Ascension Notes

Not really intending to use this blog as self promotion - although I'm prone to posting the odd draft paper or poem here, I know - but my new book's out, and I LOVE the cover! So here it is, plus the opening poem. I always feel a bit odd when a new publication comes out, and this time around so much work at the same time has made it all seem as though it's happening to a parallel poet. The launch/ first reading is next month in Camden. More in due course.

filter

as blue bleeds to violet
    as whiskey warms the blood
        as the clenched fist slackens

                as ah your ribs subside

as a lost glove sinks into the marsh
    and insight drifts into whorls
        your heat gathers and ploughs

                its dreaming, sleep’s deep crop

as the night sky’s lightpoints
    sink into your skull’s thickening
        soup, the primal salt and rock
                 (its basal pulse, pulse, pulse)

                                   as you exhale

the first glimmers
    as a first bird dares
        your cortisol twists
                tight as a silver rope

pulling you up
    to fields of speech

                           and you open your eyes