Out of the dust
The MS of my new book has gone for editing. Shadow, the tabby kitten and trainee critic, has bitten Tom Paulin's "Winddog". If you had got past the cover, Shadow, you would have discovered that "Winddog" means a fragment of a rainbow.
This unprovoked attack took place during some rare pre-breakfast reading. Usually, I am brushing floors. I would like to claim that this helps to save the planet, and to free hours for poems. In fact, I hate hoovers, and spend the time visiting the old unaffordable pony on the hills.
But we must learn from our betters. Mozart was told by his doctors to ride daily, and obeyed. Then, when Constanze was away, he went to a coffeehouse and sold his horse. A few weeks later he was dead. Never sell your horse.
Still horsed, I am very glad to have a poem in the Winter issue of Poetry Review. I was looking forward to hearing David Harsent read at the launch. Sadly, my planned dash to London has been thwarted by the arrival of 70 kg of steel at the family metal finishing business where I work. I have always chosen jobs which have nothing to do with literature. This does provide subjects, if very little pension. But when you are 50% of the workforce, it is hard to get away in the week.
Then, hunched by the cooker waiting for the slow vegetables, I found my poem "Solo" in the Independent Arts and Books Review (5th January). I was delighted. It is my main aim to smuggle poems out into the wide world. The smuggling train on this occasion was my old friend "Agenda", whose latest issue was reviewed. I had been reading it in the workshop, beside my snatched mugs of weak coffee. It is a very strong issue. It is unfair to pick out writers, but I was especially drawn to a love poem by John Kinsella, a poem humming with insects by Mimi Khalvati, and a compelling article by W.S.Milne on the poetry of Nessie Dunsmuir. I would very much like to read her mining poems.
I was also very happy when "December 25, 12 noon", my small drunken Christmas poem, reeled along on Christmas Day to www.poems.com, Poetry Daily, one of my favourite websites. My late night forays there have led me to some excellent American poets, including Robert Wrigley. The heroic internet magazine Snakeskin, http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/ also includes a generous selection of my poems in the January issue. The poems are in the best of company, as the other work in this issue is outstanding. I especially admire the poems of Gregory Leadbetter, whose work I first saw in "Poetry London". It holds a rare poise between the word and the world, and,I am sure , will be snapped up soon by a publisher. Shadow is already sharpening her teeth.
In view of her reckless dashes across the road, I think we had now better take this chance to wish all our readers a very Happy and unedited New Year.
What follows is not a concrete poem, but what you get when you fall asleep at a keyboard!
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This unprovoked attack took place during some rare pre-breakfast reading. Usually, I am brushing floors. I would like to claim that this helps to save the planet, and to free hours for poems. In fact, I hate hoovers, and spend the time visiting the old unaffordable pony on the hills.
But we must learn from our betters. Mozart was told by his doctors to ride daily, and obeyed. Then, when Constanze was away, he went to a coffeehouse and sold his horse. A few weeks later he was dead. Never sell your horse.
Still horsed, I am very glad to have a poem in the Winter issue of Poetry Review. I was looking forward to hearing David Harsent read at the launch. Sadly, my planned dash to London has been thwarted by the arrival of 70 kg of steel at the family metal finishing business where I work. I have always chosen jobs which have nothing to do with literature. This does provide subjects, if very little pension. But when you are 50% of the workforce, it is hard to get away in the week.
Then, hunched by the cooker waiting for the slow vegetables, I found my poem "Solo" in the Independent Arts and Books Review (5th January). I was delighted. It is my main aim to smuggle poems out into the wide world. The smuggling train on this occasion was my old friend "Agenda", whose latest issue was reviewed. I had been reading it in the workshop, beside my snatched mugs of weak coffee. It is a very strong issue. It is unfair to pick out writers, but I was especially drawn to a love poem by John Kinsella, a poem humming with insects by Mimi Khalvati, and a compelling article by W.S.Milne on the poetry of Nessie Dunsmuir. I would very much like to read her mining poems.
I was also very happy when "December 25, 12 noon", my small drunken Christmas poem, reeled along on Christmas Day to www.poems.com, Poetry Daily, one of my favourite websites. My late night forays there have led me to some excellent American poets, including Robert Wrigley. The heroic internet magazine Snakeskin, http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/ also includes a generous selection of my poems in the January issue. The poems are in the best of company, as the other work in this issue is outstanding. I especially admire the poems of Gregory Leadbetter, whose work I first saw in "Poetry London". It holds a rare poise between the word and the world, and,I am sure , will be snapped up soon by a publisher. Shadow is already sharpening her teeth.
In view of her reckless dashes across the road, I think we had now better take this chance to wish all our readers a very Happy and unedited New Year.
What follows is not a concrete poem, but what you get when you fall asleep at a keyboard!
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