Last Updated 16 July 2007
Publications currently available
Cannon Poets and Friends
Orders to:
The Cannon Poets, 22, Margaret Grove, Harborne, Birmingham, B17 9JH
Make Cheques payable to The Cannon Poets please.
The Ant Attack by Peter Isacké . £5.00 (+ 50p p&p) 24pp
Poems written in Australia
Bluebeard’s Wife by Julie Boden. Pontefract Press £3.00(+50p p&p) 190032542X
A Symphony Hall poem. A sequence of 18 sonnets.
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Poems inspired by Bartok’s opera deriving from a Symphony Hall workshop led by Julie Boden and also including the libretto of the opera. 20pp £2.00 (+50p p&p)
Broadside X Edited by John Alcock, Don Barnard, Martin Underwood .Cannon Poets
£7.50 (+ £1 p&p) 0953890007 82pp Celebrating 21 years of the Cannon Poets. This collection includes work by the current Birmingham Poet Laureate, Don Barnard and other national prize winning poets and poems.
The Cannon’s Mouth. Quarterly magazine from Cannon Poets. All contributions welcome for consideration. ISSN 1745-6630. £10.50 per annum (four issues) – or become a Member or Associate Member and receive it free! (Subscriptions to Cannon Poets, address as above).
Dew Sweeper by John Alcock Silver Lake Press £5,00 0954319516
John’s latest collection (his earlier book was Clutching….amber). Rich, rewarding, surprising, moving.
Four Caves of the Heart, An Anthology of 14 Women Poets
edited by Myra Schneider and Caroline Price
Second Light Publications £ 7.95(+£1 p&p) 09546934X 119pp
Four Horizons by Milorad Krystanovich Heaven Tree Press. £4 (+ 50p p&p) 0954881109 45pp Poems in English and Croatian. Just published.
Griot eds. Kampta Karran & Cathy Perry. Writers Without Borders. £7.50 (+ £1 p&p) 0953968111 107 pp. Poetry from the multi-cultural group.
Growing Old Disgracefully by Don Barnard..2nd ed. 2005. 0953352552.
£5.00 (+ £1.00 p&p). Light performance verse by Birmingham’s ninth Poet Laureate.
Jigharzi by Caroline Carver. Semicolon 0953352528. £6.95 (+ £1.00 p&p) 62 pp Illustrated poems by the 1998 National Poetry Competition winner.
The Language of Wounds by Milorad Krystanovich £7.50 (+£1 p&p) 095396812X 82pp
With some poems in Croatian.
Listen. Semicolon. £3.50 (+ 50p p&p). 48 pp 095335251X
Poems inspired in workshops at Worcester Cathedral led by David Hart.
Menorah by Don Barnard. D Barnard (formerly Semicolon) £1.00 (+ 50p p&p) 0953352544.16pp Seven poems by Birmingham’s ninth Poet Laureate to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
One Drop by Soran Writers Without Borders £4 (+50p p&p) 095368170 48pp
Poems in English by the distinguished Kurdish poet.
Poetry & Me: The World Around Me Rod Dungate with Jayne Basnett. A unique poetry resource for KS1 teachers. Book contains: new collection of poems by Rod Dungate in a range of modern poetry styles; notes for teachers and activities on each poem; mappings to NC; CD with copies of materials and produced recordings of Rod reading the poems. Many lessons worth! Available in September 2005. Special introductory offer (inc. p&p): £20. Further info, mail@PersonalPerformance.org OR www.PersonalPerformance.org.
Red by Andy Conner Dynamic Press. £6 (+ £1 p&p) 0955000300 65 pp
Red The Rainbow Tuesday Club’s new anthology. Soon to be published.
Saving the Seeds. Writers Without Borders. £8.75 0953968189 140pp
A further collection by this dynamic group (see below) on the theme of identity. Including some (very) short stories which blur the line between poetry and prose in their use of language.
Shakespeare Memorial Room Writers Without Borders £8.95 (+ £1 p&p) 0953968146 158pp Poetry and Prose by the multi cultural group whose members include Croatian, Kurdish, Asian and Caribbean writers, among others – English may not be our first language but it is our meeting place.
Single Travellers by Christine Coleman Flarestack £3.00 (+ 50p p&p) 1900397706 44 pp
Sweeney Todd and Other Gothic Tales by David Battersby
Zeke Publishing £5.99 (+ £1 p&p) 0954692802 74pp Have you ever wondered what your fellow man tastes like? Read David Battersby's re-telling of this classic tale in verse with new twists and turns for a new generation to enjoy.
Sweeney Todd and Other Gothic Tales by David Battersby Zeke Publishing £5.99 (+ £1 p&p) 0954692802 74pp Have you ever wondered what your fellow man tastes like? Read David Battersby's re-telling of this classic tale in verse with new twists and turns for a new generation to enjoy.
Ten Hallam Poets. Mews Press. £7.99 (+ £1.00 p&p). 1843871238. 98 pp Anthology by 10 students from the Sheffield Hallam University MA Writing Programme.
Voiceprints by Inktank Flarestack £3.00 (+ 50p p&p) 190039779X The first anthology by the women’s poetry group Inktank, nine voices including Jo Bell, Julie Boden & Hazell Hills.
Where Spirits Touch by Milorad Krystanovich Writers Without Borders £7.50 (+ £1 p&p) 095396812X 80pp
Zaza Collections by Lizzy Murray Mcginley: The Rose; 11/11/11; I wanna write;
Flood each at £1.50
Broadside X
A new collection of poetry celebrating 21 years of the Cannon Poets
NOW AVAILABLE. Jointly edited and including poems by John Alcock, Don Barnard (Birmingham’s Poet Laureate 2004/5) and Martin Underwood and including work by other national prizewinners. Special price to members and Associates: £5
£7.50 (incl p&p) 82pp ISBN 0953890007
Tony Walker (2006)
lower case love
ISBN 0-953-35256-0
If I confess that Tony Walker's lower case love had me reaching for a magnifying glass please do not get the wrong idea. The clarity of the text is beautifully presented (in acknowledged collaboration with Don Barnard) but one of the poems, 'tumbling smoke', took me back to childhood, identifying with the young boy, as he looks through 'his great aunt's reading glass', at the reversed image where: 'next-door's smoke, grey-black and heavily rolling towards the new-lit fire, / falls like dull lead through his gaze'.
Past and present are juxtaposed by what the poet/child describes as 'best magic' and there is plenty of that in Tony's book. Describing himself as 'always a science student', poetry has never been far away, from the time of the Liverpool Poets of the '60s to his days studying small-scale engineering at Warwick University and, subsequently, as a welcome friend among the Cannon Poets.
If engineering requires precision, so does poetry, and this is frequently demonstrated. Among the first poems in the book are two gems: 'yesterdays' portrays a small girl - a daughter? - 'contemplating the lovingly collected pinecones, / in your cupped hands, / with quiet joy.' While 'spacewatch' is a love poem of rare and sensuous beauty. If Imagist poetry comes to mind this is not surprising; and surely William Carlos Williams would give his blessing to 'woman humming', complete with wheelbarrow!
If these are solo pieces, elsewhere the reader will find lush orchestral works, as in 'days of grace', a paean to sailing, and 'hot-hot', a tour de force, evoking the languid heat of the West Indies. Here: 'music slips lazily along dusty ground from Paul's car radio / leaking from the car with no engine / But has passengers'. From there we go on to meet Eilene, Ma Coco and a whole gallery of characters.
The poet is at his best, however, when he is putting what the cover refers to as 'the trivia of life' under his microscope. Juke boxes, one-armed bandits, milk bottles, windfall apples; the list could go on but each is precisely analysed and embellished with polished imagery. If some critics would claim that 'trivia' is not the subject of poetry they have only to read Seamus Heaney's defence of 'the disregarded ones' in 'Mint'[1] to realise Tony Walker is in good company.
Among the poems that will be longest remembered, I suspect, will be the more homely ones: the writer in his caravan watching two youngsters leaping: 'from sodden bank into the brown torrent / / boisterous and girlsterous / foreverbrave and fearless.' ('spring'.) Inevitably, such thoughts lead towards time and mortality, contemplated with sensitivity and usually with patience, though just occasionally, defiance, like the 'fishmonger of words' whose: 'bloody four lettered words go all over the pavement.'
Even that is a metaphor; this poet rarely uses a real four-letter word. Rather, his quiet control is what steers each poem to its conclusion and I am reminded of Gavin Maxwell's observation: 'That the white space at the end of the line is the mist we walk into every moment of our lives.'[2] An exciting and rather scary place to be, but one that is all the better for knowing we are in such trustworthy hands as those of Tony Walker.
John Alcock
[1] Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level, Faber 1996
[2] Gavin Maxwell, Poetry Review Vol 96:4
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