Mick Imlah
Author, Author
The cards you sent in ’96,
From Paris, or the College gardens—
Sharp and sweet, like sherbet sprays
Zinging off your nerve ends—
Were signed with a pair of pert initials,
Matchstick girls; or obelisks;
Twin rockets, given a wobbly base,
That council tip in Moss Side,
But fixed on a future far and wide.
You’ve not been starved of honours since:
A PhD, a Research Fellow,
And now your story’s a best-seller;
All on a diet of mandarins.
You’re right to be full of yourself,
Hugging your doctoral gown, or wrapped
In the scroll of your certificate
As tight as the brown shrimp in its shell:
A clear-cut case of doing well.
The judging’s over. You can doff
Your mortarboard, and shake your hair,
Till multiple merits scatter like pearls,
And alphas, exploding out of the curls,
Sparkle and fall in Disney showers.
And though the cards have slackened off,
I second what those matchsticks meant:
You were a brace of Eiffel Towers—
Two straight As—excellent!
Page(s) 12
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 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