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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...
Alistair Appleton
Sep 10, 20241 min read
351 views
0 comments


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 ...
Alistair Appleton
May 28, 20242 min read
396 views
3 comments


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


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


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...
Alistair Appleton
Mar 5, 20241 min read
607 views
6 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Feb 27, 20241 min read
428 views
0 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Feb 20, 20242 min read
287 views
9 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Feb 13, 20242 min read
315 views
1 comment


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...
Alistair Appleton
May 6, 20232 min read
272 views
0 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Apr 19, 20232 min read
237 views
6 comments


Moment / Wisława Szymborska
translated from Polish by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh This beautiful poem was suggested by Mindsprings regular Mechteld-Hanna...
Alistair Appleton
Apr 10, 20232 min read
259 views
0 comments


'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...
Alistair Appleton
Feb 8, 20232 min read
1,553 views
8 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Dec 15, 20222 min read
440 views
6 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Nov 27, 20221 min read
403 views
4 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Nov 2, 20221 min read
683 views
3 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Aug 15, 20222 min read
1,602 views
2 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Jul 12, 20221 min read
202 views
2 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Jul 4, 20221 min read
428 views
4 comments


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...
Alistair Appleton
Jun 27, 20221 min read
215 views
1 comment


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...
Alistair Appleton
May 30, 20221 min read
210 views
1 comment
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