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    Weighing the Present
    Weighing the Present
    Weighing the Present
    Ebook81 pages23 minutes

    Weighing the Present

    By Michael Laskey

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    About this ebook

    Weighing the Present includes poems about family and wider society, often through brilliantly evoked particular details and specific scenes from 'everyday life'. Short linked poems, which amount almost to sequences, deal with difficult material - elegies for lost friends for instance - while still remaining somehow lifeaffirming. At the heart of the book are tender but unsentimental love poems.

    A new collection from Michael Laskey is always a cause for celebration.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Poetry Business
    Release dateOct 10, 2014
    ISBN9781910367247
    Weighing the Present
    Author

    Michael Laskey

    Michael Laskey is a full time freelance poet, editor, and tutor with many years experience of promoting contemporary poetry. He has published five collections, most recently Weighing the Present (Smith/Doorstop, 2014) and The Man Alone: New & Selected Poems (2008). His first two collections were Poetry Book Society Recommendations: Thinking of Happiness (Peterloo, 1991) and The Tightrope Wedding (Smith/Doorstop, 1999), which was also shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. He co-founded the international Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in 1989 and directed it through its first decade. He also founded and co-edited the poetry magazine Smiths Knoll with Roy Blackman (1991-2002) and Joanna Cutts (2002-2012) until the final fiftieth issue in November 2012. He published pamphlets under the Smiths Knoll imprint until 2016, many available here and still continues his work as an editor with The Garlic Press (which he established 2003) which principally publishes Suffolk based poets.

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      Book preview

      Weighing the Present - Michael Laskey

      Weighing the Present

      Michael Laskey

      Acknowledgements

      Many thanks to the editors of the following magazines and websites: Arete, The Dark Horse, The Poetry Review, The Rialto, The Spectator and Poetry International Website. Special thanks too to The Poetry Trust for commissioning 'Treatment' as part of a residency in 2009 at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and to the artist Ian Starsmore for commissioning 'Ladder' to accompany his 2013 exhibition at Cambridge University Library.

      Published 2014 by

      smith|doorstop Books

      The Poetry Business

      Bank Street Arts

      32-40 Bank Street

      Sheffield S1 2DS

      www.poetrybusiness.co.uk

      Copyright © Michael Laskey 2014

      Digital Edition © 2015

      ISBN 978-1-910367-24-7

      Michael Laskey hereby asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Cover image: Repairing the Bicycle by John Quinton Pringle

      Author photo: Claire McNamee

      smith|doorstop Books is a member of Inpress,

      www.inpressbooks.co.uk. Distributed by Central Books Ltd., 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN.

      The Poetry Business is an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation

      Supported by Arts Council England

      Contents

      Not That He Wrote Poems

      The Unexamined Life

      Must Be About Now

      Catch

      Alternative

      Either …

      A Breath

      House

      Birthday Cards

      According to Google

      The Hummers

      Visiting

      The Tiger

      The Morrison Shelter

      Volunteers

      Left Standing

      Character

      The Finishing Touch

      Lap

      Distress

      Approaching

      Moment of Hope

      Ladybird, Ladybird

      The Verge

      Unheard Of

      Bayonet

      Callipygian

      February

      Ignorance

      One Life

      Pull

      Spontaneous

      Late

      Nails in the Coffin

      Ladder

      Deathtrap

      The 39th Wedding Anniversary

      Together

      Breakfast

      In the Moment

      Treatment

      At Your Feet

      Living with Lemons

      Aubergine

      Mood

      Chopping Board

      On the Desk

      Curtains

      Perm

      Lucky

      Swifts

      Service

      Footpath

      Scots Pine

      Seeds

      Going the Extra Mile

      Resolutions

      A Bundle of Bamboos

      Waiting for the Wave

      Weighing the Present

      About the Author

      Not That He Wrote Poems

      but in the dream he’d been giving a reading,

      launching his latest collection,

      Enjoying the preview?
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