Wild Court

An international poetry journal based in the English Department of King’s College London

‘Comet C/2023 A3’: a poem by Gregory Leadbetter

Below is a poem from Gregory Leadbetter’s new collection The Infernal Garden, recently published by Nine Arches Press.

Comet C/2023 A3

The watchers called, all world wide, for what
had not been seen since human fires
burned so low they let the night
etch the mind with all its stars.

I heard, and wanted that cold touch.
I saw its stain of light arrive
through the glass of a sky clear with hush.
I felt its distance at the root of my life.

The blue torch of a satellite passed
as if to pierce the concentric spheres
that give the gaze of thought its compass.
It crossed me with the grace of silence.

I watched and the comet held me still,
as if for a voice on the travelling air
to come with a secret it could never reveal.
It took me to space and left me there.

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Gregory Leadbetter

Gregory Leadbetter’s new collection of poetry is The Infernal Garden (Nine Arches Press, 2025). His previous books and pamphlets include Caliban (Dare-Gale Press, 2023), a New Statesman Book of the Year 2023; Balanuve, with photographs by Phil Thomson (Broken Sleep, 2021); Maskwork (Nine Arches Press, 2020), longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2021; The Fetch (Nine Arches Press, 2016), and The Body in the Well (HappenStance Press, 2007). Recent work for the BBC includes the extended poem Metal City (Radio 3, 2023). A song-cycle featuring poems from The Fetch by the composer and pianist Eric McElroy has been performed internationally, and a recording with the tenor James Gilchrist was released in 2023. As a critic he publishes widely on the history and practice of poetry, and his book Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination was awarded the University English Book Prize 2012. He is Professor of Poetry at Birmingham City University.