Olympic Breakfast at Ponti’s (the larger, grander one in the Station with additional Food Hall). Talk of “theological space cadets”. These 9am egg and mushroom patrons! Business meetings over bad coffee and worse service. The concourse moves below, a shifting mirror. This futuristic throwback. London’s Double Vision. In New York, In New York… InContinue reading “These 9am egg and mushroom patrons!”
Author Archives: Tom Chivers
Residency at The Bishopsgate Institute
Good news. I have been appointed Poet in Residence at one of my favourite local places, The Bishopsgate Institute. This is a first for me and them. Very exciting. I’ll be spending time there in April researching in their archives, talking to staff and visitors and finding material in the nooks and crannies of their historicContinue reading “Residency at The Bishopsgate Institute”
End of the beginning
London Word Festival ended on Thursday night with our lively discussion event, Book Futures, followed by a session at the appropriately-named Water Poet on Folgate Street. Three weeks, eight venues, fifteen shows, one hundred artists (including the staggeringly brilliant Saul Williams, above) and total audiences of over two thousand have left me feeling totally shattered.Continue reading “End of the beginning”
Canon law
Sean O’Brien defends the canon in yesterday’s Guardian. I don’t quite know what to make of it. On the one hand his call to read serious poetry is right; and I agree that it’s important to see oneself as ‘part of a continuum, a community extending across history’. On the other hand, I can’t help but thinkContinue reading “Canon law”
News in brief
Just come back from another excellent event – this time the premiere of Mr Larrikin’s play Camusflage Krokodial at Hoxton Hall. I got to operate the follow spot, which was particularly exciting. My poem ‘Swans in Thames’ has just been published by the very reputable London Magazine (hence the image above). Go buy it. And on another note, I’veContinue reading “News in brief”
The Hill Fort
Its only defences now, a ring of gorse, cat snake in strange fruit tangling the land with vine, its lights diminished like clothes sewn onto the body. Beyond, the mossy gums and their barrackyard laughter; Augustus, chasing gateways that open to the view and a stone pile. High pitched calypso exfoliates my horse, grinning stillContinue reading “The Hill Fort”
Landless space
In a discussion event I organised as part of London Word Festival, Melanie Challenger advocated a poetry that is intimately tied to landscape. We need to anchor everything back to the real, to the physical world, to the landscape […] The urgent task of everybody is to tie together land and word and worldContinue reading “Landless space”
Working in Stone
from Prehistoric Stone Circles by Aubrey Burl (1979) Inside a bank that broke from the four entries, which are more like circles of rock, the damaged Cove interrupts an avenue. A field of thousands of half-completed stones visits him nightly. A stone macehead of striped gneiss meticulously deposited in line with the southern moonrise. AtContinue reading “Working in Stone”
Vomage and other neologisms Pt. II
Video from London Word Festival launch party. There is a short clip of me reading the ‘Festival thanks’ in the form of a rhyming poem. More videos on their way.
Vomage and other neologisms
Vomage n. a tribute to the night before Just one of the coinages featured on ‘The Wall of Neology’ at last night’s launch party for London Word Festival. Sam, Marie and myself are very pleased with how it went. The Gramaphone was packed with over 100 VIPs, journalists and supporters of the Festival. I know they were partlyContinue reading “Vomage and other neologisms”
Tom Chivers 