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Born in Surrey in 1940, I studied at Leeds University where I edited Poetry and Audience and learnt much from Geoffrey Hill, Jon Silkin, Tony Harrison and G Wilson Knight. After teaching in African and German universities, I settled in Newcastle in 1971 where I am now professor of poetry at the University of Newcastle. Through the seventies I edited the Second World War poet Keith Douglas and published a biography of him (OUP, 1974). In the mid-eighties I published The Truth of War (Carcanet, 1984) on the poets of the Great War and reviewed contemporary poetry for Stand. Since my poems appeared in Bloodaxe's Ten North East Poets (1980) I have published various pamphlets and four full collections: The Lie of Horizons (Seren, Bridgend, 1993), The Marching Bands (Seren, 1996), Not Falling (Seren, 1999) and After Shakespeare (Flambard, Hexham, 2001; translated into Polish as Cien Makbeta, Gdansk, 2002). The poems in After Shakespeare are drawn from people living in the West End of Newcastle and portray the varied moods of inner city life - its pungency, neglect and energy. Much of my work deals with people and places and is political. East European writing has greatly interested me, making a significant part of my Poetry of the Second World War: An International Anthology (Chatto, 1995). I have co-translated from Polish the poems of Anna Kamienska: Two Darknesses (Flambard, 1994) and my life is divided between Newcastle and Germany. If much of my writing life has been devoted to anti-war writing, my recent work has often been love poetry of various kinds, including a forthcoming collection of Milena Poems on my daughter's first twelve years.
Hop-scotch When you played hop-scotch tossing the stone forward I helped mark out the grid; I went first at your insistence, lurched sideways as if one foot in a net: you laughed then sprang, your legs dividers opened out then back, a jig, a jiggle, and one leg flipped you, tiddley-wink into a pot; ‘Do it again! Do it again!’ and you did, so many times the edges blurred like vapour trails then vanished where you had flown Across my map Eleven The one arm of the sea-saw tips over; one foot is about to land into a new boat; she is on the team choach surrounded by bubbles of laughter from frenzied companions, off to the match; she is Thursday looking to Friday and the whole easy evening of everything starting; she is snowdrops and crocus not yet daffodil and far from lilac and chestnut through definitely in flower; she is right at the top of the runway, motors purring, checking the dials waiting for clearance, the near planes all with their purposes, far ones high overhead, ready for that moment when full blast as a rocket she roars towards no end, hedge top, houses, and has to take off and eases herself into air and hangs there, rising. |