Earlier this year I told you I was working on two poetry projects behind the scenes – the first was my podcast, A Mouthful of Air, which launched in the summer. The second is a concrete poetry collaboration with stone sculptor and letter carver Sheena Devitt. What is concrete poetry? In concrete poetry the visual […]
Poems
New poems in Anthropocene, Brittle Star and Stand
I hope you have been keeping well and finding time for poetry in the midst of the upheavals of the past year. I’ve had a few poems published in magazines recently. You can read one of them online in (or should it be ‘at’?) Anthropocene. It’s called ‘Thirteen Birds’ and features different types of bird […]
Poem: Lockdown
Mark McGuinness · Lockdown You should be able to play the recording in the SoundCloud player above, but if not you can find it on SoundCloud here. Lockdown We’re cooped up with ourselves. Alone together for weeks or months until it’s safe to breathe. The virus crosses continents like weather. For now we’re stuck here, […]
(Audio) A Poem of Hope in Dark Times: The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
As the UK went into Coronavirus lockdown over the past few days this poem by Thomas Hardy kept coming into my mind. So I thought I’d read it for you and talk about how I think it speaks to us at a time like this. You should be able to play the recording in the […]
Poem: ‘Hiroshima’, in Oxford Poetry
Even though I was expecting it, as the bullet train pulled into the platform it was still a shock to see the word ‘Hiroshima’ on the sign, in the same everyday font used for station names all over Japan. I will never forget the things I saw in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, or the […]