Penny Boxall was born in 1987 in Surrey. She graduated in
2009 from UEA with an MA with distinction in Creative Writing (Poetry). Her
poetry has appeared in The Salt Book of
Younger Poets, Mslexia, The Rialto and Tate
etc. She has been shortlisted for an Eric Gregory Award. In 2010 she won the Frederick van Eeden poetry competition.
Her poems have come third in Segora, highly commended in the Museum of London
competition, and runner-up in the 2011 Mslexia
competition. Formerly the Literature intern at The Wordsworth Trust, she now
works in Oxford.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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