POEMS

I have four new poems - including 'Crow Wedding', recently commissioned by the RSPB for a fundraising project - featured on the blog of writer Becky Gethin at:

http://rebeccagethin.wordpress.com/featured-writers/

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THE WHITE REVIEW No.4

There's a poem from my new book The Fool and the Physician - alongside great new poems by Tom Chivers, Michael Horovitz, Paul Hoover and new work from Deborah Levy and much, much more - published in the new edition of THE WHITE REVIEW. No. 4

If you haven't seen THE WHITE REVIEW and you are at all interested in short stories, poetry, essays, reportage, art and politics, photography and interviews with writers and artists, then you really must look at THE WHITE REVIEW. It is stunning. Take a look at their website to see the quality of what they are doing:

http://www.thewhitereview.org

 

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I'm delighted to have poems from The Fool and the Physician up on Michelle McGrane's excellent blog Peony Moon. Read these excerpts from the book at:

http://peonymoon.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/andy-browns-the-fool-and-the-physician/

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Two new poems in one of the UKs most innovative independent magazines, Shearsman

http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2011/Sh8990.html

Shearsman magazine issue 89 & 90

www.shearsman.com

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The following new poem was invited by the wonderful SHOES OR NO SHOES Museum in Belgium. Check their whole collection at http://www.shoesornoshoes.com/

           The poem itself can be found among the catalogue of poems at 

            http://www.shoesornoshoes.com/?page=authors_list

Lost Shoes

Forsaken footwear – Dress Shoes and Sneakers –

litter the lonely locations. By busy roadsides

and distant reservoirs, Slip-Ons and High Heels

converge on the verges. On riverbanks,

along the margins of lonely ponds, fishermen

haul-up rank Gumboots and Deck Shoes, missing

Brogues, a puzzling Stiletto or Kitten Heel, as though

they’ve stumbled on an ill-dressed scene, a crime.

And sleeping there above the flotsam line

amongst the husks of dried-out fish, discarded nets,

the bladder wrack and ocean’s castoffs,

a lover may notice a Flip Flop or Mule,

or stumble across the rarer find of a single

Sling-Back or Jazz Shoe, dropped over the bows

of some expensive yacht as it slooped its way

across the waves in New Year’s reveries.

Or yet still on building sites, in car parks

or subways, a solitary Oxford or an Espadrille

lingers in the grime and debris, calling to its other.

And who has not passed through a summer field

to find, decaying in the corn, a Sandal or a Ballet Flat,

a Moccasin or Work Boot that some farmer,

startled by the presence of the overlooked

scarecrow, lost in his retreat through the stubble;

or the scarecrow himself, loping away from

his hitch-post at midnight, who kicked a leg

and shucked off a Runner, a Track Spike, a Clog

forever abandoned to yield a home to mice?

There’s a Glass Slipper on every palace driveway.

New shoes, old shoes, leather shoes that linger

for forty years beneath suburban bushes. A Blücher

in a park hut. That Snow Shoe jutting from a bin...

ten thousand shoes misplaced or chucked on purpose,

tossed by their laces to hang from the branches of trees,

to dangle over power lines at crossroads.

Your empty Wellington Boot, lolling in the hall.