The girl from the belle époque

 Draft of a poem of sorts

Sometime into a half-hearted summer,

we're still pinning our hopes

on showers clearing

and redemptive sunshine after rain.

Umbrellas flex along the waterfront –

or, collapsed, poke from a bin.

Across Europe, cities are loud with protest,

though you’d hardly know it here.

Sporadic wi-fi connections bring

stray hints, old news, a photograph.

On edge amongst the package tours,

we’re looking down into

perfect reflections of day-trip boats

moored at the quayside,

seeming ghosts of sunk ships.

Or overlooking the city

from a flat warehouse roof.

It’s temptation back to days –

those days – when, stalled

in this same, familiar light,

you were halfway up the garden path

and she was in shade,

arguing the politics,

a few exotic steps across the grass.

Tom Phillips 2013

Reading Poetry Festival 5-9 June

The first Reading Poetry Festival takes place this week, with an Italian poetry day, a children's poetry day, readings, conversations, workshops and exhibitions at the Museum of English Rural Life. The line-up includes Iain Sinclair, John Hegley, Carrie Etter, Peter Robinson, Zoe Skoulding, Mark Ford and poets published by Two Rivers Press. Full details, poems and an online magazine here: http://readingpoetryfestival.com/

On Sunday (9 June), I'll be running a workshop in the morning (10am-12noon) and reading from Recreation Ground (Two Rivers Press, 2013, http://tworiverspress.com/wp/category/people/tom-phillips-poet/) as part of the Two Rivers event in the early evening (5-6.30pm). Again there are more details here: http://readingpoetryfestival.com/

Poem: To the Northern Station

They come at me – and pass

like missed trains, failing

to stop on schedule, trailing

a line of lamp-lit heads.

I used to know them as faces

in remembered scenery,

and how the light fell, or rain

held off, and what was said.

       *

At the fag-end of a long haul

I’m looking out on what’s expected:

mountainous horizon,

boys kicking hard against shale

to swing up and onto

empty carriage stairwells,

while sun glints on minarets,

wrecking yards, apartment blocks.

In the aloof vacancy of a ticket hall

puddled with water, nothing moves.

We push at the door, step outside –

and then everything does.

Tom Phillips

Taken from the e-pamphlet The Dream Library & Other Poems (Various Artists 2013, variousartists986@gmail.com)

London Magazine review

Recreation Ground (the book) is reviewed by David Cooke in the latest London Magazine alongside new collections from James Brookes and Conor Carville - in an issue which also includes Michael Horovitz on Soho Bohemia/the Beat Generation in London, new poems by Helen Dunmore and Philip Gross, Edward Lucie-Smith on Jamil Naqsh and Tom Sykes on Dervla Murphy. Ffi here: http://thelondonmagazine.org/