Again in the Black Cloud / J.H. Prynne
I finally feel inspired to post a poem from one of my favourite poets of all time, Jeremy Prynne. I've written about my fascination with...
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Alistair Appleton
- Nov 27, 2022
- 1 min
Love / Czesław Miłosz
I've had Miłosz' Collected poems sitting on my shelf for decades and just fished that out this evening. He was writing this poem in the...
310 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Nov 2, 2022
- 1 min
A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford/ Derek Mahon
This poem by Mahon is a miracle. A shed in Ireland, abandoned during the Civil War in the 1920s, has been home for fifty years to a...
299 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Oct 18, 2022
- 2 min
A Bird In the House / Robin Blaser
This poem, by the modernist San Francisco poet, Robin Blaser is the source of the word "otherous" (in the very first line) which we...
248 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Sep 5, 2022
- 1 min
Paul Hoover / House of Cedar, Rafters of Fir
Hoover is not a poet I’m familiar with but another that I discovered on the excellent Poetry Foundation app. He is riffing on the imagery...
189 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Aug 15, 2022
- 2 min
From "Out on the lawn, I lie in bed" / WH Auden
A very Audenesque Auden poem from 1933 that undercuts the dreamy, chummy pastoral of the first few stanzas with an unsettling meditation...
282 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Aug 2, 2022
- 1 min
From “Tintern Abbey” / William Wordsworth
I loved Wordsworth when I studied him as a Romantic teenager at school. And then was rather abashed in the very postmodern University...
204 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jul 19, 2022
- 1 min
The Cold Heaven / WB Yeats
On a very hot week in the UK, here is a deliciously cold poem. One of my favourites from Yeats, it is filled with dazzling phrases -...
263 views8 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jul 12, 2022
- 1 min
Adlestrop / Edward Thomas
Kirsty and I were travelling back from Holy Isle, crossing Scotland from Glasgow to Edinburgh on the train. We were talking poems. And we...
197 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jul 4, 2022
- 1 min
Prayer / Carol Ann Duffy
This is a beautiful sonnet from the erstwhile UK Poet Laureate. In a 'faithless' world prayers come in all sorts of forms. I particularly...
226 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jun 27, 2022
- 1 min
Biology / Stephen O'Connor
I came across this short poem on the excellent Poetry Foundation app which randomly selects a poem for your pleasure. Stephen O'Connor is...
204 views1 comment
Alistair Appleton
- Jun 20, 2022
- 2 min
The Swan / Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is the best-selling poet in America by a long shot. And her life, mostly in Provincetown, Massachusetts but in her last years...
363 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jun 13, 2022
- 1 min
Thunder / Elizabeth Bishop
I love Elizabeth Bishop's poetry. The Moose and The Sandpiper are both masterpieces. But I came across this uncollected sonnet of hers...
200 views8 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jun 6, 2022
- 1 min
Weeds / Maureen N. McLane
I came across this poem in the London Review of Books (which is the source of much of my knowledge about the world, but not often poetic...
139 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
- May 30, 2022
- 1 min