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