My proudest poetry achievements are the four poetry collections I’ve published with Bloodaxe: Straight Ahead (2006), Head On (2012), Flood (2018) and Towards a General Theory of Love (2022).
You can listen to me read the poem below at Radio 3’s “The Essay”.
Rhosymedre: Prelude on a Welsh Hymn
It’s all in there: how soft her feet were
after years of not walking, how her breath was so loud
it was like she was speaking.
How the cello can hold it, how I couldn’t believe it,
it was more than a person could bear –
how we woke to the sound of the stream
in the garden, how weeping endures
and joy comes in the morning,
how loss is a church and the heart is an organ.
How pain can be sunlight; how grief is white blossom.
How we were star, oh the sobbing viola,
the wonder of it and the bluebells and horror,
how grief is a lake I will walk by forever -
oh the love that was summer,
my mother, my mother.
from Towards A General Theory of Love, Bloodaxe 2022