New anthology

There's now an anthology of new poems out by The Five, the group of poets who have contributed many of the poems on this site. In the past we've promoted live readings by the group. There are going to be more this year.

They first published together in the late 1970s and appeared with a band called Candle Factory, whose single album, Nightshift, now fetches largish sums on e-bay. They published a slim anthology then - and many years later, this is their second collection  after "five life-times of beach-combing, of spiritual highs and lows, of taking less-travelled paths".

The new book Five Squared, edited by Simon Peter Iredale, is available from lulu.com for £12.50 It has 25 poems. One or two have appeared here - but most have not.

The five are Max Butcher, Colin Gibson, Simon Peter Iredale, Tom Rudge and Chris Warren.

Christmas morning

Curled together
on Christmas morning
we're the comma
in the year
an apostrophe
of mutual possession
a quote mark that says
the conversation is ended
and is beginning anew

Tom Rudge, Christmas 2011
Copyright: By application


Last by this writer

Suggest a Dylan lyric..

I've been trying to find an appropriate Bob Dylan lyric - words that stand out on the page as a poem in their own right. Dylan is meant to be the great lyricist, the contemporary song writer about whom dissertations have been written. Indeed sometimes he wrote poetry without songs - although unlike Leonard Cohen he was not a poet first and foremost. I confess - I have found the search difficult.

Any suggestions?

Galactic Lovepoem

Some video has emerged on Youtube of Adrian Henri and Liverpool Scene (a rock poetry band) performing live. This is Galactic Lovepoem

Spring

Look out for Spring,

the life underground,
the life underground.
The thawing and the overflow.
Oh early, early in the morning
we’ll go.

Seven shades of green
are painted on your door,
painted on your door,
the field alive under the snow.
Oh early, early in the morning.
we’ll go.

Oh world of rooftops,
hearing one field song.
The walk in raincoats,
the wait for Easter, Tom.
We are awake or waking,
awake or waking from.
Here that day comes.

The Innocence Mission 
from the album my room in the trees

Copyright: The Innocence Mission
Reproduced with permission

Last lyric by this artist

Listen here:

Park and ride

Riding the Metropolitan
Railway I think of Betjeman
rhapsodist of suburban dreams
where golden ochred autumn trees
decorate fading maisonettes
Here I'm a ghost whose journey's past
parallel lives I might have chanced
hanging, like prunes, from every branch
Hillingdon, Northwood, Amersham,
emptied now of aunts, friends, gran,
echo with part-remembered plans

Past Harrow, men play ball on a field
a wasteland has brambles and a horse
near Ickenham an old house in a park
a crumbling Middle Saxon manor
then a station amid half-timbered
homes

here sounds the motorway's call

Tom Rudge, Devon
Copyright: By application


Last poem by this writer

Summoned By Bells - John Betjeman