Perfect bound. 76 pages. £7.95
ISBN 978-1-909404-23-6
Publication date 22nd October 2015
Colour illustrations
Chester Walls is an exceptional first collection. These are lyric poems and historical narratives of the highest order: expansive, impeccably controlled, assured, and full of an imagery that lingers long in the memory. Every page is its own treasure. They are poems of place, built, like the Walls themselves, piece by piece, and with a chisel-like intricacy, mapping centuries of lives lived and imagined, and how their shadows continue to bear upon us now.
Dr Nikolai Duffy, Lecturer in American Literature
Sample poems:
Fallen Angels
You look startled with your set lips,
brows frozen over apple cheeks.
Are you shocked to find yourselves here,
eight disembodied spirits, stationed in pairs
around a giant carriage clock
on the mantelpiece of Eastgate Wall?
Wrought iron and sandstone is a drop down
from heaven’s crystal halls and the swords
of fire you held at Eden’s gates.
Now all you guard is the Diamond date
of an earthly Empress’ reign; in a fortress city
at peace, you chaperone time for all comers.
Do you brim with anger, crammed
into corners, your heads held rigid,
sprouting sky-blue wings for ears?
You could not hear nor stop the thieves
who came to steal the only hands in sight
on the clock-face, beneath your eyes.
Your vanity wings, trimmed with gold,
leave you pinioned on a box built
to house a hundredweight of pendulum,
aching your brains with the throb of time.
Eternal creatures, forced against each second
of the Walls’ passing hours.
Your annunciation tamed into decoration,
you become extras in a thousand images
of beaming Japanese or gawky teenagers.
Cherubs afloat above iron curls, brick-red roses,
you have endured over a century,
watching us walk under time’s shadow.
Trees by the Eastward Wall
No urgent axe has hacked
to clear threatened ground
so here, steady and serene
they have outgrown Wall,
crowns towering high.
They stand in long time,
gaze down decades, infuse
whispers adrift on the air.
But year by year their roots
weave deeper still. Nourished
on loss and detritus, what knowing
do they draw from earth?
Fragments of old tools, letters?
Mulch of concealed bloodshed,
tang of dried secrets, tears?
Nearer the Cathedral
their boughs proffer sanctuary,
verdant in prayer
Chester City Walls will be launched at the Chester Fringe Festival on October 22nd:
