Mark McGuinness | poetry

Elizabeth Bishop – ‘Large Bad Picture’

May 14, 2010

This poem has one of my all-time favourite titles, as well as one of my favourite endings: In the pink light the small red sun goes rolling, rolling, round and round and round at the same height in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling, while the ships consider it. Apparently they have reached their destination. It would [...]

Derek Walcott – ‘A Sea Change’

May 8, 2010

With a change of government the haze of wide rain which you begin to hear as the ruler hears the crowd gathering under the balcony, the leader who has promised the permanent cobalt of a change of government with the lilac and violet of his cabinet’s change. I couldn’t resist posting this today. It’s from [...]

Review – Voice Recognition anthology, Sarah Jackson, Andrew Elliott

March 7, 2010

Magma 46 has just been published – it includes my review of Voice Recognition, an excellent anthology of young poets edited by Clare Pollard and James Byrne; Sarah Jackson’s pamphlet Milk; and Lung Soup by Andrew Elliott, which is like nothing you’ve ever read. (I published two of Elliott’s poems in Magma 34, and found [...]

Emily Dickinson on Poetry

February 13, 2010

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? [...]

Alice Oswald — ‘River’

December 15, 2009

In the black gland of the earth the tiny inkling of a river The first impression of these opening lines is of symmetry and contrast: one line for earth, one for water; the silvery tinsel of the river against a black background. And notice how ‘inkling’ is perfect for the hesitant, broken thread of the [...]

Simon Armitage on Poetry

December 12, 2009

Poetry is about manner as much as it is about matter – the manner in which words behave under certain conditions and in particular surroundings From the Introduction to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Poem — Okuizome Haiku

December 5, 2009

A little poem for my children’s Okuizome (?????) – a Japanese ceremony performed when children are 100 days old. They are given their first chopsticks and ‘eat’ their first piece of fish. I use inverted commas, as they only pretend to eat! According to my wife, fish used in Japanese ceremonies must be very fresh, [...]

James Merrill, ‘Matinees’

December 1, 2009

Das Rheingold condensed to two lines: Until with pulsing wealth the house is filled, No-one believing, everybody thrilled.

Haiku of Issa

October 31, 2009

If you’re remotely interested in haiku, you should sign up to receive a daily poem by the haiku master Issa, via e-mail. (You can also pick them up on Twitter, by following @issa_haiku. And there’s an enormous searchable archive of Issa haiku on the site.) What better way to start the day than by reading [...]

The Smiths — ‘I Want the One I Can’t Have’

August 28, 2009

And if you ever need self-validation just meet me in the alley by the railway station The greatest rhyme in English — surely?

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