Winners 2003 : Runner-up : Tim Smith-Laing

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.

Tim Smith-Laing

The Passport

Setting out unprepared
from here,
past the fly-tipped sofa,
the tricycle left there

last year by the flood,
black and white signs
turned against armies invading
sunny afternoons, mud,

domestic arguments, chores,
tilted fence-posts, the not-quite
stream, the concrete aerodrome,
abandoned in the war,

where Mr and Mrs S.
passed through habit
and into customs,
with a nod at the desk.
Where an old gent
glanced over photos,
nodded back;
time spent

picking wool off fences
keeping from knowing
how to breach
the defences

dressing first dates,
fourth birthdays,
crushes, in sentiment’s
rose-tinted tenses.

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.