Other Lives

Last night I whittled down more than 16 lines of a draft to a four line poem. In the end the draft was waffle and the quatrain captured exactly what I wanted to say. It didn't need to be said again. I jotted it down between checking my emails and putting some chips in the oven. I was also listening to a pre-match report on the radio. My wife was upstairs putting our daughter to bed. The revision took place on its own in my mind throughout the day, and perhaps longer, and the actual jotting was spontaneous. It felt good to write though I barely knew I had written it. Momentarily I felt lighter and whole, whatever that means. A number of things coming together, perhaps. Then I left it and got on with making dinner. More recently I am letting myself write the poems I am able to write rather than the ones I want to write, or which I've learned to write. I could write a lot more this way, and feel more authentically myself, though I worry about finding a place to publish them. Might...

Sauna Lie still. This is the cusp of comfortable. One thin towel can’t muffle the hot slats and a mist is pressing on you like cement. You’ve become the confluence of two rivers, one of liquid salt and one of steam, which pour over your bones and work them edgeless – and the tiered box is so crisp and angular, it carves up even light like church windows. You lie perfectly still. You are what flows. Dough A silent accordion she cools her hands to play in the kitchen corner. I try and it seems to writhe against my grip. In her firm press it doesn’t struggle, it flows through the shapes she offers it: she leads but makes the dough an equal partner. Hard stem of the palm is what she works with. Sometimes you can see a medic working to restore a heartbeat: bread needs breath, unspooling yeast needs air. I need that strength of touch, that medium which yields as it strains to rise. So I kiss her hands. John Clegg was born in 1986 and is studying for a PhD at Durham University on the Eastern ...

Grace You’ve been living for this for weeks without knowing it: the moment the house empties like a city in August so completely it forgets you exist. Light withdraws slowly is almost gone before you notice. In the stillness, everything becomes itself: the circle of white plates on the kitchen table the serious chairs that attend them even the roses on the papered walls seem to open a little wider. It looks simple: the glass vase holding whatever is offered – cut flowers, or the thought of them – simple, though not easy this waiting without hunger in the near dark for what you may be about to receive. (From ' Grace ', due to be published by Bloodaxe in October 2011.) Imperative This morning don’t go down to the kitchen in bare feet. Put on your gardening gloves, fetch the dustpan and brush from the cellar and sweep these pieces up quickly but carefully, making sure you get every last sliver from the darkest corners of the room (later they may be held against you). Wrap the frag...

Delighted to get a review in Saturday's Guardian. Archiving it here .