Matthew Paul: Poetry & Stuff

The Last Corinthians, Crooked Spire Press, 2025, poetry collection, available to buy here.

Praise for The Last Corinthians:

‘Matthew Paul has a painter’s eye for colour and vivid detail. The poems in The Last Corinthians are exquisitely wrought and often hilarious. This is an expansive, open-hearted and tender collection populated by characters who settle in and stay in the memory. This is wonderful writing.’
– Vanessa Lampert

‘There’s an exhilarating range of work in this collection and whether writing about the Guildford bombings, Mike Yarwood, the UK’s first roadhouse–nightclub at the southern end of the Kingston by-pass, or the birth of his child, Matthew Paul writes with an unflinching clarity, an attentiveness to language and a sureness of touch that makes The Last Corinthians a sheer pleasure to read.’
– Cliff Yates

‘Matthew Paul turns his prodigious talents to excavate the stories of people who have made up the fabric of this country. Paul’s skills as a poet – his precise use of words and images; his deft syntax and phrasing – combine with his meticulous care as an archivist to allow the voices from our collective past to sing. A necessary book for our times, this collection is a poignant record of those who have slipped into the shadows of history.’
– Shash Trevett

‘[. . .] consummate skill on display [ . . .] It all adds up to an exceptionally well-crafted collection.’
– Hamish Ironside, Acumen

‘A delightful book, imbued with warmth and love.’
– Mary Mulholland, The Alchemy Spoon

‘The poems [. . .] are like little coils of super-8 film which have been found by chance and restored with care, and we watch them to see ourselves grow up and grow old.’
– Philip Rush

‘These vivid narrative poems merge precise historical details with emotional charge – to a place or a person – to illuminate the contemporary world. Matthew Paul is the Al Stewart of poetry!’
– Jeremy Worman

Reviewed by Ali Thurm here.
Reviewed by Greg Freeman for Write Out Loud here.
Reviewed by Jane Routh for The Friday Poem here.
Reviewed by Philip Rush here.
Reviewed by Rowena Somerville for The High Window here.

*

The Evening Entertainment, Eyewear Publishing, 2017, poetry collection, available to buy here.

Praise for The Evening Entertainment:

‘Whether you’re looking for something for the commute or for the weekend, these delightful, dazzling poems will titillate even the most jaded palate.’
– Clare Pollard

Reviewed by Greg Freeman for Write Out Loud here.
Reviewed by Billy Mills here.
Reviewed by Julie Mellor here.

*

The Lammas Lands, Snapshot Press, 2015, haiku and senryu collection, available to buy here. Honourable Mention in the Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for distinguished books in 2015. Here are the judges’ comments:

A powerful sense of solitude pervades Matthew Paul’s collection of haiku, The Lammas Lands, with imagery drawn from his native England. Often it is a bleak landscape he describes, one of frost on brambles and permutations of a cold weather sun, with various species of birds offering points of life or flashes of color. Paul’s deep sensitivity to his natural surrounds is readily apparent in these deft haiku that frequently describe the flora and fauna of his homeland. “Lammas” references the time of the first wheat harvest in August, with the end of summer ushering in the colder seasons. It is an apt title since the authorial presence in these poems is a keen observer who feels the necessity of survival in the natural world, as living creatures hunker down for the approaching winter, a time of hibernation or migration for many animals, and perhaps one of retreat for humans. The author himself communicates a profound sense of isolation, which feels both personal and metaphysical, in references to “slipping unnoticed,” or to a one-man band that “strums to no one,” or to a pavement-sweeper that “waits for me to pass.” Other poems that juxtapose the human-made with natural processes of erosion or decay reinforce that vulnerability and aloneness and foreshadow the inevitable fall of even the grandest structure:

the holes that insects
have bored in the megalith
winter wind

cobweb morning
the merest outline
of ship funnels

In other moments, light counterbalances the prevailing darkness when Paul calls us back to the possibility of future harvests and the cyclical nature of death and rebirth with the seasons:

the last sun
across the lammas lands
perennial asters

This collection’s potency lies in the evocative pairings of natural species in scenes that capture their familiar resonance for the author — and in the sense of isolation evoked by these native landscapes which is deeply realized in the reader.

Reviewed by Caroline Gourlay for Modern Haiku here.

*

The Regulars, Snapshot Press, 2006, haiku and senryu collection, available to buy here.

Reviewed by Michael Dylan Welch for Modern Haiku here.

*

Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku, Snapshot Press, 2008 – anthology co-written/co-edited with John Barlow, available to buy here. Chosen by Stephen Moss in the Guardian among his science and nature books of the year in 2008 here.

Reviewed by Paul Miller for Modern Haiku here.
Reviewed by Carole MacRury for Frogpond here.

*

I was one of the 12 contributors of haiku in Off the Beaten Track, Boatwhistle Books, 2016, available to buy here.

Reviewed by Rachel Hadas in the Times Literary Supplement here.

*

A selection of my nature haiku was included in Where the River Goes, ed. Allan Burns, Snapshot Press, 2013, available to buy here.

Reviewed by Scott Mason for Frogpond here. 

*

If you would like a signed copy of any of these books, please get in touch with me via the ‘Contact’ page, here.