Winners 2001 : Runner-up : Eve Blair

Summer School 2012

The 8th Tower Poetry Summer School for young poets aged 18-23 will be held in Christ Church, Oxford from 28-31 August 2012. The tutors will be Alan Gillis (University of Edinburgh, Scotland) and Kevin Young (Emory University, Atlanta, USA).

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Poetry Matters

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.

Eve Blair

Blue

The sky is far and flat,
Dry
With cloud cut-outs.
Soon we will be
Alone
Together
Under the guttural utterances of stars
And the damp, sleepy open lips of the moon.

For now,
Children play in the brittle grass outside,
Under the clicking dirty leaves of plane trees.
The river is the only one of us
Who will make it to the sea today –
Over the sun-softened air of the city,
To where she walks, barefoot,
Swaying her wide, blue hips,
Bejewelled between the dusty and the shiny cars,
The midday swelter of noise in summer London parks,
The stillness of patiently waiting buildings.

But you and I are rich with the decadence of afternoon sleep:
The scent of the shadow in the dip of someone else’s neck,
The taste of a kiss under your tongue,
Sweetly stored.

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.

Publications

The Twelve:

Poems from the 7th Tower Poetry Summer School 2010
Edited by Daljit Nagra and Jo Shapcott
The Twelve contains 56 poems from the 12 young poets who attended the Summer School.