In The Poetry

When many years ago I went to stay for a day or two with Thomas Hardy he very kindly met me at the station and he explained with a smile that there were no taxis or anything to ride in because all the people had hired them to take them to a performance of his [...]

I always had a love of football – my father took me to my first football match in Budapest when I was a child, and he took me to my first English football match when we came to England. ‘Preston North End’ the poem describes the first match I ever went to which was Spurs [...]

It’s one of the divinations, one of the markers of character – where one sits in an audience.

Sitting with Others

The front seats filled last. Laggards, buffoons,
and kiss-ups falling in beside local politicos,
the about to be honored, and the hard of hearing.

No help from the middle, blenders and criminals.
And the back rows: restless, intelligent, unable to [...]

The next poem is called ‘The Searchers’. At the time of the Moor Murders, I remember seeing on television news a whole line of men, policemen, crossing the moor because they were looking for the possible bodies of buried children, and they were probing with their sticks into the ground, with sharpened sticks, and [...]

There is a geological principle of ‘isostasy’ which, dubiously summarised, suggests that if the pressure from above is equal to the pressure from below then where they meet is a point of vast strength and stability. This poem takes the proposition a cheeky step further, that by the same principle the tip of a wave [...]

footnotes of a hammock

i.

and what about this phrase ‘the silence
of the world’, where does it come from did
you borrow it from another poet did something
hum it in your ear like an attic
mystery in the middle of a heatwave afternoon
when the air torments you with its fiery
breath and you could lose your temper
but something gives you [...]

The Brother

Dropping a canape in my beaujolais
At some reception, opening or launch,
I recall briefly the brother I never had
Presiding at less worldly rituals:
The only man at my wedding not wearing a tie;
Avuncular, swaddling my nephew over the font;
Thumbing cool oil on our mother’s forehead
In the darkened room, the bells and frankincense…
While the prodigal sweats in [...]

The Charge of the Light Brigade

1

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs [...]

Remembering W H S

Come back once more and walk along the shore,
a Styrofoam container in your hand,
and search again through litter on the sand
for shells and seaweed. Start a new collection.

“There’s no such thing as rubbish,” you once said,
“only things we don’t know how to use.”
You had the gift for the unexpected find,
quick as [...]

The River

The River’s a wanderer,
A nomad, a tramp,
He doesn’t choose one place
To set up his camp.

The River’s a winder,
Through valley and hill
He twists and he turns,
He just cannot be still.

The River’s a hoarder,
And he buries down deep
Those little treasures
That he wants to keep.

The River’s a baby,
He gurgles and hums,
And sounds like he’s happily
Sucking his thumbs.

The [...]