A Poet Rehearses her Rejection of a Novelist’s proposal My dear… friend (keep it impersonal) it would be quite impossible. (Impossible? Never mind, carry on.) I know what you want,...

  Please, tell me of the smell of the moon   What does it smell like, she asks, when the moon is full? Do you know first hiss of batter hitting groundnut oil in a shallow pan, I   ask, on...

    Double Shift now she sleeps under him so used to armpit exhale she double-breaths her dreams he sleeps now without thinking heated roving palm tectonics burn these damp and jutted...

Primrose We used to keep the goats for milk and meat, but now they’re mostly pets.  Mum says she has got too old to take the billy kids to slaughter. I never realised it was such a big deal, but...

    Broken Children   I went looking for them In the empty room Where the sad music was playing   And  a woman’s voice was singing Of the deaths of children.   There’s a single...

      Helping My Son With His GCSE Poetry Homework Built like a flanker, swearing like a football-dad it’s four Weetabix to a bowl, Fifa scores with strangers and show-me-the-money...

  Interference Two rings and I snatch up the receiver, static crackles and curses on the line scouring my ear drums . I just make out a Lilliputian voice , and shriek ‘How did you get on?’ Your...

  Writing and Reading   For years I thought my mother couldn’t write. My father wrote the notes for milkmen, signed time-sheets, notes of sympathy, reasons for absence, postcards from...

                                                    Paul Bluer : 'I...