In The Poetry

The Hawk

On Sunday the hawk fell on Bigging
And a chicken screamed
Lost in its own little snowstorm.
And on Monday he fell on the moor
And the Field Club
Raised a hundred silent prisms.
And on Tuesday he fell on the hill
And the happy lamb
Never knew why the loud collie straddled him.
And on Wednesday he fell on a bush
And the [...]

Serpentine

Those buried lidless eyes can see
the infra-red heat of my blood.

I feel the crack, the whisper
as vertebrae ripple and curve.

Days of absolute stillness.
I sleep early and well.

His rare violent hunger,
a passion for the impossible.

He will dislocate his jaw
to hold it.

My fingers trace the realignment
as things fall back into place.

Each season, a sloughed skin
intensifies the colours [...]

This poem is called ‘Flamingo Watching, and it was written at a time when I thought that the ‘subtle’ needed defending, in poetry, I felt that, anything artful or subtle or sophisticated or elaborate or elaborated was suspect. It seems like things had to be rather plain and blunt and straightforward and, and chunky [...]

This is a poem dating from 1984.

Prelude to a New Fin-de-Si

Blunden: It is odd but one or two of those which seem to me to cover all I’ve got to say in a way [Interviewer: yes] have come without any modification afterwards. Another is called ‘Report on Experience’.

Interviewer: I was going to mention just that poem – this was obviously a poem where you were [...]

In the 1920s before the dangers of radium were known it was used in all kinds of things from children’s toys to luminous paint. And this is the story of some women who worked in a New Jersey factory making clock faces.

The Innocence of Radium

With a head full of Swiss clockmakers,
she took a job at [...]

This is called ‘Red Boots On’. It has been set to music, it’s a very stomp-like little poem, but almost too much so for setting to music, really, you need a bit more freedom, I think, as a composer for these things to do a bit of portamento but this is pretty emphatic in its [...]

A Sight for Sore Eyes

They wrap mountains round my eyes,
they say ‘look’ and it’s all what they say
where the colour, that’s another word is
deepest blue, and that’s the colour of
the wind, blowing this way, warm and dry
coming from the mountains, visibly.

I have eyes in the back of my neck
too, the sun is mumbling the day’s [...]

Mr. Bleaney

‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.’ Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,

Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. ‘Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.’
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook

Behind the door, [...]

How we use the oral traditions to talk about politics, talk about love, talk about all sorts of things…

Song Of Chickens

Master, you talked with bows,
Arrows and catapults once
Your hands steaming with hawk blood
To protect your chicken.

Why do you talk with knives now,
Your hands teeming with eggshells
And hot blood from your own chicken?
Is it to impress [...]