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.
Feel honoured to join such fine company at @ClutagPress, in bonny yellow. Available here: https://t.co/V8kPhyOeh0 pic.twitter.com/2G1g9cPZLS
— Robert Selby (@RESelby) May 30, 2017
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.
Thanks to the @spectator for taking my poem 'When That Which is Perfect is Come'. Nothing like a poem about death and decay to herald spring.... pic.twitter.com/GYLfpclAiY
— Robert Selby (@RESelby) March 23, 2018
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.
'Summer's here': my review of Rory Waterman's 'Sarajevo Roses' is in this week's lovely @TheTLS: https://t.co/ikTDSfCELQ pic.twitter.com/ldXuZ7OGD6
— Robert Selby (@RESelby) April 12, 2018
The Weald below was white as a burial shroud.
I waited for my taxi to fight its way off,
then opened the pre-Reformation oak door.
The hush within almost matched the one without.
Two hundred mourners, and none looked around:
they were nearly all your flock, Ralph.
The vicar signed your eulogy with the arms
of a railing minister, but the countenance
of a calm faith. Hands spoke silent psalms.
Under the vaults, my mind was a shedding bough,
lightening at the fall of each good word,
interpreted from the transept. Sorry Ralph:
conscious of others with hearing, I only
mumbled the Lord's Prayer, but we were friends
because my life so differed from yours,
mention of which over chess was strictly
verboten, till brandy loosened your tongue
and you'd say how you'd only just begun.
Under the vaults, hemmed tight, in winter wear,
I smiled at an old expression of yours:
Hot as a blackbird nesting in a traffic light.
Relief: you were borne down the shining nave
into snow-light, a silence we broke
with our heels on the gritted steps.
Ralph, the diminuendo of startled birds
recalled our walks on clear days, while you
still could, in the grounds of your life's work.
[Dear Ralph Crozier]