Other Lives

My new pamphlet 'Spring Journal' has just been published by Rack Press and will be available to order on 9th January from the Rack Press Poetry website or to buy directly (at a later date) at the London Review Bookshop, Bury Place, London WC1. Other poets published in Rack's latest series of pamphlets are Denise Saul , Martina Evans , and Michele Roberts . The launch is on Thursday 26th January, 18.30 - 21.00 (readings from 19.00), at The Marchmont Centre, 62 Marchmont Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1AB. Admission is free and refreshments will be provided.

January Tony Hoagland, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty Gillian Clarke, A Recipe for Water (reread) Sinead Morrisey, The State of the Prisons (reread) Tony Hoagland, What Narcissism Means To Me February Ian Hamilton, Collected Poems Jo Shapcott, Of Mutability Stevie Smith, Selected Poems (reread) Jo Shapcott, Electroplating the Baby (reread) Robert Hass, The Apple Trees at Olema: New & Selected Poems Adam Zagajewski, Mysticism for Beginners (reread) Adam Zagajewski, Canvas (reread) Robert Creeley, Collected Poems 1945-75 March Robert Hass, The Apple Trees at Olema: New & Selected Poems (contd.) Robert Creeley, Collected Poems 1945-75 (contd.) Robert Wells, Lusus Geoffrey Hill, Without Title (reread) Adam Zagajewski, Eternal Enemies Adam Zagajewski, Without End: New & Selected Poems David Harsent, Night Charles Simic, A Wedding in Hell April Christopher Reid, A Scattering (reread) The Best American Poetry 1998, ed. John Hollander Charles Boyle, House of Cards...

September I sit in the kitchen, under a thinning calendar. At this time of year I’m always too tired to write. Outside, the weak, midafternoon sunlight balances on shadow-stilts. A bee – perhaps the last – passes slowly over the dried out honeysuckle; lands. Stumbling from stamen to stamen, it adds, even now, bullion to the panniers strapped to its sides. ©2011 Dan Wyke

I am delighted to be able to post two poems from Alan Morrison's latest book, Captive Dragons/ The Shadow Thorns - Poems from the Mill View Residency 2008-11 by Alan Morrison. This book incorporates an epic poem on the subject of mental illness and its perception throughout the ages, tackling thorny issues such as psychosis and suicide through a series of 35 Cantos exploring different periods, persons and approaches to the psychiatric and social treatment of mental illness. A Laingian sensibility drives towards some uncomfortable speculations as to 'mental illness' as, in part, a socio-political construct. The Shadow Thorns ( from which these poems are taken) is a sequence of smaller poems, each a study of composites of various inpatients encountered by the author during his three year voluntary poetry workshop residency at Mill View psychiatric hospital in Hove. Flo of the solitudes Flo’s patron of the moment’s immersion, Timelessly lit in a pool of her own Out-pouring, h...

A Question About Fog Did it drive the cattle down from the hill in search of a visible world, or did they use it for camouflage, for this infiltration of our human terrain, these gardens and metalled roads on which they’ve appeared by surprise this morning, sudden, unblinking, innocent, burly, a sign of what’s kept on the outskirts, what’s never discussed, silent apart from the hoof-falls, the muffled flop of their dung? Martin Mooney was born in Belfast and has worked as a civil servant, creative writing teacher, arts administrator and publican. As well as poetry, he has published short fiction, reviews, critical articles and cultural commentary in Irish and British periodicals. Mooney has collaborated with visual artists on a number of site-specific projects, and with composer Ian Wilson on Near the Western Necropolis for mezzo soprano and chamber orchestra. He has also adapted texts by Shakespeare, Sheridan and Ionescu for physical theatre companies in the north of Ireland. Mooney i...

To help cope with the post-NPD comedown, I'm delighted to be able to post two poems by Claire Trevien. Love from, On my wall I pinned the postcards you sent me from Malta, Ibiza, Gomera, Greece . . . My fingers jumped from pools of fluorescent water to cats haunting crusty archways. I used to pine at your absence — an idea — as I fingered those battered papers haunting my wall. Each picture was your face watered down by time, even the stamps smiling from their contained box. My fingers would trace the images from the cards until they unpinned. Once, you gave me Madrid, a water fountain, but your words failed. My haunt would always be wrong: you’d pinpoint a boulevard rather than the street it was (or water it down to a lane) and your signature varied from “your father” to “Joel”. I sent its crumbs to haunt the wind, but eventually my fingers chased those scattered scraps pinned inside bins, imprinted, or sailing watery grass. I rescued my wronged address from the pond and the litte...