Poems
‘My Dad has decided’
we’re going to the moon. He walks around the bedroom in his socks while we try to guess what we’re supposed to do next. We’re supposed to know his thoughts, to know about the moon, even though he hasn’t told us. He expects us to read his mind. When I question him he turns on…
Susanna Harding
‘Long Love’
He laced up his sneakers and left for a jog as raccoons stumbled from trash cans back to the woods at dawn. Soon the house was awake. His wife fixing lunches, boys slurping oatmeal. He raced the three boys to the bus and walked back home whistling and wondering if today was a day for…
JaneSchulman
‘You’ve got potential, baby’
Sometimes it’s a battery or a newly discovered stem cell. A vaccine in early trials. The half-second of still before the referee’s whistle. Tiny hands. Or it’s an explosion, a chemical trigger that pushes molecules from here to there. A release of pure energy in a too-small space. Other times it’s the short dash after…
Niall Firth
‘Concentrating, When One Ought Not’
I should have brought a clipboard. Note: four creases in the pillows. Note: the sides of wardrobes and desk-lamps bent back in a night not quite black enough: tough buffer-zones in a nesting-box. There are twelve bars fizzing on the surface of a clock that imply the time. Note: a touch, seeking a reach, a…
Eley Williams
‘Hospital Visitors’
A sharp gust of river air makes me look up, sensing some commotion at the distant end of the corridor. Wild and heedless, pressing towards me full of fathomless intent, striped by the light from high-vaulted windows, knocking soft cartilage against the walls, three mud-flecked swans smelling of tundra dip and lift their fearsome, faintly…
Peter Wise
‘Thirteen’
There are ginger toms on the fire escape and curtains tied in knots – nine flights up your cigarette ash is burning white and a guy in the corner one they forgot – a puppeteer of memory doesn’t have a clue – this could be New York, a sketch pad in the Hotel Chelsea and…
NicolaBray
‘Blue Peninsula’
For Joseph Cornell Personally I like the hotel’s Spartan décor, the parakeet in the lobby, the way ships salvage has been reused to give the place a nautical air; the fishing net over the windows, for example, which prevents guests from falling out. Every room has a view of the Blue Peninsula. It’s the parrot…
SimonCollings
‘Tunnelling-out’
Instead let me tell you how to present yourself at all times. With me? Yes. Embrace your inner standing still. The shadows? They’ll stare, they’ll stare. Sweetheart, clay- eyes, you with the sootfall heart. Eat. More. Rocket. Its tinselly fronds will nourish. Redemption Is lying with her feet up in the next road, the moles,…
Pam Thompson
‘She Leaves’
a hollow space, without plump cushions snug as velvety moles, or her clay lamp that dappled the ceiling with shadows, where red and green wires now blast through a gash in the plasterwork like the WHAAM! of a pop art rocket. I slam tall shutters back on themselves and a wane light embraces the dark…
Olivia Dawson
‘A History of Rockets’
Let me tell you this: history is a nonsense. They blanked me out of their books, their stories, their minuscule minds but here is the truth: Take a pinch of stolen black powder, a man in a moon, a love of the light and the blackest of nights – this is the real history of…
Stephanie‘A Sonnet for Clay Eaters’
Clay crushed under calloused feet and cajoled by hopeful hands is hurled into moulds and sun baked near cottonwood trees. And so, parched bricks are made, one on top another, to build a home. You squat inside, let terra red shadows swaddle your born-bright who stares at you as if seeing God. She pitches arias…
Clare Hepworth-Wain‘Scientists Count Whales From Space’
At night we listen to the crackle of antennae as we track populations. 10 million species and then these slow, shallow swimmers, pale against wavelengths. Image analysis shows us 55 probable, 23 possible pixels driven to extinction. We should monitor more. On this screen where lost things are un-found, automated systems surprise us with…
Nichola May
Podcast: Hannah Lowe reads from ‘Chick’ and a new poem
Last term, Hannah Lowe headlined our Autumn term launch party and read from her debut collection, Chick, where she thrilled the crowd with tales of misadventure from her childhood and illuminated the secret life of her enigmatic, card-playing father. And now, with this podcast, we re-present the whole reading in all its glory. If you…
Will Barrett (Poetry School)
‘On the Borders of DTs’
(from The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas) It’s a wild wet day in this tided town and it’s too cold to write. Scarlet ants crawl from the holes in the rocks onto my idle hand. The wind’s blowing hair across my face. I stare from this muddied edge at the shapes of rocks carved in…
Maggie Sawkins
How I Did It: ‘Fat Dandy’
Most people know me as a “performance poet”. I don’t like the term, it’s rather restrictive and plenty of what I write ends up in books, not on stage. Sound is very important though. I want the poem to sound good, to rattle off the tongue, or fall on the ear like a big, soft…
Luke Wright
‘The Summer our Father Sailed the English Channel’
The summer our father sailed the English Channel, we rolled packets of Polos into smooth white paper tubes. My sister used her felt tip pens to write EMERGENCY MINTS down each bony spine. You were our polar explorer, arctic adventurer. We charted your route, coloured the curved waves of land, solid blue slab of sea….
Karen Jane Cannon
‘The Certainty of Snow’
i.m.o. Dave Knightley First snow of the New Year and, as ever, the cautious and wary will make as if for a siege; check supplies, tune in for updates, and tut at carefree children who shriek just with the thrill of it. Soon the path to our front door will heave, as laden as…
Babs‘The Time-Traveller Writes’
As I promised you, time can be re-written: this letter from old age to youth, to tell just how you’ll never know or need to write to warn a younger self than one who writes to you. No need, then, to be a different man: begin as if you knew to tread a surer…
Paul Armitage‘Learning to Count’
Seven, eight you’re fucking late she says. Hours we waited. Then he says something like Oh, for Chrissake and they both go on until doors slam bangbang! Don’t pry. Don’t spy. Never ask why he was late. One, two buckle my seatbelt. Oh. There’s no seatbelt. (This is years ago.) Watch the road! You’ll…
CathyDreyer
How I Did It: ‘The Shipwrecked House II’
I wrote ‘The Shipwrecked House II’ at my grandmother’s funeral. I know this because this image is my contribution to her funeral book. A few weeks later I met Tom Chivers for the first time to discuss my yet untitled collection. I wanted to go with ‘Hook’ in memory of my grandmother (her maiden name)…
Claire Trevien
Podcast: James Brookes reads from ‘Sins of the Leopard’
Last term, Poetry School tutor James Brookes co-headlined our Autumn launch party with this wintery tranche of poems from his debut collection, the Dylan Thomas Prize-nominated, Sins of the Leopard, which we are delighted to present to you now. James will also be teaching an Online Feedback Course for us this Spring, so if you…
Poetry School
‘King Kong’
On my 8th birthday, just after the 1976 release of King Kong Aunt Sarah gave me a creature – a rubber toy the size of a two litre bottle of Coca-Cola, as fake as the story, all the stories she used to tell me about justice and democracy punishment and freedom the sins of men…
Albeniz Clayton
How I Did It: ‘As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent / you asked for the latest party’
This is the last poem that made it into my new book, just as the publishers and printers were calling time. It’s a definite Summer of 2013 snapshot. When I wrote it, all these things were in the air: the David Bowie Is exhibition at the V&A; BOWIEOKE (David Bowie karaoke) at The Betsy Trotwood,…
Julia Bird (Poetry School Staff)
How I Did It: ‘Violet-among-the-Harpsichord’
I was commissioned by Claire Trévien to write a new poem for her Penning Perfumes Christmas Special. In the Penning Perfumes projects you are sent a mystery perfume to write a poem about. Once you’ve completed the poem, the scent is revealed to you. The idea is that you are able to work with the…
Amy Key
‘Levelling Song’
I am the new crow laureate of the empire state, perched on a cushion at the right hand of the governor, by his appointment, a bard-bird of sorts; diamonds sparkling in my claws, I wear a ruby crown, and sing a song so strong it rivals Niagara’s electrifying roar, saving millions for Albany; I sing…
Lisa Bellamy