Some Poems & Links to Poems
(The photo above is of the Stapelia pillansii (I think, or some other Stapelia? Suggestions welcome….). Photograph: Isobel Dixon
Listen to recordings of my readings of poems on The Poetry Archive.
Links to poems published on the web can be found directly below.
Please scroll down for the texts of some more poems not available online.
Most of the poems can be found in my collections A Fold in the Map, The Tempest Prognosticator and Bearings (all published by Nine Arches), or in the pamphlet The Leonids (Mariscat). Several of the recent poems below are from my most recent published book, A Whistling of Birds — a collection of poems about nature and travel, also honouring other writers and artists, with some particular tendrils of connection with D.H. Lawrence’s collection Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923). The work has involved a fruitful collaboration with Scottish artist Douglas Robertson, who has created some beautiful illustrations and assemblages as we have both circled around Lawrence’s poems and shared our concern for our natural environment. Twelve illustrations appear in the UK edition and exhibitions are planned in London and further in the UK in 2024 and 2025. Nine Arches published A Whistling of Birds in in the UK in June 2023 and Human & Rousseau published in South Africa in September 2023.
The Landing, about my mother, including poems from The Leonids, will be published by Nine Arches in September 2026.
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LINKS TO PUBLISHED POEMS AVAILABLE ONLINE
On the Poetry Archive, you can hear me reading ‘Plenty’, a poem about water and the lack of it,
for my mother and scattered sisters. ‘Plenty’ has been included in the iGCSE English syllabus.
‘Bede’s Sparrow’, New Statesman
18.5.22
‘Self-Portrait in Sweet Woodruff’, Herbology News
1.5.22
’Sweet Violet’, Bad Lilies, Issue 5
December 2021
‘Threshold’, ‘Hawkweed Burning’ & ‘Our Doubtful Art’, Anthropocene
4.4.21
‘My Sweet Fiorenza’ , The Florentine
March 2021
‘Whereas at Venice’, The Island Review
29.9.20
‘This, Evensong’, The National Poetry Library
24.4.20
‘April Incense’,The National Poetry Library, Poem of the Day
24.4.20
‘Gentians for Carole’ in The Hudson Review, Spring 2020, ‘The British Issue’
23.4.20
‘Matsephe’s Dance’ in the Johannesburg Review of Books
10.4.20
‘On First Spotting a Snake’s Head Fritillary’ on the Places of Poetry map (The Gardens at Dartington Hall, Totnes).
November 2019
Also published in the Places of Poetry anthology (Oneworld) in 2020.
‘The Moving Finger’ on the Places of Poetry map (about my grandfather who grew up in Normanton, near Leeds).
November 2019.
‘The Landing’ in the New Statesman
10.7.19
'In Which the Capercaillie Ceilidhs On' in New Boots and Pantisocracies
22.10.16
'Seville Yellow' from Bearings in The New European
18.10.16
’Cape Indifference’ in Aerodrome
3.10.16
'9 a.m.' from The Leonids, in Aerodrome.
6.9.16
’”A Part of Me is Gone’” from Bearings in the New Statesman
16.8.16
'My Mother's Dress' from 'Notes Towards Nasturtiums' in The Leonids, in The Glasgow Herald
13.8.16
‘That Coyote Moment’ and ‘Messenger’ in Aerodrome
13.5.15
‘Fred’ in the New Statesman
6.1.15
Four poems, including thoughts on Nelson Mandela, Robben Island & the Cradock Four on Writer's Hub
9.12.13
'Spew' on Rozalie Hirs's Vertaallab,
10.6.12
An interview and poems from The Tempest Prognosticator on Matt Merritt's Polyolbion blog
9.1.12
‘A Beautifully Constructed Cocktail’ in Magma 49, edited by Julia Bird
'Beetle, Fish & Fetish' on Essie's Fox's The Virtual Victorian blog
14.7.11
'Moth Storm' on Kathleen Jones's A Writer's Life blog.
12.9.11
Some poems from The Tempest Prognosticator on Michelle McGrane's Peony Moon blog
4.8.11
7 Poems on Poetry International
29.2.04
Certus Incertus
Noon classroom heat, the rhyme a perfect whole
shaped in her head, the air
as heavy as a drape about her
as she stands, the clever one,
her hands pressed hot against her skirt.
Then dumb-show swallowing
and mime. The rapid fire of cocked-up consonants.
The stretching out of time -
A sentence come unstrung. And no escape.
God wove humility into my tongue,
stitched knots into its root:
words made my stumbling blocks
and snares. Both gift and downfall,
so a syllable could catch me unawares
despite the careful path
I’d laid about the difficult.
Alone, a poem was paradise.
Aloud, an ambuscade.
And still my name is treacherous:
the first an easy swim,
a sibilance, soft labial,
and then warm lateral rest.
A stubborn plosive bars the last,
refusing. The mouth’s tough muscle trapped,
a clumsy toad that’s scarred and furrowed
as if mapped with all its failed assaults,
the long embarrassments
as listeners’ lips chew silently,
rehearsing what they think I mean.
Pace! I’ve better words inside than these –
gladly abandon sound bytes
and embrace the peace of foolscap,
the pleasure of a faintly humming screen.
From A Fold in the Map, published by Nine Arches in the UK and Jacana in South Africa
Meet My Father
Meet my father, who refuses food –
pecks at it like a bird or not at all –
the beard disguising his thin cheeks.
This, for a man whose appetite was legend,
hoovering up the scraps his daughters couldn’t eat.
The dustbin man, we joked.
And here he is, trailing his fork
through food we’ve laboured to make soft,
delicious, sweet. Too salty, or too tough,
it tastes of nothing, makes him choke,
he keeps insisting, stubbornly.
In truth, the logic’s clear. His very life
is bitter and the spice it lacks is hope.
He wants to stop. Why do we keep on
spooning dust and ashes down his throat?
From A Fold in the Map, published by Nine Arches in the UK and Jacana in South Africa