This coming Saturday, 11 September, 7.30pm, British Summer Time - I’ll be one of the poets who have recorded a video for the YouTube launch of The Alchemy Spoon, issue 4. The launch link is here.
Author: Matthew Paul
OPOI reviews of James Aitchison and Felicity Sheehy
My two latest one point of interest (OPOI) reviews, of pamphlets by James Aitchison and Felicity Sheehy, for Sphinx are now online, amongst another bumper crop of reviews. I very much enjoyed reading and writing about both of these poets’ poems.
On office machinery and Kath McKay
Old, obsolete office equipment is a fascinating subject to me, since I’ve spent almost all my working life in offices (including my own; well it’s more of a room with a PC in it, but hey ho). When I first started in local government in Kingston in 1992, there were cupboards still full of weird… Continue reading On office machinery and Kath McKay
The poetry of reservoirs
You, my regular reader, may remember that several of my blog posts have been inspired by those of Matthew Stewart. In this case, it’s slightly different: a welcome instance of synchronicity.It must be difficult to be a poet in Yorkshire and not feel a need to write, at least once, about reservoirs. Near where I… Continue reading The poetry of reservoirs
On Patricia Beer and the RNLI
The news from a few days ago that Nigel Farage, the ‘Poundland Enoch Powell’ as Russell Brand memorably called him, had berated the RNLI on social media for providing what he called ‘a migrant taxi service’ across the Channel was of course both fascist flatulence about the value of migrants’ lives and a crass trivialisation… Continue reading On Patricia Beer and the RNLI
Quiet flows the Don
If you’ve read either of my haiku collections, you’ll know I have a fondness for rivers; but then, who doesn’t? Living in the middle of England, fifty-five miles from the nearest coastline, landlock naturally means that I gravitate to rivers and canals. Rotherham is where the Rother ends, at its confluence with the Don.The upstream… Continue reading Quiet flows the Don
Poems on Wild Court
My thanks to Robert Selby for publishing two poems of mine today, over at the Wild Court website, here.
On Brian Jones (no, not that one)
A decade or so ago, I was a member for two or three years of the Twickenham Stanza group of the Poetry Society until it ceased following the closure of Langton’s bookshop, Church Street, in which the group met. The quality of the poems we workshopped was invariably high. Among the members was the fine… Continue reading On Brian Jones (no, not that one)
On football poetry and why it matters
If you dislike football, and QPR and/or England even more, then you probably ought, as Des Lynam used to say, to look away now.I’ve been a football fan almost as far back as I can remember, and in 1973 chose QPR, then newly promoted to the old First Division, as my team. I sometimes wonder… Continue reading On football poetry and why it matters
On Kavanagh, Hughes, Burra and Sisson
A correspondence on haiku and then sonnets led me to dip into Don Paterson’s 1999 anthology 101 Sonnets (Faber). I was pleased to find Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘Inniskeen Road: July Evening’ included. It’s the only poem I’ve ever ‘borrowed’ from – I used the equally punning phrase ‘blooming sun’ in the first poem, concerning a herd… Continue reading On Kavanagh, Hughes, Burra and Sisson
