New Poem by Peter Robinson

Good news. Eyewear today offers a new poem by one of England's best poets, Peter Robinson.

Current Affairs

RECOVERY

Convalescent, by the Kennet side,

I see two raucous geese glide

down to a synchronized landing

through scattered waterfowl.

Cygnet nests built under wharves

or pendant willows in a row

hold tints for the late spring’s

promises of leaves

in branches’ blurs, a greenish yellow.

A Fire and Rescue launch goes by

and, look, that Ukioe print

has a swan stood on the current

absorbed in waves of its headlong flow.

RED LINE ISSUES

The streets are paved with takeaway

wrappers, strewn sheets, cans,

and posters for elections …

Then faces come up in the dusk,

each with its private memory

migrant to that point.

Sun sets on brick and greenery.

More distant faces come —

those who’d struggled to get here,

others that hadn’t yet made it

and those who have, uncertain eyes

at checkout till or queue.

IN THE DRIFT

Feeling fragile, a memory of health,

my old self rehearsed

in piecemeal efforts at improvement,

I find unreal expectations

blight even what we do;

and stripped beds, ring-fenced saplings

of a biscuit factory park

derive sense from resistless drift,

the incorrigible makeshift

doing then undoing things —

as if the body politic

had to get its health back too.

poem by Peter Robinson

Robinson just published a signed limited hardback edition, English Nettles and Other Poems with illustrations by Sally Castle, from Two Rivers Press. Available from: 35-39 London Road, Reading RG1 4PS. £15 + £3 p&p.

Comments

The Editors said…

Always good to see a new Peter Robinson poem. I'm a big fan of his work: he seems to fit a particular line in British poetry that follows in the footsteps of Modernism - his earlier work, in particular, is comparable to Roy Fisher's - but is still open to a more 'reasonable' tone of voice (not far removed from the Movement, in many ways), and the formal characteristics that come with that. He's comparable, in this regard, to poets like Charles Tomlinson and Jeremy Hooker: all steer a kind of middle course between mainstream and alternative praxis. More people should read him (as well as Tomlinson and Hooker, but that's a different thread, really). Is there a new Robinson collection in the pipeline, Todd?

Thu Jul 08, 09:53:00 pm 2010

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