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Alistair Appleton
Sep 101 min read
We Two Boys together Clinging /Walt Whitman
I promised myself to read more Walt Whitman this month. I always had a slight allergy to his loose-limbed lines but inspired by my visit...
188 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
May 282 min read
Kindness / Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye is an American-Palestinian poet who lives in San Antonio. Her poetry is much garlanded and she has been Young People’s ...
381 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
Mar 272 min read
Allerseelen / Paul Celan
Where to start with Celan? A Holocaust survivor whose pulverising poetry stretched the oppressor's language into transcendental shapes,...
278 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
Mar 121 min read
from XIVLINERS / Tom Raworth
I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the English (post?) modernist poet, Tom Rawoth back in 1990 when he was midway writing his great...
176 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Mar 51 min read
Symbiosis / Em Gray
Em Gray is a neurodivergent poet from Brighton and this haptic, ticklish poem was commended in the Forward Prize this year. Simple as it...
489 views6 comments
Alistair Appleton
Feb 271 min read
Eliza / Liz Berry
This beautiful Queen-Mab-like poem is from Liz Berry's collection Home Child describing the life of a 12-year-old orphan, Eliza Showell...
424 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Feb 202 min read
from Gravity's Rainbow / Thomas Pynchon
GR is, of course, not a poem. It's a 900-page novel. Fifty years old this year. But I was so bruised, amused, amazed by it that I wanted...
287 views9 comments
Alistair Appleton
Feb 132 min read
Oh Do You Know the Flower Man / Kizziah Burton
Kizziah Burton lives and works in Hollywood. And this poem - shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2024 - is awash with florescence. And...
305 views1 comment
Alistair Appleton
May 6, 20232 min read
Coal Sarcophagus/William Haas
I don't usually care for prose-poems but there are, of course, some masterpieces. (Rimbaud, par example). But I have been really enjoying...
272 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Apr 19, 20232 min read
Apertura d'ali (Wingspan) / Bartolo Cattafi
Cattafi was one of the generation of post-war Italian poets I was inspired to read at university in the 1980s. He lived through the...
237 views6 comments
Alistair Appleton
Apr 10, 20232 min read
Moment / Wisława Szymborska
translated from Polish by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh This beautiful poem was suggested by Mindsprings regular Mechteld-Hanna...
259 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
Feb 8, 20232 min read
'December 18th' / Anne Sexton
So here's a muscular, sexy poem from Anne Sexton for the beginning of Spring. It's the last poem in her 1969 sequence "Eighteen Days...
1,476 views8 comments
Alistair Appleton
Dec 15, 20222 min read
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...
430 views6 comments
Alistair Appleton
Nov 27, 20221 min read
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...
386 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
Nov 2, 20221 min read
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...
627 views3 comments
Alistair Appleton
Aug 15, 20222 min read
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...
1,431 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jul 12, 20221 min read
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...
202 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jul 4, 20221 min read
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...
271 views4 comments
Alistair Appleton
Jun 27, 20221 min read
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...
213 views1 comment
Alistair Appleton
May 30, 20221 min read
Lana Turner Has Collapsed / Frank O'Hara
I love Frank O'Hara's poetry and I wrote an IG post on his birthday a few months ago. "One of the most delicious and intoxicating poets I...
194 views1 comment
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