In The Poetry

Wedding the Locksmith’s Daughter

The slow-grained slide to embed the blade
of the key is a sheathing,
a gliding on graphite, pushing inside
to find the ribs of the lock.

Sunk home, the true key slots to its matrix;
geared, tight-fitting, they turn
together, shooting the spring-lock,
throwing the bolt. Dactyls, iambics –

the clinch of words – the hidden couplings
in the cased [...]

I spent my schooldays on the east coast of Lincolnshire, in Skegness, where the chilly wind straight from the North Sea did tend to put a damper on picnics a lot of the time. This was part of a whole sequence of seaside poems, and this particular one is just called ‘Picnic’

George, lend a [...]

I love to write mysterious poems. Here’s a favourite from my second book, Midnight Forest.

Winter

Winter crept
through the whispering wood,
hushing fir and oak;
crushed each leaf and froze each web -
but never a word he spoke.

Winter prowled
by the shivering sea,
lifting sand and stone;
nipped each limpet silently -
and then moved on.

Winter raced
down the frozen stream,
catching at his [...]

I am a devotee of thrift shops and goodwill stores and garage sales and yard sales and so on, and have spent hours and hours in these places – I just love them, I can’t exactly say why. But the following poem describes the basement of a goodwill store in the way I’ve seen them [...]

You’ve Ruined My Evening / You’ve Ruined My Life

i would be eight people and then the difficulties vanish
only as one i contain the complications
in a warm house roofed with the rib-cage of an elephant
i pass my grey mornings re-running the reels
and the images are the same but the emphasis shifts
the actors bow gently to me [...]

I don’t introduce myself as a poet if I am at a gathering – it’s an embarrassing category, most people don’t read poetry, most literary people don’t read poetry – but if I’m introduced as such I can’t deny it. On the part of total strangers half or a third my age, there’s a [...]

The Waste Land

III. The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer [...]

National Trust

Bottomless pits. There’s on in Castleton,
and stout upholders of our law and order
one day thought its depth worth wagering on
and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder
and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.

Not even a good flogging made him holler!

O gentlemen, a better way to plumb
the depths of Britain’s dangling a [...]

Essay on Snow

We have been here before, but not often.
With the blue snow lying on the shaded roofs
And the city beyond them
Lying open, miles of it, with no one there -

Untrodden parks and freezing underpasses.
The statuary anonymous, the cobbled chares
Like streams of blackened ice.
There is a bird somewhere. Its voice

Is like chipping an icicle,
Damping the [...]

Follow the Food

adapted for fast movement
hunting in light

one engine stops
another starts

to make surplus sacred
always missing

emotion liquidised
until distracted