Mark McGuinness | poetry — A notebook of poems I read, a scrapbook of poems I write

Nancy Gaffield, ‘Nihonbashi’

by Mark McGuinness on 16 October, 2011

Inside, the edo-jin stir ashes to a dogged glow.
A pair of curs sniff the bridgehead and the rat
that passed there, now wallowing unreachable
in river silt. They turn their backsides
to our Hiro as he slips out of sight. The old town
droops into silence and the rains begin.

(Full poem online at The Bow-Wow Shop.)

I read this several times before I noticed the pun on ‘our Hiro’.

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I’ve just finished Nancy Gaffield’s superb Tokaido Road – 55 poems based on Hiroshige’s series of woodblock prints Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido. I read it first without looking at the prints, to see how the poems work on their own (very well). Now I’m going to read it again, looking at the pictures. For [...]

Private Poetry

October 6, 2011

Outside the Brisbane Powerhouse, apparently.

Louis MacNeice, ‘Passage Steamer’

July 30, 2011

One of my favourite bits of MacNeice: Upon the decks they take beef tea, Who are so free, so free, so free, But down the ladder in the engine-room (Doom, doom, doom, doom.) The great cranks rise and fall, repeat, The great cranks plod with their Assyrian feet To match the monotonous energy of the [...]

Poet Inscribes Verse into Bacteria DNA

May 2, 2011

Many artists seek to attain immortality through their art, but few would expect their work to outlast the human race and live on for billions of years. As Canadian poet Christian Bök has realised, it all comes down to the durability of your materials. Bök has written a poem, “The Xenotext”, which he is inserting [...]

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Blog

March 2, 2011

Whilom I was browsynge thurgh myn RSS redere, ich happed upon an newe blogge – hyt nys nat altogidir newe, but newely entred into myn orbit – ywriten by noon othere than that noble auctour Geoffrey Chaucer. (Ich am nat makynge thys up, I sweare.) Ywis, yt is soomdel funnye and goode matere for those [...]

Basho – Snow Haiku

December 3, 2010

The snow we saw together – has it fallen again this year? Adapted from Haiku of Basho.

T.S. Eliot, ‘A Dedication to My Wife’

November 17, 2010

These are private words addressed to you in public. If only Eliot had lived to see Facebook.

Coleridge and Auden on Puns

September 10, 2010

Great minds think alike: And Puns, then best when exquisitely bad; (S.T. Coleridge, poem quoted in Letter to John Thelwall, 31 December 1796) Good poets have a weakness for bad puns. (W.H. Auden, ‘The Truest Poetry is the most Feigning’) I’m tempted to call this 1-0 to Auden: he trumps Coleridge for pithiness, memorability and [...]

Which Poets Do You Give the Benefit of the Doubt?

August 30, 2010

I’ve just written an article for the Magma Newsletter, titled ‘Which Poets Do You Give the Benefit of the Doubt?’. The premise is that when we read a poem, our response is mediated by what – if anything – we already know about the poet. So if we encounter a ‘difficult’ poem, then it makes [...]

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A notebook of poems I read, a scrapbook of poems I write