Matthew Paul / Poems

2012-01-26T20:50:00.002Z

I have a new poem at Football Poets.

2012-01-06T22:20:00.001Z

the moon all but full I plump for the slow train

2011-12-26T10:50:00.002Z

Christmas morning
a crow has free rein
in the superstore car-park

2011-12-24T18:47:00.002Z

the wind-buoyed crows
this Christmas Eve
mackerel sky

Merry Christmas

2011-12-22T20:52:00.002Z

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog this year. Big thanks to everyone who's posted comments - I very much appreciate it.

2011-12-22T20:50:00.002Z

winter solstice
the street-cleaner picks up
a glass half full

2011-12-13T21:02:00.000Z

cold snap
parakeets strip
the crab-apple tree

2011-12-08T19:58:00.002Z

storm-force winds
the shopkeeper wrestles
with a Christmas tree

The Hand of God

2011-12-08T19:57:00.001Z

My poem, 'The Hand of God', which appeared on this blog in an earlier version, is now on the ever-lively Football Poets website.

2011-12-07T20:15:00.003Z

winter sunshine
the clippers define
my sideburns

2011-12-04T11:24:00.001Z

the slow rowing
gets you nowhere fast
each oarstroke
lifting rainbows of water
the oar and your body as one

2011-11-23T21:29:00.001Z

On the Eucalypt website, there's a very kind and generous appraisal, by Yvonne Hales, of one of my tanka.

2011-11-17T22:26:00.000Z

John Barlow's brilliant and moving poem, 'The Ghost Auks', commissioned for Ghost of Gone Birds, is on the Caught by the River website.

2011-11-09T18:00:00.001Z

autumn rain cascades
down the station footbridge steps
a white-pawed cat

2011-10-29T16:36:00.001+01:00

bracken light
the fallow-deer herd
fords a stream

2011-10-24T21:06:00.001+01:00

Ferris Gilli, Paul MacNeil, Ron Moss and I have two themed renku over on the Notes From the Gean website: Painted Eyes and The Sound of One Garter. Big thanks to our old friend Alan Summers for accepting them.

2011-10-24T20:59:00.003+01:00

My brother Adrian has a story on the Bristol Festival of Literature website. Unfortunately, the pithy language has had to be toned down to make it 'family-friendly' but it's still a cracking read.

2011-10-09T10:48:00.000+01:00

the boat's wake
reaches both banks...
diving grebe

2011-09-29T21:01:00.002+01:00

Michaelmas heat
a tangle of bicycles
chained to a lamppost

2011-09-27T20:50:00.002+01:00

rotting windfalls...
the harbour-master's boat
noses upstream

2011-09-25T17:05:00.000+01:00

A packed house of over 100 people filled the East Room of level 7 at Tate Modern last night for the launch of the Poetry from Art at Tate Modern 2011 pamphlet. With contributors such as Karen McCarthy Woolf, Natasha Morgan and Anne Welsh, the poems were excellent and beautifully read.

My own contribution to the pamphlet, which is now available from the Tate Modern shop at the bargain price of £4.95, is below:

The Runners-up

You probably couldn’t guess from looking at the photo
which player in the sky-blue kitted team –
six of whom stand upright, with arms crossed,
behind the hunkering other five –
is fated within weeks to die
while the rest transfer to secondary school.

Nor would you probably pick me out,
blond and mop-topped as I am then, squinting
next to perma-grinning Robert Scott.
It’s the last time I see him. He chases
his family’s spaniel round the garden, not clocking
that the door of their new conservatory’s shut –

and charges straight through, headfirst,
to be floored like a punctured football.

2011-09-22T20:30:00.003+01:00

Leg of Mutton Pond
the grandfather ambles
at his son's pace

2011-09-11T21:16:00.004+01:00

last swallows...
a lad on a Barbie bike
belts downhill

The Farm

2011-07-16T14:07:00.004+01:00

A white road leads into the farm;
becomes a cratered barnyard
where an old German shepherd
busts the tautness of a rusty iron chain,
thrashing its intentions a body-length away.

The rose moon rises. As if in downpour,
its light streaks the lemon-scented leaves
of a sprawling eucalyptus; plays
upon the texture of the bark,
the resinous knots and boles,
like sleight of hand on a piccolo’s fingerings.

Everything—even an ocellated lizard
basking beside the coop—
moves at snail’s gallop:
gradually up and over
the choppy furrows of the new-hoed earth.

after Joan Miro, 1921-1922

2011-07-01T07:17:00.003+01:00

first bus of the day:
hands-free conversations
in many tongues

2011-06-26T12:36:00.002+01:00

midsummer rain
a magpie snaffles stuff
from guttering

2011-06-19T11:28:00.002+01:00

commuter train
the beaming baby
grasps her feet

2011-06-14T19:24:00.001+01:00

protruding from the cemetery wall a sprig of bittersweet

2011-05-28T13:45:00.001+01:00

evening lull
rowers drop oars
at the cox's command

2011-05-26T20:17:00.004+01:00

drought's end
a duck flanked by her young
sails downriver

Sand Martins

2011-05-18T19:58:00.002+01:00

make nuanced, meticulous flips
above the shallows

on whose shimmer reflections of willows
sprawl from the ait

until they’re breasted into ripples
by a red-crested pochard

nibbling a female’s tail
with its fuchsia-lipstick bill,

as the martins torpedo towards their nest-hole
in the stone embankment,

one squeezing inside, just past the other.

2011-05-11T20:42:00.000+01:00

humid night
three ducks follow
the main line out of town

2011-04-22T16:25:00.003+01:00

this warm spring night
the honeysuckle scent
partners me home

2011-04-20T22:08:00.003+01:00

borne by the evening haze the blush of a woodpigeon's breast

2011-04-06T20:48:00.002+01:00

strategy planning
the senior manager jots
on the back of his hand

after Matt Morden

2011-04-06T20:47:00.000+01:00

I have a poem on the Tate Modern website, as part of the latest course tutored by Pascale Petit.

2011-04-03T21:06:00.000+01:00

slowing past a bank
of sunlit marsh marigolds:
the narrow river

2011-03-31T20:06:00.001+01:00

downwind
from the deer herd
their ragged red coats

2011-03-31T20:04:00.002+01:00

spotlit by sunbeams
flickering through willows:
a clutch of coots' eggs

2011-03-24T20:11:00.002Z

on the underside
of the signal-gantry:
many shades of rust

2011-03-17T21:22:00.003Z

budding magnolia
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
heaves with the breeze

2011-02-27T17:42:00.002Z

biorhythms...
the first spring sun picks out
pleurococcus

2011-02-25T19:51:00.002Z

chit-chat
outside the mosque
a bed of crocuses

Parakeets

2011-02-23T19:50:00.000Z

tear up the valley,
each asserting leadership and hectoring,

then dropping to the back, up-fronting
once again and repeating ad libitum;

till they alight on cankered horse-chestnuts
to occupy our listening space

with the random polyphony
of a hall full of schoolkids

at Monday-morning assembly
before the Deputy Head strides in

to impose just through presence
some kind of restive order.

2011-01-28T18:18:00.001Z

full spate
the river swirling
all shades of brown

i.m. David Platt, fantastic haiku poet and all-round great bloke

2011-01-19T15:45:00.000Z

red morning
the spread of frost around
lichen-edged gravestones

2011-01-16T14:33:00.002Z

new year mudbath
a clearance soars across
the neighbouring pitch

2011-01-09T20:05:00.001Z

round an icy park
at the city's edge:
the trilling of waxwings

2011-01-09T10:58:00.001Z

through puddles the size of ponds my running shoes' cadence

2010-12-28T07:53:00.000Z

from the dark wood
the sound of last week's snow
sliding off pines

Christmas updates

2010-12-22T10:34:00.002Z

I have a new poem at Football Poets, and a haiku at the latest issue of The Heron's Nest.

Meanwhile, John Barlow has beautifully revamped the Snapshot Press website.

Season's Greetings!

MP

2010-12-08T19:56:00.000Z

in the low-tide pools
of the midwinter river:
bathing crows

The Beached Margin

2010-12-02T19:03:00.004Z

A week into British Summertime,
with the season’s tide-tables published,
the Easter Saturday sunshine
seeks out the apricot, copper and gold
in your breeze-burnished hair.

Yachts circumnavigate the spit.
Saltation and slumping
deposit oyster shells
among the limpets, mussels, and piebald pebbles
attracting your discerning eye.

Turnstones race like toddlers
between the balls of washed-up sponge,
as we clamber down from the esplanade
onto the sand and over a groyne,
whose posts are capped like teeth, with rusty iron.

The tide-raked beach invites us to play:
to dig with spades,
swing out over the channel,
or leg it up a springboard
and swallow-dive into the brine.

Beyond all, there’s the sight of you,
beachcombing behind the tideline,
that’s enough to summon starfish
twirling across the waves
to pirouette on a patch of untouched sand.

After Edward Wadsworth, 1937

2010-11-28T14:30:00.000Z

the girth of planes...
black-headed gulls let rip
at parakeets

2010-11-19T08:19:00.000Z

held in headlights:
a cold peasouper
not lifting all day

2010-11-19T08:10:00.001Z

at breakfast
the waitress mutters about
anything

2010-11-18T13:09:00.000Z

over fenland fields
the light comes and goes...
suckling calves

2010-11-08T17:11:00.000Z

a warm wind heaps leaves
against an ivy-covered fence—
one for sorrow

2010-11-01T17:54:00.001Z

All Saints’ Day dusk:
a blackbird’s alarm call
sets off another

2010-10-23T17:20:00.000+01:00

as though the oakwood is laughing:
the bubble of its bourne

2010-10-03T08:48:00.000+01:00

dewy pitch
a mother explains
what a CRB check is

2010-09-25T17:00:00.000+01:00

Indian summer
her knife scrapes butter
over rye-bread toast

2010-09-25T16:58:00.001+01:00

sunrays and leaf-shadows
slant across the headstones
from a century ago
a teenage couple embrace
as if the world is theirs

Youngblood

2010-09-08T21:01:00.000+01:00

On tiptoes
discerning as you do
a white stallion’s head
in the complex patterns of the Wilton on the landing
you ascertain all manner of outlines
as if it’s Midsummer’s Eve
when every patch of cumulus resembles
a baby sitting up by itself for the very first time
on a lawn of buttercups and daisies
in the middle of the marsh where longhorn cattle masticate
as you fashion an ending
to the days of having friends from junior school
round to play before tea.

2010-09-02T12:56:00.002+01:00

a toddler smirks
from his father's shoulders
summer's end

2010-08-28T18:55:00.003+01:00

Some news: Ferris Gilli, Paul MacNeil, Ron Moss and I have won this year's Haiku Society of America Einbond renku competition - as updated on Tobacco Road. Go, Team!

2010-08-01T17:46:00.000+01:00

turning from ruby to plum: the unprisable blackberry

2010-06-27T10:18:00.001+01:00

behind the long pebble beach the filaments of wild fennel

The Hand of God

2010-06-19T08:24:00.001+01:00

After the first of many replays
of what will become known
as 'the Hand of God’,

Dave from Walsall
has already had enough
and blusters out

from his cousin’s house
to the dusky streets
of the fervidly Loyalist

Ballybeen Estate,
East Belfast,
where a short burst

of ‘O Sole Mio’
brings children out
from nowhere

to form a queue of sorts
for pokes—always with
a flake and sauce—

or 20 Regal Kingsize,
a packet of Rizlas
and a can of Harp.

At the very moment
that Dave makes his way
to the counter of the van

and asks for a Strawberry Split,
Maradona rips the piss
out of England,

to leave Terry Fenwick
scrabbling on his arse,
and put his country two-nil up.

2010-06-12T18:32:00.001+01:00

down the tiled facade of a half-demolished pub tepid rain

Making Tracks

2010-06-10T19:34:00.001+01:00

Along the old chalk ways from Jevington to Beachy Head,
we walk at snail’s pace over downland pasture dotted with
buttercups, hop trefoils and early-purple orchids;
the views behind us lengthening into the Weald,
those before us the earthen tones of Eastbourne’s roofs,
and Seaford, and cliff-tops, sea and capering rabbits in between.
A stonechat loudly gives what for from gorse
within the motionless shimmer of midday sunshine.
Jackdaws sip at the edge of a dew-pond.
And seemingly out from hawthorn spinneys,
a stupendous greyhound rockets up the track,
all four legs at full pelt, like pistons, through the balm.

2010-05-30T11:43:00.000+01:00

Whitsuntide
a bundle of goslings
shifts with the breeze

2010-05-23T14:31:00.001+01:00

late-spring heatwave
the pendulous laburnum
torn round by swifts

Biology

2010-05-07T11:58:00.002+01:00

Mr Edwards, known as ‘Taffy’ throughout the school,
wishes to demonstrate the probabilities underpinning genetics:
in an interactive way, to capture our attention
for the first time this term (or at least since the moment when

Simon Keelan swung his Adidas holdall over his shoulder
and through the glass of a tank full of copulating locusts,
which unsurprisingly took the chance to leap,
still mating, as far around the lab as they could,

while the whole of 3N3 went berserk), with some straightforward
tasks, like how many of us—all but one—can roll our tongues,
to the absurd: a challenge met only by Colin Knowles,
who claims it is a power inherited from his mum:

the wiggling, to start with, of his right ear, and then of his left;
and next, with a gormless grin on his humdrum face,
both of them—in a scintillating, synchronized, oddball cabaret
that even Stan Laurel in his heyday would have envied.

- for Jake Sebastien Barlow, born 27th April 2010

2010-04-30T20:30:00.001+01:00

cherry blossom
the player-coach skies one
down mid-on's throat

2010-04-25T14:14:00.001+01:00

honeysuckle scent
woodpigeons fluster magpies
round a leylandii

West Berlin Nights, 1987

2010-04-06T17:56:00.000+01:00

The Harlequin Band proceed
from one Irish bar to another,
playing where they reckon
they might be appreciated,

where heads will nod, feet will tap
and approval—in the form of beer,
a hatful of coins and craic—
will, with any luck, be theirs.

First the fiddle, sawed back and forth
unfeasibly fast by Wolf,
a German so Irish
his brogue has a lilt of its own;

then Niall on acoustic guitar,
not a great one for Traditional
but in for a pfennig…;
bearded Billy on bodhrán,

his eyes, ears and wrist
all waiting for the moment
when his rhythm should interject;
and, lastly, Willy, on pipes,

the youngest, hairiest,
most naturally gifted of all,
as softly voiced as the lap of the lough
at the edge of his village back home.

2010-03-30T19:40:00.000+01:00

within a ditch
parallel to a reedbed
black dots grow
in the frogspawn

2010-03-30T19:37:00.002+01:00

A poem of mine is on the Tate Modern website.

2010-03-25T18:43:00.001Z

splashing
a collared dove's breast:
spring equinox light

2010-03-20T17:29:00.001Z

cobalt skies
the swath of daffodils
before the downpour

2010-03-17T18:18:00.003Z

There are haiku of mine in the latest issues of the following:

Notes from the Gean

Shamrock

The Heron's Nest

2010-03-17T17:44:00.001Z

city square:
white and purple crocuses
bloom around Gandhi

2010-03-09T18:57:00.001Z

beside
the slope of snowdrops
a face full of sun

2010-02-28T09:19:00.001Z

penalty save
my brolly turns inside out

Belonging

2010-02-24T19:51:00.002Z

Conclude from the manner
in which you are cared
that you ought to belong
to a family of apes,
mountain gorillas,
impeccably rare.

Sleep on my shoulder,
cling to my chest,
see how a father
handles his young;

and should you be aghast
at cold summer rain,
inhale a lungful
of the lavender fragrance,
detonate a smile
and hide in my name.

[Published in Inspired Fatherhood, 1997 - for Conor, now aged 14]

2010-02-21T14:45:00.001Z

strewn mimosa
a carnival creature
snaps at the crowd

2010-02-07T10:19:00.002Z

the cormorant tree
a crane swings through
the whole panorama

2010-01-31T11:39:00.001Z

the red-deer herd
packed tightly together
winter sunlight

Isleworth, 1876

2010-01-27T07:31:00.002Z

Now I am going to tell you about my walk to London. – Vincent van Gogh to his brother, Theo, 7 October 1876

At dawn, Vincent sets out
up the London Road. Starlings
arrow the first autumnal air.

Ahead of him, a round-trip walk
of twenty miles. Hedge mustard tangles
the railings of Syon Park.

How Vincent could preach here,
among the elms! There are few
carts on the road today—

a blessing, for the verges
have turned into mud-pools.
The light is to Vincent’s liking,

changing with the cumulus
that rolls, like him, from the west,
through Kew, Chiswick, Hammersmith

and Kensington; to Hyde Park Corner
and the swank of Piccadilly.
Vincent visits the galleries,

pays homage to Delacroix,
takes it all in. Verses from Hebrews
turn in his mind. Running an errand

for Jones, his employer, he buys
violets for Jones’s wife. He’s a young man
doing his duty; one minute

head-strong with joy, the next
encumbered with bookish
hate and irritability.

A horse-bus fills with workers
as Vincent starts to wander back,
at vivid sundown, towards his home.

2010-01-17T16:30:00.000Z

squirrels
grey
two
London plane
the burnished
up
screwing
cork-

2010-01-14T19:45:00.000Z

on a back road
winter sunbeams stripe
the almshouses

- The Haiku Calendar 2010

2010-01-13T17:17:00.001Z

snow on the tongue
a set of pawprints vanishes
mid-pavement

2010-01-10T12:12:00.000Z

Stanford Forrester at Bottle Rockets Press, over yonder in the States, has just published a bumper anthology of flower haiku, entitled seed packets. Irrespective of the fact that there's a couple of mine in it, it is definitely worth checking out, once Stanford has put details on the site, as it is superb. Sample haiku: 'field of lupine / the deepening blue / of your goodbye' - Claudette Russell. When I opened it up yesterday it felt like spring had sprung. All good stuff, as I invariably say.

2010-01-10T10:48:00.000Z

perishing...
the contours of deer-droppings
on top of the snow

2010-01-09T20:06:00.000Z

outside the cricket square a cordon of headless snowmen

Retrospective (after Tracey Emin)

2010-01-09T09:45:00.000Z

A white road,
caked in magneta neon,
disappears like a curse trailing off.

You feel a tenor sax
course into your legs, your arms
and fingertips stretching away.

The fields echo with frost;
the sky entreats your biddable eyes
the whole sharp night.

2010-01-04T20:14:00.000Z

a new decade
the creeper tangles
into itself

2009-12-30T13:33:00.000Z

year's end drizzle
a moorhen takes a run-up
to launch into the stream

2009-12-24T18:19:00.001Z

sleet on the skylight
I open a present of moon poems