Category Archives: Poetry and writing

This is not a sales pitch

This is not a sales pitch. This is a confession. But this is not a confessional: I have nothing to be ashamed of. In May Test Centre will release my second collection of poems. It’s been six years since I published How to Build a City. It is an understatement to say that I haveContinue reading “This is not a sales pitch”

Two early reviews of Flood Drain

Chivers’ Flood Drain speaks in many voices: some are beautiful, some are demotic and, pulled together, they achieve a confluence, like the Humber and the Hull, like the past and the present. John Field, ‘Find the River’ and Very different from the ambitious Medieval allegorical world of Langland’s dream poem this witty and intelligent take onContinue reading “Two early reviews of Flood Drain”

Mutant River: Messing around on the Hull

In the opening of the great medieval dream vision Piers Plowman, the narrator lies down ‘on a brood bank by a bourne syde’ and is sent to sleep by the sound of the stream which, as he says ‘sweyed so murye’. The poem registers a universal truth, that there is something mesmeric about running water,Continue reading “Mutant River: Messing around on the Hull”

Flood Drain

I couldn’t be more excited to have been commissioned by Humber Mouth Literature Festival to write Flood Drain. ~ Flood Drain: A Contemporary Dream Vision of the River Hull Inspired by the extraordinary dream visions of the medieval poets, the contemporary writer Tom Chivers proposes a new exploration of the liminal terrain of the RiverContinue reading “Flood Drain”

Seamus Heaney’s Human Touch

It’s fair to say that Heaney stood apart from many of the innovations of modern poetry, but he was a master of breath, and of the poised line-ending. His poems are always clean and efficient, but with sounds that leap off the page: his was a poetry of speaking, of a gently turned vernacular. TheyContinue reading “Seamus Heaney’s Human Touch”

Five new dates for The Walbrook Pilgrimage

Part historical/cultural research project, part exercise in acute environmental observation, Chivers’ ode to the Walbrook – “ghost and friend of the City” – is an immersive, beautifully executed exercise in urban psychogeography. (Wild Culture) If you missed the initial, sold-out run of The Walbrook Pilgrimage, it’s your lucky day – I am leading five moreContinue reading “Five new dates for The Walbrook Pilgrimage”

The Circus of Poetry: from Clowning to the Taming of the Lion

Three years ago I edited and published a collection of essays exploring new approaches to poetry. Stress Fractures is currently on sale for just five of your English pounds, so as a further temptation I am making my introduction to the book freely available right here. I envisaged the collection as a means of provokingContinue reading “The Circus of Poetry: from Clowning to the Taming of the Lion”

That an Horse hath no gall

A horse in a field is worth two in the hand          Applejack is a reliable and hard-working pony, although headstrong about doing things on her own[1]          take horses for an example, if you look closely you notice that all horses have exactly the same face[2]          Glueing coconuts to your dogs feet so people think youContinue reading “That an Horse hath no gall”