Matthew Paul
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Two poems by Matthew Paul
Photo by Thomas Verbruggen on Unsplash A Short History of Greenhouses In the end, my father’s greenhouse was shipwreckedBy ivy, which spiralled round bamboo canes, stuckLike octopus suckers glued to a crab-shell, cracked The last surviving glass and snaked through holesAt the bottom of terracotta plastic pots. An oddballNurseryman, a character actor throwing colourful Shade,…
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Measured economy: ‘Whatever You Do, Just Don’t’ by Matthew Stewart
Matthew Paul Admirers of Matthew Stewart’s first collection, The Knives of Villalejo (Eyewear, 2017), will undoubtedly remember how its intense, tightly compressed poems navigated the overlaps and tensions between memories of his upbringing in Farnham, deep within ‘Stockbroker Belt’ Surrey, and the adult life he’s made, as a wine-trader in Extremadura, with his wife and…
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Two poems by Matthew Paul
Frans Ruiter on Unsplash Brian Clough in the Rijksmuseum I had four beautiful days in Amsterdam. The weather was gorgeous, the sights were just absolutely gorgeous. Everything about the place is magic. – The Frost Interview, 1974 As he stood eye to eye with Rembrandt’s 1628 self-portrait, did newly-sacked…
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Two poems by Matthew Paul
Chris Balderstone in action for Carlisle United and England The Last Corinthians for Ann and Peter Sansom A cricket bat slumped at the back of my father’s shed preserves the faintest whiff of linseed oil. Faded GM on its splice denotes the makers: Gunn and Moore, co-founded by Billy…