Paul Sutton
Advice to a young poet
I’m afraid I can’t offer you any comfort.
Yesterday, if my memory serves me,
I had obsessions that kept me bound and gagged
like a hostage on an iron bed.
When I got up I could hardly walk.
I toured the coast, sniffing its mud-moated hulks,
a walking set of Brodie’s notes -
Haversham and Rochester helping me through adolescence,
revelling in blight, dreaming of self-dramatization.
Then Oxford. God how I loafed around,
no wonder cars swerved through puddles
soaking me in leafy rain.
I feared the fast flow by Osney Island,
many a failed poet has been swept away there
composing an ode as the black waters close.
And then my incident with the Poet Laureate.
A pub car-park scuffle in Devizes –
mainly eye jabbing and throat grabbing.
Now I mutter at the check-out,
buying my pork pies and cup-cakes,
panicking young mothers in the queue.
Page(s) 37
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