Martin Corless-Smith was born and raised in Worcestershire, England. He has published 6 collections of poetry (including the most recent Bitter Green) and one novel, This Fatal Looking Glass. He is Professor of English at Boise State University.
Alex Houen is author of the poetry chapbook Rouge States (Oystercatcher, 2014) and has another one (co-written with Geoff Gilbert) entitled Hold West forthcoming from Eyewear Publishing. He’s published poems in various journals, including PN Review, The Wolf, Shearsman Magazine, 3AM (forthcoming), Molly Bloom, Free Verse, and Visual Verse. He co-edits (with Adam Piette) the online poetry magazine Blackbox Manifold, and teaches Modern Literature in the English Faculty, and Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.
Both fine and different poets (and different from me too) so it was a rich reading with a great audience; and time spent with the readers, Adam and Geraldine Monk and Alan Halsey a pleasure.
I read from History or Sleep, not replicating any of the poems from my Storm and Golden Sky reading (see here):
‘Round Midnight’ (see text here)
‘Twin Poem’
‘His Furious Skip’
‘Empty Diaries’ : 1926 and 1936
from Warrant Error
‘Steam from
the nostrils of the nervous engine’
‘Whose body
crackles with self-quotation’
‘Through
slatted blinds you spy another’
‘for
Stephen’ (see the poem at the end of the post here; see the photo of the metronome mentioned in the poem at the top of the post)
‘for
Patricia’
‘As Yet Untitled Poem’
