The Five Live!

The Five are live in Derbyshire next Sunday - September 16th 2018.

The event is taking place at 6 pm at Christ Church Parish Church, Litton. Derbyshire. SK17 8RA

Domenico's Gate

Domenico's Gate is the new book of poems by Simon Iredale.

The book spans all Simon's adult life and rages in topic from Oedipus to the Great Birmingham Bin Strike. Simon Iredale is one of those writers who carry great learning lightly. Follow the trail of his poems on this site and you find writing that's a great first read - but well worth extra time spent in pursuit of  the writer's mind.

In Domenico's Gate you will find a whole new set of Simon Iredale's poems. It can be found at:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Domenicos-Gate-Selected-Simon-Iredale/dp/1973564149/

The Riding Man

The picture is
Of a young man, attempting
To ride a horse.
His pose is strained, half
Crouched in the saddle, painfully
Aware of being observed.
I am told, by those
That should know, that
This is me at twenty-three.
But since then every
Cell in this fragile human
Form has been altered by
Nature's alchemy.
And if the self is an
Emergent property of time
And 'I' am only 'I' through the
Chance concatenations of
Fitful experience, then between
The one who rides and the
One who turns the paper
In transient hands, there
Is a great gulf fixed which
Cannot be made up by
Memory, story spinning or
Unwitting invention.
When one idol falls, another
Irresistibly rises in its place.
Some new stranger may yet
Remark on this dying moment
Who shares my face.

Simon Peter Iredale
Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale

Last poem by this writer

Radiance Festival

On Saturday - May 26th - members of The Five will be reading at the Radiance Festival at St Matthew's Church, Church Hill, Walsall, UK. WS1 3DG


Radiance is described as a Christian Spirituality Fair. Admission is £5 for the day, running from 10am to 3.30pm.

Chris Warren, Colin Gibson and Simon Iredale, of The Five, are scheduled to read at 11.45am.


Chris Warren will also be leading a workshop on "poetry and prayer" during the day.

The Five first wrote and read together as students in 1977 and reconvened five years ago. Their latest anthology is Five Squared.

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.

The Waiting Room

This is where you come, nursing

your dearest fears.

Those that, once on a time, in

the country of the healthy, you

would have dismissed with a smile

turning to your latest love.

Yet, like an animal that follows you

home, they wheedled their way

into your sick affection.

Now, casting their speckled

skin they are revealed

for what they are – loathsome,

predatory, implacable - the

many faces of hurt.

Patient and passive, our

lives in parenthesis, we wait

for someone to call our name.

Though we sit side by

side, we are not companions, each

languishes in their own solitude,

our eyes do not meet.

No one’s file of words bears

exactly the same judgment, illness

is as distinctive as a laugh.

We shall return here like sad

comets every three months, until

some vagary of gravity spins

us off, out, onto a path for which

there is no return.

Simon Peter Iredale

Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale

Last poem by this writer

At the Bar

First position comes naturally,

the body equipoised, tranquil.

The expression is one of unrelenting

surprise, eye fixed and gawking.

The corner of the mouth turned down

in disappointment, disapproval?

How can your world always fail

to live up to expectation?

Second position advances the thigh,

the knee bending backwards, ankle

extending each flexed toe tip.

Often the leg is held with a gesture

of suspense before with effortless

elegance, the foot is planted.

The body glides and the cocked

eye sweeps the matted earth.

Third and fourth positions are

accomplished in a swift lunge, the

body following the stabbing head.

Here, pursuing a hapless insect,

motion verges on an abrupt jeté.

Comb and wattles flutter red

warning as the beak snaps shut.

The glazed eye winks satisfaction.

Fifth and sixth positions are lost

in the straw, grand plié, the feathered

rump descends, neck ruffles raised.

Cruel beak in a gape, eye staring,

a primeval chatter wells up through

the lipless mouth, shriller and more

raucous, shaking the roost, until

a great calm – and an egg!

Simon Peter Iredale

Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale

Last poem by this writer

The Bee Blog

Simon Iredale, a regular contributor to this site, has started his own blog, The Bee Blog.

He says: This blog follows my amateur efforts at bee-keeping through the medium of poetry and prose. They are a source of contemplation since they fill you with a kind of wonder - human beings need wonder!

An appearance in Chesterfield

Four writers who have contributed new work to this site will be leading an evening of poetry on Sunday June 28th in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, UK.

It's at 6pm at the Central Methodist Church, 38 Saltergate, Chesterfield, S40 1UH. Admission is free.

Originally and many years ago known as The Five, Colin Gibson, Simon Iredale, Tom Rudge and Christopher Warren will be presenting some of their work, old and new.

The End of the World, Again

Some said the world would end with fire,

an incandescent cook-out to which all were invited.

Churchmen in waking dreams and night sweats

felt the flames licking their toes and knew

themselves marked for a toasting.

To the medieval mind, floods were another option

(myth offered a precedent), not so showy as combustion

yet they saw the hovel overtop the king’s towers and

rats in velvet breeches vainly bite for the highest place.

Apt too, that, guilt-ridden, they should choke - prince,

bishop and country clown - on their own slops.

Then, when the crystalline firmament was no longer lit

by gods’ or demons’ candles, and fear was not fixed

by the curve of the sky, a fresh fascination.

From the other side of heaven, mountains bowled

like monstrous googlies, gravity’s wrecking balls

swinging round to pulverize and eclipse.

This one would run and run, a lucky bag

for film makers and a truly poncy post-modern terror.

Not divine justice grinding out calamity’s small

change but random and indifferent, humanity

a cosmic road kill, pancaked on the galactic

highway, not noticed therefore not remembered.

But somehow such catastrophe does not satisfy

there is too much scope for panic.

We shall not see the plasma screen readout

(supplied at public expense) counting us down

to chaos, nor the victims of celebrity hurried

underground, tragic pose rehearsed and intact.

Perhaps some silent technology few understand, with

particles invisible, will work up our finale.

A misplaced number in a lab, an enthusiast’s

oversight will calculate our sum and rule it under.

When we all blink out or gurgle down a black

hole what we shall hear last will not be sermons,

threats or maledictions but the soothing

sound of official blandishments, ‘there’s

really no reason for concern,’ a nano

second before unknowable vacuity.

Simon Peter Iredale

Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale

Last poem by this author

Koi Carp

Hum
drum

Though, to the ancient
mind, surrounded by rare
novelty like an
enchanter’s castle, the
garden centre’s verdant
overtures fall
flat.

Here, the hunter
gatherer scratches an
atavistic itch, fashions
new Edens suited to
the size of his purse.

And so on,
until mid-sulk, my
truculent eye was thrilled by
complex, gliding
movement.
O wonder!

A thousand jewelled shapes
performed an
endless arabesque, every
way they turned
away, leading the design
into shimmering
convolution.

What He willed was so.
Gratuitous beauty
heaped on the
innocent eye.
A liquid paradise
of contemplation.

These
were not ornamental
fish, these were the
very thoughts of God
glimpsed in
mid-creation.

Shaken
by how simply the shadow
play of the mundane
gives place to
divinity,
I, in spirit, replaced
my shoes and tip-toed
reverently away.

Simon Peter Iredale
Copyright: By application

Last poem by this author

Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts

An imagined womb-
like darkness.
Light neither of the sun
rising nor setting but
diffused, crepuscular.
Over such must the pregnant
Spirit have brooded.
The burnished icons
address me with their stern,
gentle eyes, delving
into my unquiet privacy;
my shadow freedom to be separate.
Something is happening: beyond
the screen that marks
the limit of what can be known
a delicate descant of chimes
as incense fills little heaven.
I cannot grasp what
these things mean.
For the first time, I am
content not to know.
A phrase flares up
From the praying heart,
‘Master, it is good to be here.’
It is good, to be,
here.

Simon Peter Iredale
Copyright: By application

Last by this author

Akathistos

Akathistos

Antiquity
plundered the hoards
of half-remembered tongues,
piling paradox
on teetering
paradox
until reason tottered.

Such did not
comprehend you who
encompassed one greater
than the all.

These ecstatic singers sleep
in golden cities now
powder for the winds,
content they had
aspired to gaze level-
eyed into the
face of God:
their failure is their glory.

To what shall we
liken you, or
with what words shall we,
in our teeming generations,
compare you?
We whose lips have lost
their innocence?

Fish out of God’s river
with no memory of the shoal,
we gasp in alien air.
Alien also to each other.
Well-spring of compassion,
be also
Our Mother.

Simon Peter Iredale
Copyright: By application