The Dawn Treader magazine

 Just a quick note to say that my poem 'acceptance' is published in the Autumn edition of  the excellent Dawn Treader magazine. 

Best.

Power and Wealth poem in Morning Star Newspaper

 Here is a link to the poem Power and Wealth that was published in the Morning Star Newspaper in 2021. Morning Star Poem

 

And here is the Poem.

 Power and Wealth

 

on the outside
looking in
at power and wealth
not being a mind reader
it is difficult to disconnect
from feelings of utter revulsion and disgust
at them and their acolytes –
their carryings on
that are destroying everything
                                 regardless.

it’s hard to spot
a psychopath
without having full measure

 
of their wealth –
outside of that
and how they act –
                            all self –
they appear just like everybody else.beware –
they are killing us.

A poets response to the poem A Philosophical Provocation read at Carlisle Poetry Symposium.

  

 

Read the original blog post here Carlisle Poetry Symposium, or as reposted below:

I was invited to attend the Carlisle Poetry Symposium , (a day of readings), on May 19th 2018, and I read the poem A Philosophical Provocation. Here is the Poet Andy Hopkins response to the poem.

 

 Andy Hopkins writes:

7 Symposium Moments (No.4)

Posted on July 5, 2018 by darkhorsepicture

I was thinking, as the weeks have gone by, of the Poetry Symposium that we ran on May 19th. Again and again I keep coming back to seven wonderful moments. So I thought I’d share them.

I have talked elsewhere of Alan John Stubbs’ modesty and great skill. So I wanted to show you an example of this that demonstrates it so well. Alan started his reading on the day of the Symposium with his poem ‘a philosophical provocation’. The tree the poem is written abut is visible from the windows of the Phil and Lit… so you can see how all the stars aligned for this Symposium moment.

I have taken a photograph of the poem (see below). You can enjoy the poem for yourself, of course. But allow me to point out how playful it is itself, in artfully showing how playful the tree is. And then – on top of that – is the way that meaning is not beamed from a extraneous source into our brains ready formed. What we see makes it. What we are makes it. Our history makes it. The object itself makes it. And the humour we are in when we see it makes it. I love the way the poem itself plays with this idea. In fact, our conceptual understanding of the tree changes as the lines develop; more than that, the concept of what a tree is changes. And this is not occurring in a projected, inflated tone – this is on the bedrock of empirical assertion. It is less: ‘I think therefore I am’. It is more: ‘I am because thinking is‘. It is an exposition of thought as a warping thing. You can see the new sentence for yourself at the end – when we trace a thought back to its origins these are the sorts of transformations that it undergoes. If a tree is the processor of light and water – it is the processor of its self. We, the reader, are processing the thought as we are reading it: translating it. How rare is it for a poem to seek to invest its meaning in the transitory nature of perception itself? How rare is it for the form to fit that meaning without being stretched to breaking? There is such tightness of structure here, and carefully considered form; by all means read ‘Free Verse as Formal Constraint’ by Andrew Crozier (no you haven’t), but you’d do better to read Alan’s poem a few more times.

Poets often try to recreate an object for us. Usually there is an quality of loss bound up in that. The thingyness of the thing is so frequently woven into a regret that the thingy is less thingy than it was, or will be less thingy than it should be. But here, in Alan’s poem, is a celebration of thought and change and changing thought as the only truth, or constant, that we can experience. Yes, the door is blind shut at the end; yes we don’t know if it’s lit, but the value of thought, and thinking, provoked by the contemplation of things (and, by extension, our own thinking – not someone else’s given/found interpretation) is the key here. Some poets would give you the tree. Alan gives you the sinewy twists of thought that you try to bring together when you consider the tree. Yes, we cannot by united by some sublime tree truth, but the playful and non-didactic nature of the poem (and all Alan’s work) frees the reader to acknowledge the difficulties of thought. This is as good a poem about meaning and thought as ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’. But then again, ‘this/ is an interpretation’…

The Poem.

 

 

Preface to The Lost Box of Eyes by Fiona Sampson is to be re-printed in the Selected Poems 2000 - 2025.

 Here is Fiona Sampson's Preface. 

Preface

Alan Stubbs writes like no-one else. That’s a hugely important thing to say about a poet. Yet for the poet himself, it can feel like a mixed blessing to be “out there”, “on a limb”, at the waney edge of practice itself; for all the world like this book’s exiled ‘Ovid at the water’. 

Another way to say this is that a poet like Stubbs has to have enormous artistic courage. To the quotidian terror of the blank page, he must add the vertiginous realizationt hat every new poem requires from him nothing less than a complete reinvention of poetic form.

This is not to suggest that Stubbs’s darkly narrative book is a Macedonian salad of styles and projects. On the contrary: a deep coherence underlies the work. Images and register recur and, in recurring, speak at angles to themselves. A consistently angry, inelegant and anti-elegant imaginary is at work here, with equal detail, on both the inhabited local world and dystopian fantasy, relationship and place, language and image.

Stubbs’s ever-expanding verse often has a motor of narrative, but it is also impelled by urgent tone and by frequently risky thought-experiment. There is curiosity, too, and an energetically appropriative take on the world, particularly the world this book’s “narrator” travels to. ‘Ithaca’ may be imagined or real, but Florence, in ‘in Firenze art’, is embodied in the marble of Michelangelo’s David, while a Turkish coastline from Nazim Hikmet’s work is reconstructed in ‘On the days’. 

The Lost Box of Eyes takes us to New York, Havana, Prague and Madrid, and its cosmopolitan sophistication is a useful rejoinder to the reader who assumes that the passionate concentration with which other poems detail English birds and trees is a sign of a local imagination: of some latter-day John Clare, single-handedly modernizing English verse.

It is no such sign. Yet Stubbs is like Clare in the stubborn courage of his unique poetics; and in its rootedness in a vividly re-rendered materiality.

These “nature” poems are hyper-real; as absolutely contemporary as any urban anecdote. And these thought experiments repeat no single theory, but place everything comfortable and comforting from musical formal tropes to the so-readily-digested argumentation of lyric conventions in question.

When I first came across Alan Stubbs’s work, among the submissions to a magazine, I was reading tens of thousands of unsolicited poems a year. I was punch-drunk with the repeated strategies and repetitive ideas that dominated and still dominate if not British verse as a whole, then the whole middle ground of that verse. I was, as any committed reader of verse must be, frequently bored by the riskless, irreproachable poetry I so often found arranged on the page before me. Alan Stubbs’s poetry, by contrast, came searing off the page: restless, energetic, uncomfortable and discomforting, like a call to poetic arms. And so it does today.

Fiona Sampson

Coleshill, 12th February, 2016

 

Fiona Sampson.

Fiona has been shortlisted twice for the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes.  Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and awarded a Cholmondeley Award, the Newdigate Prize and the Ziaten Prsten (Macedonia) among others.  A Fellow and Council Member of the Royal Society of Literature, she is Professor of Poetry at the University of Roehampton and is the Editor of Poem magazine. 

The Collected Poems 2000 - 2025.

 Just to say that I have realised that the Collected Poems (2000 - 2025) does not contain 4 poems that I wrote for the anthology To kingdom come, published by the Onslaught Press in 2016. I am especially proud of one of these poems that is based on a Reuters article of the time titled The Afghan Housing Crisis. Perhaps I should include these in the Selected Poems? Decisions decisions!

Very Best,

Alan

Started work on selected poems book.

 Just to say that I have started work on publishing a 'Selected' edition of my poems 2000 - 2025. 

And good news celebrated award winning poet and biographer Fiona Sampson has agreed to the use of her Preface to The Lost Box of Eyes, as a Preface to the Selected. Thank you Fiona, that's very kind.

looking forward to completing this personal selection.

Best Regards,

Alan John Stubbs

All 5 Books (The Collected Poems 2000 - 2025) is Published.

 ANNOUNCING THE PUBLICATION OF ALL 5 BOOKS.

 

I have received a copy of the Collected Poems 2000 - 2025, and I am very happy with it.

All 5 Poems (The Collected Poems 2000 - 2025) is available as a hardback on Amazon. 

To see it press here  ALL 5 Books  

This book is a record of the poems I have written over this period, and also contains an essay I wrote for Agenda Magazine. 

Writing CV

When I first started submitting poems to magazines etc I kept a list / record as a kind of writing CV. I thought it would be interesting to make it available here.

Note that after 2016, when The Onslsught Press began publishing collections of my poetry and I felt that I no longer needed it, I ceased making entrys on this record.

 

Alan John Stubbs Writing History:

1st Published (Poetry Monthly) Poem: Out there

No fee just free cop of mag that I gave to Mum and Dad.

Published in the poetry collection: Into a Gathering. Editor Terry Jones

published by Cumbria Community Arts Project. 2004 Poems: Bog Man

                                                                                           Ivy

Finalist in Mirehouse Poetry Competition 2007. Poem: Begin Judge: Ruth Padel

(Prizewinner - £100 of books)

Shortlisted Bridport Poetry Competition 2008  Judge: David Harsent 2 Poems Growth and Socks.

Commended Arvon International Poem: a philosophical provocation

Poetry Competition 2008

Prize £500 awarded by Andrew Motion Judges Andrew Motion, Moniza Ali, Alice Oswald

Published Poetry Review - Volume 99:1 Spring 2009. Psycho-geographies. 

Poem: A Body Of Ice Is Hot. To see press here Poetry Review Spring 2009

 Editor Fiona Sampson

Commended: Kent and Sussex Poetry Competition Poem: Time Judge Penelope Shuttle.

March 2009

Published Poetry Review - Volume 100:1 Spring 2010. Poem: Oedipus

 Editor Fiona Sampson. To see press here Poetry Review 100:1

Published Poetry Review - Volume 100:4 Winter 2010. Poem: Unknown

Editor Fiona Sampson. To see press here Poetry Review 100:4 Winter 2010

Published The Rialto - Volume 70 Poem: Broad Street

Editor Michael Mackmin

Shortlisted in Bridport Prize 2010 Poem: beyond crack willow 'pip'

Judge Michael Laskey.

Poetry Reading at Carlisle college on 1st November 2010, 11.30 - 12.15, Read Broad Street, A Philosophical Provocation, To Ithaca, and On the Days.

Free of Charge

Poetry Reading on 1st March 2011 - At Chigwell (Public) School - Essex

 Theme : What is Poetry for?

- read to age-groups 11 - 13 years

                             14 - 16 years

                      and  17 - 18 years

Published Poetry Review Volume 101:2 Summer 2011 Poem: a philosophical provocation

Editor Fiona Sampson.  To see press here Poetry Review Summer 2011

Published AgendaVol 45 no 4/ vol 46 / 1 May 2011 Poems: 'Woken', and

'there are four boats and her'.  To see press here Agenda Dwelling Places Contents

Editor: Patricia McCarthy

Published Agenda Website May 2011 Article on John Burnside.  

Read here Essay Reading Burnside Go down to page 19 for my essay.

 See Agenda Supplements here Agenda Supplements

 

Published Poetry Review Volume 102:1 Spring 2012 Poem: 'the slight curved feather'

Editor: Fiona Sampson. To see press here Poetry Review Spring 2012

Published Carillon Magazine (Dec 2012.) Poems: 1st November 2012

Havana Scene

Editor: Graham Rippon

Published The Cannon's Mouth magazine Poem: Circa sus partes en mi paisaje

(Dec 2012) Editor: Greg Cox

Published Dreamcatcher Magazine Poem: As they dance.

(2014)

Published The Cannon's Mouth Magazine Poem: begin

(2014)

Published The Cannon's Mouth June 2015 Poem:The First to pass was

Published Carillon Autumn / Winter 2015 Poem: Trypich.

Published first Collection The Lost Box of Eyes Editor Mathew Staunton. 

See here The Lost Box of Eyes

Forward by Fiona Sampson Back page blog – Marion McCready.

Published Cumberland News April 2016 

Poem:  Broad Street.

Published in the Book: To Kingdom Come -  Published by The Onslaught Press.

                                            Poems:

                                            The first to pass was

                                            what are you having

                                            afghans housing crisis

                                            reflections

                                            Drones

                                            States

Editor: Rethabile Masilo

See here To Kingdom Come

Published in International Magazine POEM. June 2016

                     Poems:

                    Ivy

                    After the fall

                    SF Soft Dissolve.

See here International Magazine POEM June 2016

Published in The Journal (once of contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry)

Issue 48 (June 2016)     Poems:

                                     In the waiting room

                                     Where

News and Star newspaper 25^th June 2016

                                    Poem:

                                    Perfect (old shoes)

Although I have continued to be published occassionaly in magazines (most notably in Obsessed with Pipework and The Dawntreader), I am afraid that I have not continued to update this record beyond 2016.

Proof of 'All 5 Books' , the collected poems 2015 - 2025 received.

 I am excited to receive the proof copy of All 5 Books ready for checking and correcting. 

Within the next two weeks book this should be ready.  

I have had an initial read and apart from some spacing issues, one new page marker needed, and a couple of spelling corrections, it looks good. I am very pleased with the look of the book, the front and back covers, the illustrations in 'when she is winter', and the fonts etc..

Very Best.

When she is winter ebook launched.

 I have now launched an ebook (kindle) version of my latest collection 'when she is winter'. 

Competitively priced and Available on Amazon now.

Very Best.

The First 5 Books Collected Together

 I am beginning to prepare a collected book of poems comprising the poems from the 5 published books 'The Lost Box of Eyes', 'ident', 'tomorrow is the tugboat of today', 'sound about hot', and 'when she is winter'. 

I am going to initially publish this as a hardback, with plans to publish as a paperback book, and even perhaps an ebook later.

Best Regards,

Alan 

Cover of when she is winter by Emily Ford

 Here is the cover of when she is winter designed by the very talented Emily Ford. 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see more info on the book, including a preview here When She Is Winter

When she is winter is launched on Amazon.

Announcing the launch of a new paperback collection, my first since 2020's sound about hot. 

I am very happy with the poems in this collection, and very happy with the cover design and illustrations by excellent Cumbrian artist and illustrator Emily Ford.

These poems were made in the time that both of my parents died, and some of the poems address this. 

There are also poems occassioned by birth.

 This is my first venture into using kindle publisher. I hope that the collection is interesting.

To order please visit amazon, or click on the link here when she is winter 

Best Regards.

 

Coming soon - A New Book titled when she is winter.

Just to announce that I am in the process of completing a new paperback book collection of all new poems. This collection will be my first self-published book, published using kindle self publisher and marketed through Amazon. I will let you know when it is available to buy and include a link on this site when it is ready.

Very best, Alan

 

Madrid poems

 I have made an ebook of some of the poems occasioned by my many visits to the vibrant city of Madrid.

A city I love being in, with great people, great art, great buildings, and wonderful parks.

I hope that readers will enjoy this.

POEMS for the NHS reformatted into ebook.

 Just a note to say that poet Matt Barnard has contacted me to let me know that the Onslaught Press Anthology Poems for the NHS is being converted into an ebook. It has been made free / as cheap as possible, and readers are encouraged to donate to NHS Charities Together via a link on the site.

Hoping that this a success.

The ebook is available from Amazon.

I have two poems in the anthology. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

5 POEMS a series of taster books of 5 Poems by 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.

 

 

 

One of my favourite poems from the collection sound about hot

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.

a poem from the collection tomorrow is the tugboat of today.

 

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.

a poem from the collection tomorrow is the tugboat of today.

 

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.....

 

a poem from the collection tomorrow is the tugboat of today.

 

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

of a Van de Graaff Generator

 

 

A  poem from The Lost Box of Eyes:

 

 

a philosophical provocation

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.

Poem from the anthology of Cumbria poetry This Place I Know

 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.

 

 

 

lost box of eyes collection available on Internet Archive

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.

 

Lost Box of Eyes  

enjoy