Contents ( 152)
- Contents
- Introduction
- The Distance
- Maybe I’ll Be The First
- border/softer
- untitled poem – on travel
- Galway Dreaming
- Escape
- Your World
- Not knowing when the Dawn will come
- The Instructions
- Away and See
- ‘A girl unbridled’ – Feeling Free
- Freedom
- Mythology
- Freedom Poem
- The Long Holidays
- In Wellies
- Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day
- Londoner
- She Showed Me Her Dreams
- Let Me Count the Ways
- Bath
- Ourstory
- Megan Married Herself
- ‘A land where I could be a queen’ – Growing Up
- The Mother
- Hedgehog
- The Pomegranate
- Persephone to Demeter
- The Window
- Obedience, or The Lying Tale
- kids
- The worlds
- Praise Song for My Mother
- You May Have Heard of Me
- ‘What if this road . . .’ – Travels over Land
- What if this road
- On the Road Through Chang-te
- Divorce
- *
- The Footprint
- Autobiography in Five Chapters
- The Road Out of Town
- Cocoon
- Wolves
- Ode
- A Winter Ride
- Driving Back Over the Blue Ridge,
- ‘Golden windows in a wall’ – Words Can Set You Free
- In a Cardiff Arcade, 1952
- Sonnet XXXI
- from Aurora Leigh
- Books
- Poem
- from The Emulation
- we misread ‘language’ as ‘lavender’
- Poem
- Kemo Sabe
- When to Write
- The cypher
- Coal
- Wings
- from Washing Day
- ‘My wild hair backward blown’ – Taking Flight
- The Destroyer
- Flying to Italy
- holiday
- The Bomber
- Hungary
- Spring Wind in London
- from Sonnets from a Lock Box
- The Full Indian Rope Trick
- On the South Downs
- ‘It’s better with all the banners flying’ – Courage, Hope and Resilience
- ‘Out of the darkness’
- Miss Aylward’s Journey
- Sangharsh Karna Hai
- All Around the Jailhouse
- Locked Inside
- L’Envoi
- December
- New Glass
- Release
- Her Kind
- The Lady with the Sewing-Machine
- Edith Sitwell
- War Girls
- Wood Song
- ‘Riches I hold in light esteem’
- I want to stand naked in the school hall
- ‘Chasing weightlessness’ – The Final Frontier
- I Had a Boat
- from Darkness Music
- The Moon at Knowle Hill
- ‘On the road through the clouds’
- The Crescent Moon
- Sally Ride Speaks to the Schoolgirls
- Target
- De Profundis
- Sky Ladder
- Devil at the End of Love
- The Hubble Space Telescope before repair
- Avowal
- ‘It’s the sea I want’ – Voyages by Verse
- Hunter’s Moon
- Strawberries and the Sailing Ship
- The Sea-Shore
- It’s the Sea I Want
- Dare
- Sea Love
- Staying in the Mountains in Summer
- from Elegy on Captain Cook
- Exultation is the going
- from Notes on the Voyage of Owl and Girl
- Strange Sea
- Saint Senara and Me
- The Winds of Fate
- Boats in a Storm
- The New Colossus
- Emigravit
- ‘Dream me mermaid’ – Flights of Fancy
- In Your Mind
- from On Imagination
- The Centaur
- The Chatelaine
- Roads
- My Hat
- Functional Skills Maths
- The Burning
- Laurel in the Berkshires
- Iridescent lizard
- The Forlorn Sea
- The Celestial Announcer
- The Levitation of St Christina
- Ego Tripping (There May Be a Reason Why)
- ‘Silence and a space of sleep’: Travels towards Tranquillity
- from Verses Written in the Chiosk of the British Palace at Pera
- Southern Sunrise
- Lochan
- Birthday Poem from Venice
- ‘Leave Krete’
- Dzoka (Return)
- The Girl Who Fell in Love With the Mountain
- Translation
- Furness Abbey
- Not for that City
- About the Poets
- Index of First Lines
- Index of Poets
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
Exultation is the going
From this swaying city
gather symbols and sounds from the garden
Give me the long, straight road before me
here, the hurried truth
Hope in jars, it lines the shelves
I
I am of the wind . . .
I blow across the stagnant world
I had a boat, and the boat had wings
I have built one, so have you
I have gone out, a possessed witch
I kissed the southern face of a mountain
I know a country laced with roads
I rise on a wing and a prayer
I should like to dwell where the deep blue sea
I swear by every rule in the bicycle owner’s manual
I walk down the street
I want to stand naked in the school hall
I was born in the congo
I watch the gush of life in the May sunshine
I will do everything you tell me, Mother
I wish for the days of the olden time
I’ve had enough of chasing my tail
I’ve moved here to the Immortals’ place
If I were called in
If there are 4.5 litres in a gallon
Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Implausible fish bloom in the depths
In my dream I take the white man
In the car, shreds of 8am light pool in
In the day
In the earnest path of duty
in the new year or when i grow up or
Into the void behold my shuddering flight
It is a pleasant thing to roam abroad
It was the hard winter she came
It’s the sea I want
Its leg was not broken
Leave Krete and come to this holy temple
Let us now praise women
Look, At these flat lands
Look. How does a painting capture
Mother said if I wore this hat
My father was a bear
My mum made us many worlds
My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
Not for that city of the level sun
Not knowing when the Dawn will come
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
Now that clouds have covered up the moon
Of the fleeing man I have only the footprint
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Oh to be in Magherabeg
Oh why is heaven built so far
on a crack of dawn flight
On a winter day when frost crackled
On the day that you hear
On the last year’s trip I enjoyed this place
On the road through the clouds
Once and for all, I go my chosen way
Once in a lifetime, you will gesture
One of those little shops too small
One ship drives east and another drives west
Our bones stuck like honey
Our Princess married
Out of the darkness
Over the downs there were birds flying
Over the sounding sea
Penelope as a garçon manqué
Quick, before the sun
raincoat zipped to my chin
Riches I hold in light esteem
Say first, what Power inspir’d his dauntless breast
Scarcely two hours back in the country