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Robert Selby
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My debut pamphlet was published as part of Clutag's 'Five Poems' series in May. It is available to buy on Clutag's website here.

Poem 'When That Which is Perfect is Come', from my 'East of Ipswich' sequence, was published in the 24 March 2018 issue of The Spectator. 'The Big Guns', from the same sequence, was published in The Spectator of 22 October 2016. Four poems from the sequence ('In God's Prevenient Grace', 'Elysium', 'Tournai' and 'Wilf') were published in Ambit 221, Summer 2015. 'The Daylight', also from the sequence, is forthcoming in Ambit 233.

Caught by the River have been kind enough to publish my poems 'The Firecrests' and 'Shadows on the Barley' on their website, here and here. A travel piece I wrote for Caught by the River, on WS Graham and Cornwall, is here.

My review of Kayo Chingonyi's Kumukanda appeared in the TLS, No. 5989, January 12 2018, my review of Rory Waterman's Sarajevo Roses in No. 6002, April 13 2018, and my review of Claudine Toutoungi's Smoothie is forthcoming.



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Days of Roses

The anthology, featuring five of my poems and the poems of others from the regular reading event, is now available to buy.

Link to Amazon / Buy


The unauthorised use of any work without permission from the author is strictly prohibited
----> sample of work
This poem appeared in the Times Literary Supplement
No.5495, July 25 2008, and the anthology Days of Roses
(2011)


How easily people forget things,
The winter wood displays.
Hanging in tangles limp from brambles
Are scarves that were gifts on Christmas day,
And gloves adorn waymarkers and fences
Like cairns, or the butcher-bird's prey.
Now and then, a neatly folded Barbour
Or pair of hiking boots, as if a rambler,

Wishing to ramble no more, drowned himself
In the river down by the cattle byre;
Had to wait until a full day and night
Of rain, until it could swell no higher;
Thrust field guide in tweed one last time,
Hung binoculars from wind-bent brier,
And swanned in between dripping pine
Up to his deer-stalker - the only sign

A man gulped hard in there, ending things
As easily as people forget things. Frost
Stiffens body and bower just the same,
And all the walkers' accessories lost
From their selves soften in squally rain;
Decay, forming a rag-and-bone copse
Whose knitted limbs of knotted fabric
Stand as testament to the losing habit.

[The Winter Wood]