I am pleased to have a new poem appear in Issue 1.3 of Aperçus Quarterly. I am once again delighted to be in such good company. Also, of all the poems I have written since moving to London in May, this is the first to appear in print. I wrote this poem just three weeks into my new life here, while deep in the throes of culture shock, keenly aware of the differences around me–and especially the symbols and signs. This poem came out of that heightened, almost frenetic, state of awareness.
Enjoy.
I came home tonight to a strange package from New York. In it was a copy of the August 11th issue of The Long Islander, bearing one of my poems. Regarding this historic American newspaper from England, it seems curious to note that its founding by Walt Whitman in 1838 was in the Victorian era, when our North London flat was built. And the location of “Ojai, Ca” beneath my name, once second nature, is finally beginning to feel remote.
I wrote this poem long before I dreamed I’d end up here. My relocation gives the title a new shade of meaning for me, as I seek to blend in with strange surroundings. Sometimes I am unsure myself just whose side I really am on.
Many thanks again to George Wallace for publishing this poem. Click here to read the clipping.
A dear friend in America recently and unexpectedly lost his father. A new friend here in England is tending to his father’s health in what may be the twilight of his life. They have both been on my mind today, along with so many for whom Father’s Day is a poignant occasion. I am now nearly six thousand miles away from my own father, and from the birth- and death-place of my son.
Salamander Cove has put together a fine collection of poems related to fatherhood, and I am pleased to have my poem “Father-Son Conversation” appear in this way for the first time online. The poem opens my debut collection Human Shade, part of the Lost Horse Press New Poets Series. It appears last in this online collection. It is the only poem from a father to a child in this series (the others being addressed to fathers by children), and the editor specifically wanted to end the collection this way. I am honored for my work to have been part of this complex, subtle, and fitting tribute to one of the most important jobs a man can do.
Photo by James Brunskill
I am pleased to have two poems appear in the inaugural issue of Aperçus Quarterly. The poetry section features fine poems by colleagues and mentors such as Boyd W. Benson, Cameron Scott, Marvin Bell, and Peter Sears. The collection is a manageable size, and each poem is worth a read. The images beneath each poem are also striking, evocative, and well-chosen to compliment the written piece.
I wrote the poem “White Pigeons” while still in Ojai. There is a coop nearby my parents’ house. Re-reading the poem from my office in Soho makes me homesick for a place that now seems so far away as to almost have been imagined. It is, for me, a pleasant kind of haunting. Enjoy the poems.
Kate Clayton
Sugar Mule has been good to me. My debut collection, Human Shade, features four poems published across three different issues of the magazine. It is such a boost to forge a relationship with an editor who keeps wanting more of my work.
The two poems currently featured in Sugar Mule #37 give mention to figures as diverse as John Lennon and Miranda the cat. They are in good company in this issue, alongside poems by poets such as local favorite Mary Kay Rummel.
Kudos to Cameron Scott for another fine job.
I came home tonight to a lovely surprise: my contributor’s copy of A Bird Black as the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens (
