Category: Two Poems

Publishing, Two Poems

local universes

Maytree Press

We are thrilled to announce that local universes by Nick Allen is now available online and from our store.

In local universes, Nick describes the poems as the things seen or experienced within walking distance of his house. ‘I guess you could say it began with the first lockdown and the recommendation for an hour’s walk each day in your neighbourhood, combined with Blake’s idea of seeing the world in a grain of sand’.

local universes will be available direct from the author during the following events:

Saltaire Arts Trail, 27 and 29 May 2023 – taking place throughout the village of Saltaire. You can find Nick and a selection of all his books at location number 5 on the village map Open Village 2023 – Saltaire Inspired

Headline launch event 31 May 2023 – Rhubarb at The Triangle, 47 Bradford Road

Headline event – The Purple Room, Ben Rhydding, nr Ilkley on Saturday June 17 from 19.30hrs.

deerform

in the hoarfrost that knits the trees into a forest

a deer builds itself in my gaze a deer building itself

in light arriving with the drysnap of morning

building the light of itself from the sable undergrowth

the wilderness of the creature builds itself across

the soft morning of my gaze our joined breath

the other river above that which flows itself light

over undergrowth sable and deerform my eyes

blink and in that moments unseeing of myself I am gone

ripple

the sun is already down
the sky is not yet dark

when I lob the fallen
branch end over end

cabering into water
the slow river below

a stand of stark trees
and a flicked blanket

of crows lift out of their
almost imperceptible

roosts concentrically
whirling in the gloom

above the pushed air
of the liquid sound

above the slapped
water of the plosion

the grey murder rises
into featureless silence

circling an evening
in search of its echo

Buy local universes now local universes by nick allen – Maytree Press

Two Poems

Two Poems – January

Maytree Press

Welcome to 2023 at Maytree.

We can’t quite believe that we’re now beginning our fourth year of poetry publishing and preparing to launch what will be our forty second publication out into the world.

If you’ve signed up to our newsletter then you will have already received our email inspired by the colour blue featuring news of new publications for spring and details of some of the many wonderful books already available in our online store.

It’s easy to sign up and don’t worry about spam as we’re really not that sort of operation – you’ll receive a newsletter with offers and news approximately once every two months so give it a go – we look forward to welcoming you to the Maytree family.

You can sign up here – Sign Up – Maytree Press

To help celebrate the new year we thought we’d take a look back at Sarah Barr’s appropriately titled collection, January.

Sarah is a writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction for both children and adults. You can find out more about her work and other publications by visiting her website here – About Sarah Barr – Sarah Barr (sarah-barr.com)

About January, award winning poet, John McCullough writes:

“Sarah Barr writes subtle poems that probe the edges of uncertainties, the details of objects and landscapes gradually revealing her speakers’ unease. The disjunctions in the title piece evoke the sudden leaps of a mind actively thinking, the white spaces between stanzas inviting us to imagine what’s going on beneath the clipped surface of the language. Elsewhere, simple phrasing holds carefully nuanced images: the menace of cracking ice, a long-married couple surrounded by ‘masks / and stiff-limbed, velvet-dressed dolls.’ The writing carries on unfolding inside the reader long after their eyes have left the page.”

But don’t just take our words for it, you can also read the collection of five star reviews in our online store here – January by Sarah Barr – Maytree Press

January

This time I’m taking more notice –
the sandbags, submerged fields,
flooded crypt, the marooned town.

There’s more water than the land
can use, or the skies hold.

Perhaps it’s natural
to shiver with excitement
at this odd, reflective world.

A swan wings upward, abandons
its mirror-image on the bright lagoon.

Are there going to be two
of everything, including me?

I think about new surfaces
and new below-the-surfaces.

Earwigs are gorging on lush
peony heads

Their brittle bodies, pincers and folded wings,
remind me of childhood
and our proximity to small creatures like these
living in earth, bark and under stones
where we found their pearly eggs.

I can still hear my brother chuckling,
see his smile and smudged, rosy cheeks
as he gathers and stuffs these insects into his ears.
It made a sort of logic to a three-year-old,
experimenting,
then perhaps bewildered
as my mother shrieked and tried to shake them out.

I want to remember him outside playing
before the rules took over.

January, along with many other great titles, is available from our online store now. And don’t miss out as for the remainder of January every book order receives a free limited edition Maytree Press tote bag which is perfect for carrying your favourite books.

Visit our store here – Products – Maytree Press

Two Poems

Two Poems – The Ghost Hospital

Maytree Press

The Ghost Hospital by Pauline Rowe

In this new feature, we re-visit some Maytree classics that you may have missed along the way.

What better way to start than the 2020 Saboteur Award runner up (to another Maytree pamphlet).

Written mainly during Pauline’s research for her PHD, The Ghost Hospital is a dark and sometimes harrowing collection that explores the unnerving world of health care in the 1800s. Whilst the themes of love, loss, legacy and illness may be universal, the setting is as unique as each of the seventeen poems in this stunning book.

Pauline’s second collection, The Weight of Snow won the 2021 Saboteur Award and has now sold out. Don’t miss out of this treasure from our archives.

Making Faces
watching ‘R.D.Laing Has No Face’ on YouTube


You look like a fine, 

Russian dancer 

or mime artist.


Do you follow the news 

in the dark or shadow land – 

can you hear us think about you?  


When we read your books 

are you released 

from some small agony? 

Like a plenary indulgence? 


I watch your face become 

your mother’s face

– what you remembered 

as your mother’s face 


how you try to emulate 

her mask of sorrow, 

in your own features 

the expression that flooded 

her cruel face, one rare day – 

when your father brought home 

a birthday gift, a small box 

within a larger box; 


anticipation deliberately engineered 

for his pleasure, 


fragments of him, 

ten cut toe-nails 

from his hard, dirty feet.

Bequest

I bequeath him my skull

(inside which he leads another life),


my hip bones, the roots of my teeth, my scars,

the ones tight with secrets like lieder, 

the ones that ache when it rains.


I go back in dreams to that cold kitchen,

stirring porridge on a 2-ring stove.


I didn’t see the devil that winter

nor dress even the smallest tree.


I forgot the accommodations of ribbons

though there was frost enough for two.


It replays itself, his head to one side,

playful, keeping his word, so real 

I can taste his breath.


My desire then was a pearl –

perfect, no start, no end, no memory of grit.

The Ghost Hospital by Pauline Rowe – Maytree Press