Poems

Middleton, Emily

El Alto Fairytale

Where did you say
you wanted to capture the portrait?
In the backyard, when the sun sets?
Looking mournful?
...thick ochre dust coating our throats,
coughing in time with each step;
the rubbish-riddled pavements
flanked by funeral parlours
plying their trade with neon crosses...

You see, we were shut out of the house
(no reason given – lack of food, I suppose)
aged six and nine respectively.


...Continues >
Wilkinson, Ben - Sonnet

Sonnet

Sheffield’s spun in an outbreak of half-hearted snow –
the kind that doesn’t stick but blusters up streets
where cars, trams and bikes come and go
while workers trudge pavements on lunch breaks.
I don’t know what the hell I’ll say to you
when it comes to this catching up, four years on –
what else but to make small talk on the who
what where and whens of those years gone
like this flurry of sudden, street-sweeping whiteness?

The Cavendish spills open as the 95 pulls up:
six or so kids drift off towards campus
when suddenly my mobile’s relentless as gossip –

 Hi – no worries – I’ve booked us this place to eat…

          (hell, I know why I’m doing this…)
                                                      So, where shall we meet?

...Continues >
Abbott, Paul

Notting Hill Carnival

August bank holiday in Notting Hill,
Stuck in a two-thirds empty sushi bar,
I drink the cheapest soup dish on the menu
And discuss tactics: entry points, how far,
To walk or haggle, Who’s Who. Then the bill
Comes, and I pay. Pay cash, says Jimmy, then you
Won’t waste your cash on beer
. We all decide
Vaguely to join the one-way crowd outside,

 

And it begins, this packed conveyor belt
Of costumes, crowded streets, and creditcards.
Scaffolded billboards boast of low gun-crime,


...Continues >
Romer, Stephen

Strasbourg

Trailing back, smitten through the small hours,
I thought of Anna’s bedhead languor
unchanged these many years,

her unreformed Romanticism
of the first wave – ein Uber-Kunst,
the All in One, the One in All ! –

her Decadence of the last,
draped women, green fairy, industrial smoke
from a Rimbaud pipe –

of her delectable heart-shaped lostness,
« What then is my Destiny ? », and
« I thought the Germans not much fun,

but then I came to live in France ! »


...Continues >
Robert, Saxton

Under the Greenwood Tree

See the songthrush and the barn owl
pray, each ensconced in its hood
of light: brown Franciscan cowl
whose alms, fat panoply of food,

swell to plenty in the twin globes
of the world, one eye at each side
of the head; while slits in robes
peer lustily at the unconfirmed bride,

equally watchful in their facial disc,
huge devil’s eyes computing the distance
from an angel, exterminating risk,
the iron will of happenstance


...Continues >

About Tower Poetry

Tower Poetry exists to encourage and challenge everyone who reads or writes poetry. Funded by a generous bequest to Christ Church, Oxford, by the late Christopher Tower, the aims of Tower Poetry are clear: to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people in education, and to challenge people to write their own poetry. Creative writing should be a central element in literary education, and learning about writing poetry can help students to think about ways of reading poetry.

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Reviews

Music of the Spheres, Pluto by Glyn Maxwell reviewed by Matt Haw

Two Plutos come to mind as I hold Glyn Maxwell’s latest book in my hand. The first is of Mickey Mouse’s mustard coloured mutt; the second is the enigmatic former planet.  Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your taste, it is the latter rather than the former in which Maxwell’s ninth...

...Continues >
Ciaran Carson's In The Light Of: after Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud reviewed by Lucy Hinnie

The title of Ciaran Carson’s latest volume of poetry is in itself telling: rather than viewing his work as being ‘in the shadow’ of Rimbaud’s Illuminations, Carson sees his reinterpretation of the late nineteenth-century prose verse as being nurtured by its predecessor, a distinct advantage...

...Continues >
Tess Somervell reviews Luke Wright's 'Mondeo Man'

Unsurprisingly, most of the poems in Luke Wright’s debut full collection read as though they should be spoken aloud, and with great vigour. Wright has already made a name for himself as a tremendously funny performance poet, and if you’ve seen/heard him live, or seen/heard his recordings on TV,...

...Continues >
No Going Back - Miriam Gamble reviews Jacob Polley's 'The Havocs'

In ‘The Tree’, one of many sonnets in Jacob Polley’s third collection, The Havocs, the speaker broods on “what it means / to remember what was never there”. Suitably enough for a poet obsessed with winter, the tree in question is a Christmas tree – soon to be decked with baubles but, for...

...Continues >
Lucy Hinnie reviews Alec Finlay's 'Be My Reader'

One couldn’t help but smile upon reading ‘The Wittgenstein House (Skoldjen)’ given its perhaps unwitting topicality with the current British obsession with Scandinavian noir: from Wallander, to Borgen, via Sarah Lund’s jumper, our pervasive infatuation with our wintry friends is well reflected...

...Continues >

Poetry Matters magazine

Poetry Matters is an exciting on-line poetry magazine which provides a fresh, dynamic perspective on poetry issues through a mix of news, reviews and comment. It should appeal to students in the final stages of their secondary education, but its content and scope will also be of interest and relevance to the wider poetry community.

Read more

News

  • 2013 Christopher Tower Poetry Competition

    The winners of the 13th Christopher Tower Poetry Competition were announced at Christ Church on 18 April.  Azfa Ali, from Oxford Spires Academy, was awarded the £3,000 first prize for her poem, Origins. Second prize went to Sarah Fletcher (last year's winner) from The American School in London for her poem, Kraut Girl and third prize was won by Erin Tunney from De Lisle Catholic Science College, Loughborough, Leicestershire for her poem, The Devil.
  • Latest Review

    The latest review on the website is by Matt Haw who reviews Glyn Maxwell's Pluto.

Latest Audio

Listen to the prizewinners read their poems from recent Christopher Tower Poetry Competitions.

Listen to 'Feather - small and still', one of the 2009 prizewinning poems, by Sophie Stephenson-Wright, set to music by Jonathan Pitkin and sung by Heather Uren, accompanied
by Guy Newbury - first performed on 24 March 2010.

 

Latest Video

2012 prize-giving introduced by Mishtooni Bose; Christopher Reid talks about the poetry; John Cartwright presents the prizes; and the winner, Sarah Fletcher from The American School in London, reads her poem 'Papa's Epilogue'.

'Feather -- small and still', one of the shortlisted poems from Tower Poetry's 2009 competition -- Villanelle - by Sophie Stephenson-Wright, set to music by Jonathan Pitkin and sung by Christ Church undergraduate, Heather Uren, accompanied by Guy Newbury. Part 1.

Tower Poetry's 2010 competition winner, Emily Harrison, reading Love has no Larynx.