Paul McLoughlin
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A poem from Paul McLoughlin: Selected Poems
Below is a poem from the Selected Poems of the late Paul McLoughlin (1947-2021), recently published by Shoestring Press and edited with an introduction by John Forth. Mother in Murreigh You wanted to be seventyhere – despite your brotherbeing the most contrary manever to put shoes on his two feet. You spent the morning up…
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‘The Capture of the Five Boroughs’ by Paul McLoughlin
Below is an extract from Paul McLoughlin’s Breaking Ground: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems in Old English and in Translation, recently published by Paekakariki Press, London. The Old English version of ‘The Capture of the Five Boroughs’ is followed by Paul’s translation. The Capture of the Five Boroughs AD 942 …
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Inside and Out – The force of nature in poems by Ted Hughes (’Wind’); Seamus Heaney (‘Storm on the Island); Ian Hamilton (‘The Storm’) & Brian Jones (‘The Measure of the Need’).
Paul McLoughlin: Ted Hughes’s poem ‘Wind’ plays (its exaggeration is wilful) on the familiar mismatch between human consciousness and unthinking nature. It is an obsessive interest. In ‘Thrushes’ (Lupercal, 1960) Mozart’s genius involves (with ‘bullet and automatic / Purpose’) his closing the gap, so that thought and action happen together, and it helps explain why…