out more about it on the Brookes web site.

‘Sweets’ is copyright © Fergus Allen, 2010. It is reprinted from  Before Troy  by permission of CB editions.

Fergus Allen is 92 years old. Educated in Ireland, he moved to England during the Second World War and ended his professional career as First Civil Service Commissioner. Following retirement he has published collections with Faber and Dedalus Press as well as CBe. Writing from a lifetime of rich experience, Fergus Allen offers poems of precision and fine observation, stripped of illusion yet deeply human in their affections and glancing wit. The confusions of abroad, of childhood and memory, of love and sex and identity, are rendered in  Before Troy  with a bracing clarity. You can hear Fergus Allen reading from his poems at the Poetry Archive.

CB editions publishes no more than six books a year, mainly poetry and short fiction and including work in translation. Since 2008 its poetry titles have twice won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and have been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize three times. In 2011 CBe put on  Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in September 2012 and this year, with over 50 publishers taking part. Find out more about the publisher from the  website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on  Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

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.