Oxford Prison
The single spire here isn’t dreaming:
this tower’s blank walls, nine feet thick at the ground,
have nothing to say that might be enlightening.
The moat was dug with forced Saxon labour,
shovelling spoil from the cold clay river lands,
making the mound where Normans kept watch
for those who’d displace them: Cavaliers, Roundheads,
the rail station car park. The moat silted up
with refuse. A canal like a lancet
excised the execution yard
from the respectable town. Recusants,
Quakers and the next duke of Marlborough
came and went in the gaol, soon to be
a hotel: a place to escape to, not from.
The Heritage Tour will take in the tower
where there was so little space, and so many men,
that prisoners slept standing, propped together
like matches, by night; by day, pointlessly
turned the crank, treadmill and capstan; left us
circular tracks, where shoeleather ground stone.
this tower’s blank walls, nine feet thick at the ground,
have nothing to say that might be enlightening.
The moat was dug with forced Saxon labour,
shovelling spoil from the cold clay river lands,
making the mound where Normans kept watch
for those who’d displace them: Cavaliers, Roundheads,
the rail station car park. The moat silted up
with refuse. A canal like a lancet
excised the execution yard
from the respectable town. Recusants,
Quakers and the next duke of Marlborough
came and went in the gaol, soon to be
a hotel: a place to escape to, not from.
The Heritage Tour will take in the tower
where there was so little space, and so many men,
that prisoners slept standing, propped together
like matches, by night; by day, pointlessly
turned the crank, treadmill and capstan; left us
circular tracks, where shoeleather ground stone.
Donna Dickenson is Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London. As well as her academic writing, she has published biographies, poetry and radio plays. She is now working on a novel.
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magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The