Books and publications

'A Tower Miscellany brings together new poems by a number of poets associated with Tower Poetry from 2000-2010. The book also includes prose pieces which offer an idea of Tower Poetry’s activities in that time. The book is not a comprehensive report on Tower’s activities over the first ten years of its existence; rather, it’s a snapshot of how Tower Poetry looked in 2010, which foregrounds new creative material from poets with whom we are proud to have been associated. Some of these are already well-known; others will be new names to poetry-readers: all embody in their work the creative originality which Tower exists to promote.' (Peter McDonald)

Contents:

Preface and Acknowledgements; Promoting Poetry – Peter McDonald; Three Poems – Alex Bell; Three Poems – C.E.J. Simons; A Tower Summer School – Helen Mort; Three Poems – Stephen Burt; El Alto Fairytale – Emily Middleton; The Workshop Tradition – Olivia Cole; Notting Hill Carnival – Paul Abbott; Three Poems – Miriam Gamble; The Fascination of What’s Difficult – C.E.J. Simons; Two Poems – Nicholas Pierpan; Two Poems – Olivia Cole; Three Poems – Helen Mort; The Tower Symposium, 2003 – Stephen Burt; Four Poems – Frances Leviston; Tower Prize Judges, 2000-2010; Notes on Contributors.

Edited by Peter McDonald, with contributions from Paul Abbott, Alex Bell, Stephanie Burt, Olivia Cole, Miriam Gamble, Frances Leviston, Emily Middleton, Helen Mort, Nicholas Pierpan, and C.E.J. Simons.

'As the work of these poets shows, new talent is always unpredicted – surprising rather than familiar.  We are glad to have played some part in promoting this originality and distinctiveness.' (Peter McDonald)

Contents:

Eleanor Morris, 1826; The Verger Locks up the Cathedral; The Pacifist’s Son; Visiting Hours; Leaving; History Lesson; The Reading Room – I Resolve to Live Chastely; Unthinkable; Ashes; Otter Ferry; Sight; January – The Ageing of Harry Houdini; Risk Assessment; An Englishman’s Guide to the Eye of the Storm; Like Faith – Flight Paths; The Writer’s Dairy; I Can Wait; Breaking the Ice; Ponte Sant’ Angelo; The Deep End – Untitled; Hastings/ Typhoon Clock; In Tenderness; Letter; The Observer’s Book of Birds – My Third Attempt to Leave; Trouble Came to the Turnip; Chaining Bikes to This Girl is Strictly Prohibited; Bread – Tradescant’s Rarities; Untitled; A Fetish.

Edited by Peter McDonald, with contributions from Caroline Bird, Olivia Cole, Frances Leviston, Anna Lewis, Helen Mort, Tim Smith-Laing, and Matthew Sperling.

Contents:

'A wander about the grounds and gardens was recommended, to engage with the patterns and rhythms of nature, and respond to them in language. And in parallel with this – for poetry has many mansions – there was a concluding joyous session of Consequences, played beneath the Cheshire Cat Tree.' (Preface)

Portrait of Mother with Child; Erased; A Seeker's Ghazal; Creativity: A Checklist; View from the roof of a bookshop in Kensington; Religion; Ain't I Black Too; Soldier Jig; Dizzy; Portrait of a woman; Snapshot; Thursday 30th August 2018, Christ Church College, Oxford; Waiting for the Perseids; The Selkie Myth; The Snail Census; The Wash Cellar; Home; Orange; Nounou; The Allotment; The Architect; Vesper; The Pianist; The Oil Painter; The Sculptor; Dani; Dandruff; Portrait of a Lady; Speilgeach; Antarctic; Ana; Scorned Lover; Man on a Horse; Atlantic behind the Couc; Recollection; Saccharine; St. Mary's Hasn't Moved; Essaxon Gold; Essaxon Blue; Essaxon White; ammonite; in the ruins of New Carthage; sundial; Narcissus; To Sleep is to Live; Bones in a Box; The Woman of the Apocalypse; Make-Believe; Dementia; Masterpieces 1300-1750.

Edited by Stephen Romer and Andrew Wynn Owen, with contributions from Qudsia Akhtar, George Charles, Coral Dalitz, Emily Dee, Louise Essex, Annie Fan, Annabelle Fuller, Theophina Gabriel, Eva Isherwood-Wallace, Salma M., Danielle Oldham, Greg Rosenvinge, Ella Standage, Jake Street, and Milena Williamson.

‘The ambitious syntax and rhetorical prowess on display are only a few reasons why this book should give good cheer to all readers interested in the future of verse. It’s a lively conversation, a memorable feast.’ (Preface)

Contents:

Not The Sick One; I Stop Replying To Your Messages; Baby, Repress That Shit; Class of 2016 – An Infant’s Cry; The Eyes of a Mother; A Minion’s Hat – Three Sultans; The Movements of the Morning – Pearl; Veil; The Astrologist – Lovers in Public Houses; You Got a Light? – Part-time job; Snowshine; On the edge of town; In Christ There Is No East or West (John Fahey) – serves 2-4; asthma stanza; humble, luxurious; running wild, mean gene – There are things untranslatable; Extract from a Dialogue with a Therapist or a Priest; The Marriage of Adam and Eve; Red tape – Laid Bare; What We Were Sold – Fledglings; Tumbler; Renting; Finger-painting – The Affair; the ink has dried on her eighty-third love letter; Seashells – Barbecue; North Dakota Hotel; Flowers From The Dark – Mothers; Playing the Cello – August Flush; Hard-Boiled; Diorama Glass; The Fool’s Child – Martyr; New Hands; Snowdon – Grandma’s feet; Dad’s concoction – Bad Time for Valentines; Someone else; Six – song for a sumerian goddess; Arlésienne.

Edited by Alan Gillis and Olivia McCannon, with contributions from Isla Anderson, Azfa Awad, Natasha Blinder, Jemima Childs, Ellie Daghlian, Lewis Harrington, Jordan Hayward, Freya Jackson, Tiegan Johnston, Tash Keary, Olivia Kershaw, Ashani Lewis, Molly Moss, Eiméar O’Donnell, Emily Pritchard, Nathan Samuyiwa, Rebecca Took, and Sophia West.

'These are poems not just of promise but achievement: they invite the reader’s attention, and having won it are slow to let it go.' (Preface)

Contents:

Lies and Lullabies; Anniversary; Homesickness – Fox; Eroica; Libra – Clock-Watching; This Is a Love Poem – Love Note in an Origami Swan; Girl Two Doors Over With The Yellow Coat; Having Never Laid in a Hammock; The Man With The DeLorean Heart – Shuttered; Footnote to an Ending; Annunciation – Polite Notice; Roker Song; Ten Commandments for Curlers – Lessons in Singing Requiems; Dear Tuba Teacher; School – Seasick; Lycanthropy – Red Riding Hood; Icarus – The rooftops; JAWS SMILEY – Bicycles; Henry, I can see you hiding there – Yn Y Stryd; Bed Time; Lads Holiday! Lads Lads Lads; Seaside B and B – The Translator.

Edited by Jane Griffiths and David Wheatley, with contributions from Luke van den Barselaar, Flora de Falbe, Sarah Fletcher, James Giddings, Dominic Hand, Alex Shaw, Jasmine Simms, Phoebe Stuckes, Azra Tabassum, Masha Voyles, Jessica Walker, Jessing Watthems, and Jay G Ying.

'Anyone interested in what the best of young poetic talent in the UK sounds like right now is, I think, in for a treat. There’s a pleasingly vernacular freshness of voice: sure but searching, rooted but expansive; and there’s a beguiling variety of style and subject manner.' (Preface)

Contents:

Gorse Fires; Cameraman; Halloween; Bleaklow – Hunting for limpets; Elegy for Michelangelo; Pomegranate – The Pelican; The Silences; Pheasant’s Wood; Sonnet – Amateur Advice for Living; Thoughts on the music of a room; London Sonnet; PotatOde – Planting Hollyhocks; The Birdman- Death of a character; Riddle; Lavender; Post-war Japan in paint –  The Innocence/Guilt of the Mayor of Figueres; The Outsider’s Observation of the Wedding; Kissing Sappho –  A premature elegy for that time; Threadbare, Lovely; A Matter Of Course –  November; The Voyage Out ; Twitching –  For Katie (and Katie); When you were thirty-five; Choristers; Not a ‘love’ poem – You, ending; Unhero; Balloon Song –  Plenty; Train; The Penumbras –  The Rabbit in the Road is an Offering from your Bad Dreams; ALL THOSE NOW LIVING WILL NEVER DIE.

Edited by Alan Gillis and Kevin Young, with contributions from Sophie Clarke, Millie Guille, Dom Hale, Ruth Irwin, Elizabeth Johnson, Clare Mulley, Camille Ralphs, Abigail Richards, Hannah Tran, Will Tyas, Molly Underwood, Phoebe Walker, and Charles Whalley.

‘We were impressed by how much their work had developed over the week, showing maturity, vision, formal skill and considerable invention. The students read with clarity and confidence and reminded us, through their poems, why Tower Poetry is so important.’ (Preface)

Contents:

2nd June 1916; From Even Ashes; The Orchards, Breathing; Edge – Laika; Jigsaw – Dechoreography; Reveille; L’Heure Bleue – It Started With Odd Socks; Le Fléau De Ma Vie; Trumpet; Post-it Notes; Old Age – To his absent love; On not being Tony; Apollo’s Ghazal; Bitesize rhetoric; Train to Nowhere – ‘I knew this sea was eternal, I was eternal’; Nectar; High Sea; Felicity; Peckover House; Before – Rubai; Jack-A-Roe; Ghazal; Delia; Roundel Redouble – August gusts; Unstuffed; Untitled; The basis awakeness; My decision; Untitled – I emulate the gentleness; Carolina; The Bacchae; Ghazal – Holocaust; Ec-Socio; Hurt; Voices; Foundation; Epilepsy; To the Slums – Tech.; Get me wrong; Musings of a coffee shop worker watching elderly patrons; This is it.; Life beyond – The Festival; Tattoo; Donors; “Brazen Bull”.

Edited by Daljit Nagra and Jo Shapcott, with contributions from Daniel Barrow, Nicholas Beaumont, Julia Goroszeniuk, Emily Harrison, Hugo Havranek, Leila Morad, Anna Savory, Honora Spicer, Chloe Stopa-Hunt, Fred Temple, Charlotte Turner, and Katie Woods.

Contents:

Forest Man; The Key Kitchen; The Village – At Your Bedside; Farquhar Road; Bluebells – Petit Saut with Persian Rug; Commute; Spanish Song – Body; Seeded; Lockstitch – Pavor Nocturnus; Barbershop; Winter 1995 – Jazz, in a Place they Wouldn’t Normally Have It; mirror therapy; mercury – Cartography; The Fig; Moon through Your Window – Compost; Paper Planes; The Veteran – Peru; Distance; 1925 – Snow Day; Belt; The Painter’s Pigeons – For Want of a Garden; Underground; The Compulsive Liar – Panado; At Silver Heights; Pineapple rockets – Gibraltar Rock; The Square Mile; Alone On A Wide Blue Sea – Night Dust; The Silent Street Festival; Running From Bones. Poets’ Photographs”.

Edited by Jane Draycott and Frances Leviston, with contributions from Beth Aitman, Jamie Baxter, Alexander Freer, Emma Jourdan, Sophie Mackintosh, Suzanne Magee, Annabella Massey, Ashley McMullin, Paul Merchant, Amelia Penny, Leslie Smith, Tess Somervell, Sophie Stephenson-Wright, and Iona Twiston-Davies.

Contents:

Conjoined; America; Gorkie Cratur – Scenes from the Life of St Benedict; The Sting; Portrait of Lee Marvin As America – Graduation Wearing Salmon; Riddle; La Vanille Crocodile Farm, Mauritius – The Day the Revolution Came; Honey in the Bible; Dry Land – Lost in Broadcast; Soft; Boil – Amalfi; Saint-Malo; The Turk – Massachusetts; Panic Attack – Charon’s Passengers; At Sea; Angel Beach – Breakfast with the Gods; Poppy Harvesting; The Faces – Exile; The Morning Garden; An August Evening with W.B.Yeats.

Edited by Jane Draycott and Frances Leviston, with contributions from Rees Arnott-Davies, John Clegg, Charlotte Geater, Antony Hurley, Annie Katchinska, Rowena Knight, Ailie MacDonald, Emily Middleton, Richard O’Brien, and Colette Sensier.

Contents:

Suicide from the Clock Tower; The Original Sin Tattoo – Dead Wood; Ekphrasis (Plainsong); Plop; Portrait; Shopping in Oxford – Stencil-King; The Ninth; Loosen Up – Sawtooth; Tracks; Villa Flora – Piano Practice; Jitterwhirring; Beckham – August – Thief Tattoo Encyclopaedia; Desert Island Discs; Front – Salsa Dancer; Fish Market; Riot – Horoscope; Kebab Shop Confessional; Hot Glass; X Marks the Spot – Rehearsing Wagner’s Meistersingers; Other Words; Nightsong (for Bobo) – Minister;  The Day you heard Your Father Died; Vocalisthenics – Knitting with Fate; Toad; Air Traffic Control – Base; Cf. Black on Maroon; La Brisure – Even if it is Sunny; Spacecraft; A Second.

Edited by Fiona Sampson and John Redmond, with contributions from Felicity Ann Alma, Sara Doron, David Devanny, Natalie Harding, Sophie Mackintosh, Jennifer Clarke, Laura Marsh, Alice Malin, Daniel Payne, Julia Rampen, Colette Sensier, Ruth Eleri James, Ahren Warner, and Alice Alexandre.

'These young writers also show a confident and exciting approach to form and words; the poems in this pamphlet include a broken pantoum as well as a work which weaves fragments of text messaging into its language.' (Introduction)

Contents:

Search Engine; Blockbuster Season – Three Shots; The Way – Country House Communion – Fire at the Morecambe Bay Pleasure-Dome, March 1917 – revisit; Pause – Venus; Combination – Private Property – Life is Late This Morning – The House – The Tower – My Grandmother’s House – Upon The Days God Rested; Being in Two Places at Once – Pips – Battle at your Playing Field – Imagined Dawn on the Last Day of a Condemned Man – Shipwreck – The Bed by the Window; The Harvest – Nocturnes – The Bare Bones.

Edited by Jane Draycott and John Redmond, with contributions from Meirion Jordan, Patrick Macfarlane, Colette Sensier, Alice Malin, Nadia Connor, Isabel Galleymore, Alice Alexandre, Misa Klimes, David Devanny, Charlotte Geater, Julia Rampen, Robert Herbert, Jennifer Bowden, Samantha Desmond, Daniel Rawnsley, Camilla Temple, Andre Naffis, and Jenny Kenyon.

'In workshops, we wrote together, on the spot, to some prompt or another. We all read the resulting first drafts aloud. The experience was exhilarating for us all. These young poets all show talent, passion and energy. You need all three to become a poet.' (Gillian Clarke)

Edited by Gillian Clarke and Polly Clark, with contributions from Francesca Beasley, Miranda Cichy, Anna Cope, Lizzy Dening, Ruqaya Izzidien, Meirion Jordan, Hamid Khanbhai, Anna Lewis, Kirsten Mackintosh, Rebecka Mustajarvi, and Alice Wood.

Contents:

Play; Freefalling; Before the fall; Medium Caeli; Jennifer and Icarus; This human clay; The pacifist’s son; Angel; Ghost; Icarus; Nuisance of farming; A mildly erroneous interpretation of Breughel’s Ploughman, to his son.

Edited by Polly Clark and Peter McDonald, with contributions from Harriet Archer, Penny Boxall, Hannah Briggs, Anna Cordner, Erin Keenan, Anna Lewis, Helen Mort, Tim Smith-Laing, Dhruv Adam Sookhoo, Angus Wight, and James Williams.

Andrew Wynn Owen

Limited editions of newly-commissioned poems, each in response to a painting by Viviano Codazzi from the Picture Gallery of Christ Church, Oxford.
Five Royal 8vo pamphlets with colour reproductions, each in a hand-sewn edition of 100 copies and signed by the poet.

Justin Quinn

Limited editions of newly-commissioned poems, each in response to a painting from the Russian (Palekh) School in the Picture Gallery of Christ Church, Oxford.
Five Royal 8vo pamphlets with colour reproductions, each in a hand-sewn edition of 100 copies and signed by the poets.

A. E. Stallings

Limited editions of newly-commissioned poems, each in response to a painting by Pieter van Laer from the Picture Gallery of Christ Church, Oxford.
Five Royal 8vo pamphlets with colour reproductions, each in a hand-sewn edition of 100 copies and signed by the poet.

Stephen Romer and Peter McDonald

Limited editions of newly-commissioned poems, each in response to a painting by Filippino Lippi from the Picture Gallery of Christ Church, Oxford.
Five Royal 8vo pamphlets with colour reproductions, each in a hand-sewn edition of 100 copies and signed by the poets.

Camille Ralphs

Limited editions of newly-commissioned poems, each in response to a painting from the Neapolitan School in the Picture Gallery of Christ Church, Oxford.
Five Royal 8vo pamphlets with colour reproductions, each in a hand-sewn edition of 100 copies and signed by the poet.