For poems by the founders and organizers of Poetry Teignmouth click here.
Featured Poet
A series featuring the work of Poetry Teignmouth members. For previously featured poets, click here.
Alasdair Paterson
Alasdair Paterson
Alasdair Paterson’s most recent collections are Elsewhere Or Thereabouts (Shearsman Books 2014), Silent Years(Flarestack Poets 2017) and My My My Life(Shearsman Books 2021). Born in Edinburgh, a graduate of Edinburgh and Sheffield universities, he began writing in Liverpool in the 1970s and was given an Eric Gregory Award by the Society of Authors in 1975. Later he took a 20 year sabbatical from poetry before starting to write again after a career in academic libraries. He has travelled extensively, from San Francisco to Siberia, from Samarkand to Swaziland - and to many places in between not starting with an S. He lives in Exeter, where he organizes and presents the monthly Uncut Poets reading series. |
Pindrop
Mine was ever
the contemplative way.
Think pindrop cloisters.
Think tonsure advent.
You were for the mystery tour
with picnic and live commentary,
for full colour mix of words
that launched and whirligigged
the way our yew tree
fired off goldfinches.
Now I’m left here
to think about it.
And I will, and I will,
the moment silence
stops breaking in on everything.
Villanelle the fifteenth (from: My life as a mad king)
The planet spins me through the dark
my cosmos is blacker than yours
I never ask for signs of grace
I fought the wars of missing gods
my god is more absent than yours
the planet turns me to the dark
In the banned book library
my worms are better read than yours
I never looked for signs of grace
New worlds wear my livery
my germs are better armed than yours
the planet sneezes through the dark
My sins fill up a box a day
my soul floats lighter than yours
I never lack for signs of grace
My winding sheet stays under wraps
my shelf life is longer than yours
the planet spins me through the dark
I never ask for signs of grace
Memory game
1950, bomb sites and coal fires;
and Granny’s doing it again, reading
nasty wall in our special book when
even pre-alphabetic me knows fine
it’s not. She’s tricky but I’m able for her:
nasty well, Granny, nasty well.
Then off I totter on a long road
to all the smirky prizegivings.
Wall/well: I’d learn what a difference
a single letter makes in the world
and how some words sit closer than
they look: like taxi/hearse, engines idling,
big and black, just a heartbeat apart.
For a year or two I thought Granny
put down our book and took a taxi
to her own funeral. Hadn’t I seen her
beyond the gate, waving, bending low
to give a driver soft instructions?
Now I wonder: was it really nasty wall
all the time? I’ll never know, but
grannies and words and memories:
you’d put nothing past them.
Hop
Nipping up the two Axminstered
steps from the hotel breakfast room,
my legs performed a kind of hop
that strangers to inside my body
might have classed graceful, insouciant:
a sprezzatura of top hat and tails.
Right away the word-hoard creaked open
to offer spry, adjective: active, lively,
nimble, brisk (especially of the elderly);
and look, to help me it came out
ready-connected to sprightly and spruce,
like jigsaw pieces the previous solver
hadn’t bothered to take apart.
spry: origin unclear, maybe 18th century.
Examples of modern usage:
furrows and cheek bulges stubble-free;
zips and buttons engaged and double-checked;
savage eyebrows whipped back to the cage;
legs gamely populating cordons of trouser.
And here I was now, inescapably me,
me onwards for the duration of spry,
like a dancer running out of melody,
a boulevardier running out of boulevard,
a prizewinner running out of shelf;
though who could forget (I will, one day)
the Model patient (open heart section) rosette,
the As good as it gets residual lifetime award?
And so for good measure I hopped
back down the steps and then hopped
back up again. No-one was watching.
Mine was ever
the contemplative way.
Think pindrop cloisters.
Think tonsure advent.
You were for the mystery tour
with picnic and live commentary,
for full colour mix of words
that launched and whirligigged
the way our yew tree
fired off goldfinches.
Now I’m left here
to think about it.
And I will, and I will,
the moment silence
stops breaking in on everything.
Villanelle the fifteenth (from: My life as a mad king)
The planet spins me through the dark
my cosmos is blacker than yours
I never ask for signs of grace
I fought the wars of missing gods
my god is more absent than yours
the planet turns me to the dark
In the banned book library
my worms are better read than yours
I never looked for signs of grace
New worlds wear my livery
my germs are better armed than yours
the planet sneezes through the dark
My sins fill up a box a day
my soul floats lighter than yours
I never lack for signs of grace
My winding sheet stays under wraps
my shelf life is longer than yours
the planet spins me through the dark
I never ask for signs of grace
Memory game
1950, bomb sites and coal fires;
and Granny’s doing it again, reading
nasty wall in our special book when
even pre-alphabetic me knows fine
it’s not. She’s tricky but I’m able for her:
nasty well, Granny, nasty well.
Then off I totter on a long road
to all the smirky prizegivings.
Wall/well: I’d learn what a difference
a single letter makes in the world
and how some words sit closer than
they look: like taxi/hearse, engines idling,
big and black, just a heartbeat apart.
For a year or two I thought Granny
put down our book and took a taxi
to her own funeral. Hadn’t I seen her
beyond the gate, waving, bending low
to give a driver soft instructions?
Now I wonder: was it really nasty wall
all the time? I’ll never know, but
grannies and words and memories:
you’d put nothing past them.
Hop
Nipping up the two Axminstered
steps from the hotel breakfast room,
my legs performed a kind of hop
that strangers to inside my body
might have classed graceful, insouciant:
a sprezzatura of top hat and tails.
Right away the word-hoard creaked open
to offer spry, adjective: active, lively,
nimble, brisk (especially of the elderly);
and look, to help me it came out
ready-connected to sprightly and spruce,
like jigsaw pieces the previous solver
hadn’t bothered to take apart.
spry: origin unclear, maybe 18th century.
Examples of modern usage:
furrows and cheek bulges stubble-free;
zips and buttons engaged and double-checked;
savage eyebrows whipped back to the cage;
legs gamely populating cordons of trouser.
And here I was now, inescapably me,
me onwards for the duration of spry,
like a dancer running out of melody,
a boulevardier running out of boulevard,
a prizewinner running out of shelf;
though who could forget (I will, one day)
the Model patient (open heart section) rosette,
the As good as it gets residual lifetime award?
And so for good measure I hopped
back down the steps and then hopped
back up again. No-one was watching.