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Alistair Appleton
Sep 10, 20241 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...
331 views
0 comments


Alistair Appleton
May 28, 20242 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 ...
394 views
3 comments


Alistair Appleton
Mar 27, 20242 min read
Allerseelen / Paul Celan
Where to start with Celan? A Holocaust survivor whose pulverising poetry stretched the oppressor's language into transcendental shapes,...
314 views
4 comments


Alistair Appleton
Mar 12, 20241 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...
177 views
2 comments


Alistair Appleton
Mar 5, 20241 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...
594 views
6 comments


Alistair Appleton
Feb 27, 20241 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...
426 views
0 comments


Alistair Appleton
Feb 20, 20242 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 views
9 comments


Alistair Appleton
Feb 13, 20242 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...
314 views
1 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 views
0 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 views
6 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 views
0 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...
1,525 views
8 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...
438 views
6 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...
398 views
4 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...
659 views
3 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...
1,555 views
2 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 views
2 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...
354 views
4 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 views
1 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...
207 views
1 comment
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