5 POEMS Book 5 launched.
I have completed the last of my practise ebooks series '5 POEMS', that offer a bite sized taster of my poetry.
Hoping that readers like these, and that they generate interest in the 4 full sized collections available to purchase from the publisher -The Onslaught Press, Amazon, Bookshops and other retailers.
These are :
The Lost Box of Eyes
ident
tommorow is the tugboat of today
sound about hot
Best Regards,
Alan John Stubbs
Announcing the publication of a series of Kindle ebooks available to buy on amazon as a taster, in small bites, of my poems.
The books published todate are :
5 POEMS Book 1 available here 5 POEMS
5 POEMS Book 2 available here 5 POEMS 2
5 POEMS Book 3 available here 5 POEMS Book 3
5 POEMS Book 4 available here 5 POEMS Book 4
If you would like to try my poems before investing in one of my 4 poetry collections please consider trying one of these.
Scan.
Is the black an atmosphere, or mud-flats, or fluid?
White body? The white
appears intact inside of the sound
of itself,
a heart is beating loosed
within pale overarchings,
—a bud yearning to spring open
whatever lock restrains
so that what was a chamber of stillness
breaks to be released,
reaches.
Is it weightless?
Aware of its own weightlessness?
I am anxious of the unknown, for it,
its diaphragm rises and falls and rises in
‘practise breaths’
the Midwife says, as she measures and listens
—and we all listen
to blood’s flow through arteries and veins.
This is the cord in section,
a section through the cord.
Why then does this machine not show it
reaching out and running like a cable should
and plugging in shocking us deep beneath our skin.
This is the landscape of the nose, the open
mouth. I remember
hearing memory begins
when words are used for things.
Alan John Stubbs.
Dream
When I realised she was made of ash
and all of the talking, talking, talking. Not
the ash that consolidates about a sapling
but what remains after a fierce conflagration.
A black and grey ash that disperses
eventually breaking to a dust, rather than
the rich blood ash that burnt peat becomes.
When I realised she was made of ash
and waiting, waiting, waiting for some
words to stop her from breaking, I was
afraid that a touch would dry the river
or raise a flood, and understood that her
words would be a wind to raise the good
earth from the charred bones of the land.
Like an anchor
holds close to the shore
it used to be a wise sailor
would tend a crow,
keeping it close
on a long journey, so
that lost he might throw it
up out of the nest
to soar high above
the clouds and see
a line they could follow
to safe land
and tomorrow.....
rail replacement bus service.
the green gleam of leaves turning
metal, fragile, brittle, is changing
as we traverse water that is still
across the road on the way in to Aspatria after
the flood, just a small flood this time
three hundred or so houses emptied out
Oh! but the light is breaking the sky
through a low cloud so forbidding
up high is a blue clear high, and the view
as we descend to the train station by
the Lake District Creamery with it's ageless
sign, a black and white cow and a milk churn -
is of a builders yard with a white van, and the usual
stacks of used wooden pallets
the bus reverses into to turn back
up the road at Johanna Terrace - but what
a light – all encompassing
everything bright as a button
a yellow wagon smiles into reverse letting us on
two horses in a field are
waked by the sun
West Street Health Centre stands ablaze
across the street the Red Lion slumbers in shade
the black faced sheep have never looked so clean
electricity pylons are positively gleaming
and the tops of hedges - shocked into a last
thrust up in the air
are a child's hair under the influence
A poem from The Lost Box of Eyes:
this tree is both an assertion and a dialogue
it is ambiguous and playfully sets out in branches
it is rooting too slowly to appreciate in inches
it is not just itself but also lichens and mosses
aggregate on its surfaces, and the spine of trunk
is a book of record in a way, and the flat leaf
a translator of light and air and water, a sheathe
of cares where a slaughter of aphids turn gunk
and tear into a million chews, or that tree frogs
may choose to hide beneath and snooze, or foxes
paw at when they parachute loose, and so this
is an interpretation, and that is all it is, a miss
heard call, a faint echo, an accumulation of
words sighing like leaves on a tree, or a stove
that is ready to cook the meal that's inside it.
This door is blind shut and we don't know it's lit.
This poem won a prize in The Arvon International Poetry Prize, and it was published in Poetry Review.
There is an excellent exhibition of Sheila Fell landscapes and portraits at Tullie House until mid March 2025. It reminded me of this poem I wrote.
unable to see the Sheila Fell landscapes.
Air dances the wings of Cherry leaves
so that green shakes about the white frowsy hair pinked in the midst
of upraised arms shaking like a child’s upbraided for walking
out onto a busy street
though it is restrained by an iron cage fitted about it and into the concrete
paving slabs diminishing what might be subtle yearnings
She has a patch, rather a coarse plaster, at her throat where
a piercing with a kind of stone is set in a wound
painfully healing. Her hair
that was wound up in a soft grey woollen towel is let down
so that what were flowers split apart and spill
about the slender bole out to the border-edges of the paving
where wall break stones tumble the corner of my eye
caught by the sleek grey of a wild cat turning away
Copywrite Alan John Stubbs
Published in THIS PLACE I KNOW, a new anthology of Cumbria Poetry, by Handstand Press,
and in the collection tomorrow is the tugboat of today by The Onslaught Press.
Free read lost box of eyes.
I have been told that anyone interested in my poetry can find my first collection the lost box of eyes in the 'internet archive' and borrow it to read free of charge.
I am delighted with this and have added a link to the archive copy below.
enjoy
Just to say that i have recently begun to submit poems to magazines for publication again.
In the November issue of Obsessed by Pipework are two of my poems, 'when she was belly', and 'beginners'. I have received the magazine and it is excellent. Well worth the cover price of £4.50.
The Dawntreader have also accepted 2 of my poems for an upcoming issue.
I am waiting to hear back from other magazines and will let you know how things go.
Best,
Alan John Stubbs
