New British Poetry

EDITED BY Don Pater son

AND Charles Simic

Graywolf Press SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA ex- Contents

xix Preface / Charles Simic xxiii Introduction / Don Paterson

Gillian Allnutt 3 Scheherazade 4 . The Silk Light of Advent 5 Held To 6 Notes on living inside the lightbulb 6 The Road Home

Simon Armitage 8 Very Simply Topping Up the Brake Fluid 9 Poem IO The Tyre II The Dead Sea Poems

John Ash 13 The Ungrateful Citizens 17 The Sky My Husband 19 Memories of Italy \

Sujata Bhatt 21 foil (Sherdi) 22 Muliebrity 23 What Is Worth Knowing? 24 Fischerhude, 2001 John Burnside 26 Parousia 29 The Old Gods

Robert Crawford 31 The Saltcoats Structuralists 3 3 The Handshakes 33 The Result 34 Fiat Lux 3 5 Alba Einstein

Fred D'Aguiar 3 6 Airy Hall Nightmare 37 The Cow Perseverance 38 Sound Bite 40 Home

Peter Didsbury 42 The Shorter Life 42 That Old-Time Religion 44 Part of the Bridge 45 Chandlery

Michael Donaghy 46 Machines 47 Shibboleth 47 The Bacchae 48 Caliban's Books 49 A Repertoire

CarolI Ann Duffy 5i Prayer 52 Warming Her Pearls 53 Little Red-Cap 54 Circe Ian Duhig 5 6 Fundamentals 5 7 Chocolate Soldier 6o The Lammas Hireling

Paul Farley 62 Treacle 63 The Lamp 64 Diary Moon 65 An Interior 65 Peter and the Dyke

James Fenton 66 Wind 67 A Staffordshire Murderer 7O In a Notebook

Mark;Ford 72 Looping the Loop 74 The Long Man 75 Early to Bed, Early to Rise

John Glenday 77 Concerning the Atoms of the Soul 78 A Day at the Seaside 78 The Garden 79 The Empire of Lights 80 Hydrodamalis Gigas

Lavinia Greenlaw 8 2 Reading Akhmatova in Midwinter 83 Three 84 The Spirit of the Staircase 84 Zombies 85 Electricity W. N. Herbert 87 Slow Animals Crossing 88 Cabaret McGonagall 91 Smirr 92 The King and Queen of Dumfriesshire

Selima Hill 94 I Will Be Arriving Next Thursday in My Wedding-Dress 95 I Know I Ought to Love You 9 5 My Sister's Jeans 96 A Small Hotel 9 6 Please Can I Have a Man

Michael Hof mann 98 Ancient Evenings 99 The Machine That Cried

101 TheLate Richard Dadd;i8i7-i886 102 Lament for Crassus

Kathleen Jamie 103 The Way We Live 104 The Bogey-Wife 105 Skeins 0 Geese 106 Pipistrelles 107 The Hill-track

Alan Jenkins 108 Visiting 109 Portrait of a Lady no Barcelona in Inheritance

Jackie Kay

113 Even the Trees 114 In my country Finger The Shoes of Dead Comrades 116 [from] Other Lovers

Gwyneth Lewis 118 Pentecost 119 'One day, feeling hungry' 120 Woods 120 The Flaggy Shore 121 [from] Welsh Espionage: ix Advice on Adultery

Roddy Lumsden 123 Always 124 An Older Woman 125 Piquant 125 The Man I Could Have Been

Glyn Maxwell 128 My Turn 129 The Poem Recalls the Poet 129 Helene and Heloise

Jamie McKendrick 133 Ancient History 134 Sky Nails 134 Six Characters in Search of Something 135 The One-Star

Andrew Motion 138 The Lines i39 A Wall 140 A Glass of Wine 141 The Letter 142 Mythology Sean O'Brien 143 Cousin Coat 144 After Laf orgue 147 The Amateur God

Alice Oswald 148 April 149 Bike Ride on a Roman Road 150 Sea Sonnet 150 Wedding 151 Prayer

Ruth Padel 152 Tinderbox 153 Skin 153 Angel 155 The Starling 156 On the Line

Don Paterson 157 The White Lie 159 St Brides: Sea-Mail 161 Imperial

Peter Reading 162 [from] Stet 164 Salopian

Christopher Reid 165 A Whole School of Bourgeois Primitives 166 What the Uneducated Old Woman Told Me 167 In the Echoey Tunnel 168 Mermaids Explained 169 Fetish Robin Robertson 170 Fall 170 Fugue for Phantoms 171 Artichoke 172 Wedding the Locksmith's Daughter 172 The Immoralist

Anne Rouse 174 Testament 175 Faith Healers 175 Memo to Auden 178 The Anaesthetist

Jo Shapcott 180 Muse 181 My Life Asleep 181 Motherland 182 The Mad Cow in Love 183 Phrase Book

185 Index of Authors and Titles 188 Index of First Lines