Header image by Howard Fritz is from the cover of Fred & Blossom
Welcome to the poetry website of Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
***Michael's poetry collections are listed below - click on the links for more information
Since the recent closure of Shoestring Press, all my books are effectively out of print and copies can only be obtained from me (well, perhaps a few are floating about on-line and in second hand bookstores)
Anglicized by Common Use (1998)
Identified Flying Objects (Shoestring Press 2024) looks at life-changing events of a personal nature – broken legs, heart transplants, bereavements – and also considers larger scale upheavals like invasions, liberations or revolutions. Such happenings may be preceded by warnings that go unheeded; and Identified Flying Objects reflects this regrettable human tendency to ignore well-founded London Grip predictions by framing the poems as a sequence of contemporary responses to verses from the Biblical prophet Ezekiel.
***
Poems in the Case (Shoestring Press, 2018) is a genre-bending volume which places an eclectic poetry selection within the framework of a murder mystery and features ten poets caught up in a classic detective story.
When participants gather at a poetry workshop in rural Kent they are looking forward to a preview of a collection of posthumously discovered unpublished poems by the admired and much-missed poet Eric Jessop. Within a few days however tensions have arisen between members of the group—not least over doubts about the collection’s authenticity. When a very public confrontation is followed by two sudden and mysterious deaths will poetic sensibility prove to be of any use in determining what really happened?
***
The Man Who Wasn't Ever Here (Wayleave Press, 2018) extends and elaborates the story of Mike's Irish grandfather which began as a poem sequence in his first book
Anglicised by Common Use (1998). As the book's preface tells us:
Our forebears leave few traces of themselves, unless they stumble briefly into the roving spotlight of recorded history. Thomas Ovans was born in Ireland in the 1850s but came as a shipyard worker to Middlesbrough, where he changed his name to Evans and got married (one small step towards becoming my grandfather). He later went to sea with P&O as a ship’s engineer; and family folklore, supported by a little photographic evidence, says he formed a shipboard friendship with the opera singer Nellie Melba. It is fact not folklore that he came from the same part of County Leitrim as Seán MacDermott, one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. Thomas himself became a posthumous news item in 1917 when his ship hit a mine in the Indian Ocean.
.
***
Pictures from a Postponed Exhibition (Lapwing Press, 2014) was written in collaboration with Australian artist David Walsh . The poems give voice to the small figures which fleetingly inhabit Walsh's hot, fierce landscapes. They tell stories that are partly evolution-myths and partly parables about colonization.
Reviews can be found on Emma Lee's blog and in London Grip
and Lunar Poetry
Fred & Blossom (Shoestring Press, 2013) is a narrative sequence based on the true story of F.G. Miles and Maxine "Blossom" Forbes-Robertson. Their romance began in an aeroplane and throughout the 1930s they were at the centre of the fashionable world of light aviation. The poems touch on the beginnings of airline travel, the British class system, the Spanish Civil War and early attempts at supersonic flight. They also give glimpses of such figures as Douglas Bader, Joseph Stalin and Peter Pan and let us hear the distant voices of Rudyard Kipling, Louis MacNeice and John Betjeman.
The Fred & Blossom cover image is a detail from a painting by Howard Fritz.
I love this book and I love what an obvious labor of love it was... the amazing story, the different forms of poetry, the prose-poems based only on words from articles written at the time. Fred & Blossom, besides having a consistent narrative voice, can also do the characters in different voices. - Murray Bodo
This is stunning ... [I] enjoyed it enormously and feel much better informed about ... history, Englishness, innovation, romance, adventure and much more. [The] choice of poems/forms/found material is wonderful - Jane Kirwan
A great story and tremendously well done. It’s ambitious and beautifully turned, and much of it is masterful. The treated texts are a delight. There was clearly relish in the telling: I do get the sense of a poet enjoying his craft. - James Norcliffe
... gloriously eccentric ... an improbable triumph - Jeremy Page in The Frogmore Papers
... precision of language is what makes Bartholomew-Biggs's volume tick - Deborah Tyler-Bennett in Under the Radar
Tradesman's Exit (Shoestring Press, 2009) tests the links between who we are, what we do and why we are remembered, mixing personal recollections with tributes to an array of master craftsmen in fields as diverse as sport, music, art, film and literature.
The book's striking cover image is by Shelagh Hickman .
"Bartholomew-Biggs has a particular gift for witty allusion ... his wit, however, is coupled with judgement." - Glyn Pursglove
" ... sometimes jolting our memories or suggesting something just beyond our knowing" - Barry Cole
An on-line review of Tradesman's Exit appears on Eyewear
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Tell it Like it Might Be (Smokestack Books, 2008) both celebrates and questions the value of human imagination as the source of both grand designs and private fears. The poems search for “what really happened” behind familiar stories such as lovers’ protestations, government statements or the Christian gospels.
The cover image is a detail from a painting by Howard Fritz.
"This is vigorous and wide-ranging poetry....Here is a book to be welcomed and savoured, by a poet who not only looks but sees" - Peter Bennet
"If my house caught fire and I had to run out very quickly I would reach for Tell it Like it Might Be - it's serious work from a very able poet." - Other Poetry
***
Uneasy Relations (Hearing Eye Press 2007) is a chapbook containing poems which play with themes drawn from the author's career as a professional mathematician. Here he allowsthe two halves of his brain to cooperate and produce poems which link mathematical ideas with subjects as diverse as hill-walking, portfolio theory, sexual politics and the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
"... elegant and relevant - even to non-mathematicians" - Sphinx
"He poses ... questions that are unanswerable, scary and fascinating" - Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society.
Some of the poems in Uneasy Relations first appeared as space-fillers in two mathematical text books published by Springer -
Nonlinear Optimization with Financial Applications and Nonlinear Optimization with Engineering Applications.
Links between mathematics and poetry in these books are explored in a London Grip article.
***
The poems in the chapbook Inkings of Complicity (Pikestaff Press, 2003) dip into the undercurrents beneath everyday experience which may - or may not - explain what happens at the visible surface.
"Impressively peopled with detail" - Envoi
Anglicized by Common Use (Waldean Press 1998) explains the author's tenuous but genuine claim to Irish nationality through a speculative poetic history of the life and times of his grandfather from County Leitrim.
"A superb first collection" - Iota
WINTER
ON THE RYE
After
a print by Paul Benjamins
And what do hedgerows hide
as night submerges them?
Fox barks punctuate the dusk. Small rodents
feed on seeded scraps. Whatever’s lost,
unwanted by the loser,
pins itself against a bush for burning
when a sunset pinks the middle-distance
mist
and far-away geometries of swirling
clouds.
Dark is eating up old footpaths.
Newer muddy tracks lead back
to where we’ve been before
from unremembered angles
through dimensions of the common-
place we always were too occupied
with better things to mention.
your prophets have been like foxes in the waste places. Ezekiel 13:4
I, WILLIAM BLAKE
A boy believes in angels up an oak tree
on the way to Croydon. That’s OK:
what’s to disbelieve when curtains
cutting off this world from any others
are thin as yellow skeletons of autumn
leaves?
Nature’s drapes and angel wings
look pretty much the same
and spread or fold as fleetingly
as sparkle-shimmers flash across our
eyes
when low sun strikes a window pane.
He looks out now through pity’s casement.
Cold wind blows across the common,
scatters morning’s opportunities
beyond the reach of any small blue hands
not plunged in hollow pockets
or clasped round chests and tucked in
armpits
of a worn-out crumpled jacket, left
unwanted,
like its wearer, underneath a hedge.
The people of the land have used oppression and
exercised robbery. Yes, they have troubled the poor and needy. Ezekiel 22:29
The
poem refers to the 2016 Ken Loach film “I, Daniel Blake” about failings in the
British social security system.
As a child, William Blake claimed to have seen visions on
Peckham Rye, including one of "a tree filled with angels, bright angelic
wings bespangling every bough like stars.”
[From Identified Flying Objects]
CRIMINAL TENDENCIES
I was talking in my sleep to this
policeman.
What it is, he said, is this. You
trust your judgement.
You get real close in up against
your suspect
then you lean on him
(and here he rubbed his face on
mine)
and you notice his reaction.
You can always tell the guilty ones.
Does it stand up well in court? He didn't answer
but applied his cheek again and I
could feel
reactions that were asking to be
noticed.
But what I want to know, I said,
is how many of the people
get to pass your test and walk away?
None of them, he smiled, and that's
the point.
That's the way
we know we've got it right.
ARRANGEMENT FOR STRINGS
Jazz and puppetry, she says
are twins. She’s right: harmonic lines
allow as little
freedom
as a finger up
the spine
or wires
through wrists that push or pull you
into false
positions.
I’m a home-made
marionette.
She holds the
strings. Come here, she calls,
pretending that
she doesn’t;
next she’ll
brush me with a kiss
or with a lash.
I won’t ask which
until I close
the door.
Should she cut
me loose I’d slump,
a bundle of
discordant limbs.
Puppetry and
jazz
run risks:
alfresco melodies
divorced from
chords collapse, go sprawling
as disjointed
notes.
She’s making me
negotiate
departures:
clean out china/filing
cabinets and
clear
the
desktop/bedside diary;
leave notelets
for my next/my old
employer/landlord/lover.
Puppetry works
hand in glove
with jazz. My
first-choice orchestra
has been
marched away
in chains and
handcuffs; in its place
a second string
quintet rehearses
ersatz hot club
music.
[from Poems in the Case]
Root Finding
Kiltyclogher 1998
Conversation
stalls; then one
musician
mentions the return
of
the man who never did come back
and
bar talk cruises off again.
Two
Americans today
turned
up in a Sligo taxi
to
brandish angst about an ancestor
who
might have been from hereabouts.
My
own more diffident allusion
to
a local grandfather
has
met with courteous consideration.
Collective
recall of his name
attaches
to a patch of woodland
round
a roofless house. Ungraciously
I
speculate this acreage
might
serve as common patrimony
for
any visitor blown in
on
a gust of curiosity.
There
is general agreement
that
Mrs Rooney would remember
something
if she wasn’t dead. She washed
her
own hair right up to the end.
Around
eleven thirty
the
barman opens up the door
to
let some smoke escape. But not the
clients.
The
musicians’ throats are flushed enough
for
them to sing as well as play
while
I engage in dialogues
on
Cromwell, Irish beef and Eddie Jordan.
I
can’t put down the Guinness
like
a resident, but try
to
feel at home and ponder what thin kinship
I
might claim around the bar stools,
indulge
what small celebrity
accompanies
the late return
of
the man who wasn’t ever here.
[from The Man Who Wasn't Ever Here]
NOTES
FOR A CATALOGUE (1)
In an
arid landscape, slender figures
curved as question marks
enact bewilderment at being
found beneath acrylic sky.
Space is what the sun can burn
and time’s the tallying of drawn-out days
on brittle limbs of stunted trees.
Painted figures cannot speak
but they can mime and want
stiff gestures recognized.
So extract a narrative
from each now in front of you
and a dozen thens remembered
or imagined down the gallery.
Ignore the hundred nevers
missing from the catalogue.
From the blind side of survival
sudden gusts come perfumed with suspicions
groves of foliage were left behind
before there was a word for garden.
[from Pictures from a Postponed Exhibition]
LEARNING
TO FLY
Today
she is learning to fly. Yesterday
it
was basic instruction. And tomorrow
morning
it
will be pre-take-off checks. But today,
today
she is learning to fly. Blossom smiles
at
her instructor. She calls this breaking
the ice
for today she is learning to fly.
This
is called the control column. It is also
known
as a joystick. You will find only small
movements
are needed when you have control
which
at this time you have not got. Blossom
chats
to
the good-looking pilot, asks after wife and children
which, it turns out, he has not got.
This
is the throttle and that is the airspeed
indicator. It is perfectly simple:
if
you let the revs drop you may stall
and
fall out of the sky in a spin. Blossom wonders
what
it feels like to be falling, spinning into love.
It all seems perfectly simple.
This
is how to hold the controls. Do not grasp
too
tightly. Thumb and finger on their own
will
keep an aircraft flying straight and level
if
you put your mind to it. Blossom grasps
that
marriage may stay straight and level only
if you put your mind to it.
She
called it breaking the ice. It was
perfectly simple
with
a handsome instructor in the other cockpit
to
start falling and spinning clutching the joystick
too
tightly with the revs dropping. Getting
straight
and
level takes a mindset which in her case she has not got
for today she’s beginning to fly.
CONTROL
REVERSAL
The
first time he acknowledged inexperience
(his
broad face reddening)
was
when they’d swapped the aerodrome
for
a borrowed room with thick stone walls
and
recessed leaded windows. On the sill
low
sunbeams caught and kissed a pair of vases,
red
and green like navigation lights
on
a distant aeroplane.
What
with one thing and another
up
till then he hadn’t had that many
girl
friends, or much time for them.
She
smiled about the shift in their positions
with
him no longer the instructor.
And
it pleased her to have hands and limbs
more
confident than his to show him how
he
might do one thing and another.
[from Fred & Blossom]
OVER
He’d always
liked late summer evenings
when dusk lay
just beyond the close of play,
white
sight-screens holding back the sky
from turning amber;
end of season aches
and fading
light would not prevent him
measuring his
full run-up once more.
Habit rubbed
the ball on flannel,
though its
shine was almost gone,
to bid the
genie of his past success
put polish on
a final effort.
The contract not renewed; no offers
from another quarter: which, he thought,
pretty well described his marriage.
Twenty paces.
Now he turned
and stiff legs
bent themselves to winding up
some pace and
rhythm, upper body
still but
tense until its pivot threw
his left arm high;
and sideways-on,
full tilt, he
let his eyes take one last sighting
then the
spring beneath his spine
released the
slingshot in his shoulder.
Front foot
jarred into the earth; momentum
flung him into
follow-through.
The perfect inswing hit the sea
exactly when his body pitched full-length
among the rocks below
the cliff.
[from Tradesman's Exit]
AVIARY IN DULWICH PARK
Whatever moves them
it is no concern of ours
propelling sudden flights, like streaks
escaping from a child’s paintbrush,
on wingbeats measured to a space
as narrow as the span of our attention.
We leave our son in hospital
at two pm and there
is just this park
to walk in since we caught an early train
for fear of being late we’re here too soon
not knowing either how to pass the time
or any way to spin it out for ever.
We snatch at
straws
to weave and moss with optimism
cushioning our fledgling hopes.
Bright flowers advertise survival
and the chattering of finches
sounds like the repetition of small
prayers.
[from Tell it Like it Might Be]
*
Michael is available for readings & festival appearances and can be contacted via mbartholomewbiggs@gmail.com
Forthcoming events:
Michael recently completed an extensive tour of events to promote his most recent book Identified Flying Objects.
His diary is currently open.....
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs was born in Essex but grew up in Middlesex, near Heathrow Airport. A youthful aptitude for sums and symbolic manipulation caused him to embark on a mathematical career, first in the aircraft industry and then in research & higher education. After publishing two text books and many research papers, he retired from full-time academic life in 2008 and is now Reader Emeritus in Computational Mathematics at the University of Hertfordshire.
He came to poetry quite late in life, during the 1980's and found valuable early encouragement at the Toddington Poetry Society. During the 1990s hipoems began appearing in magazines like Smiths Knoll and Seam. His first chapbook was published in 1998 and this, along with subsequent collections, is described elsewhere on the site
He is now poetry editor of the on-line magazine London Grip and for more than twenty years as been co-organiser, with poet Nancy Mattson, of a reading series Poetry in the Crypt (more recently Poetry above the Crypt) at St Mary’s Church in Islington.
More details of Michael's literary biography can be found in the following Q & A which was conducted for an American magazine but never appeared.
1. Before your career as a writer, you had a career in mathematics—first in the aircraft industry and then in research and higher education. How did you transition to a career as a poet? What first interested you in writing poetry?
I had a brief and slightly pretentious flirtation with the work of TS Eliot when I was about eighteen – valuing his writing chiefly because it seemed daringly different from things like ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ that I’d had to learn when I was younger. But I then paid little attention to poetry until my mid-forties when my wife (Lynda Bartholomew who, sadly, died in 1994) took a break from work and went to literature evening classes. This started her on reading poetry – and writing it too, but under a pseudonym - and I’m afraid it was nothing more than vanity and a spirit of competition that made me try to compose poetry as well! Fortunately there was a very good local poetry group near where we lived; and it was through them and their reading series that I got some essential guidance and measured encouragement.
Mathematics and poetry do have some things in common – they both deal with abstraction and with generalization from specific instances. They both value elegant and concise forms of expression. But mathematics involves precise statements whereas poetry aims for a kind of ambiguity that allows the reader to pick up multiple resonances rather than one intended meaning.
2. Who is your favorite poet and how has his or her work influenced your own writing?
I have always admired the work of Welsh poet R S Thomas for his ability to make very few words say a very great deal and say it in a very surprising way. But, as a Christian, I also relate to most of his subject matter and his troubled, psalm-like conversations with God. Thomas probably remains my overall favourite but there are many other poets I enjoy and whose skills I try to learn from. Some are well-known and others less so – but the list would include (in no particular order) Philip Larkin, TS Eliot, Hugo Williams, Robert Bringhurst, and D Nurkse.
3. Do you have a favorite form you tend to use for poetry?
I like to write in fairly regular metrical patterns with stanzas of fairly constant length; but I only make occasional use of recognizable forms. I enjoy quirky forms like the pantoum so long as the poem’s subject seems to justify it. I have tried a haiku-like form a few times with mixed success and also the odd villanelle and sonnet. No sestinas yet! One slightly unusual way in which I become involved with form is when I write pastiche versions of well-known poems – there are quite few of these in my collection ‘Fred & Blossom’ which contains imitations of John Betjeman and Louis MacNeice, among others.
4. Do you have a favorite theme or topic you like to write about? Has this theme or topic evolved over the years?
In the beginning I followed R S Thomas and wrote a lot of religious poetry. This often took the form of a re-telling of a Bible story in the voice of one of the characters. From this I went on to develop a fondness for writing narrative poetry of all kinds. The narratives may be either factual or fiction; and a political element sometimes creeps in. There are times when I find myself writing quite a lot of ekphrastic poetry – mostly based on work by artists that I know personally, rather than on well-known paintings in galleries.
5. Your work has been published in a number of online and print magazines. What can you tell us about the publication process? How did you decide which magazines to submit your work to?
Mostly I have submitted to magazines which printed a lot of poems I liked! But I was also realistic (or cowardly) enough not to bother submitting to magazines whose contributors seemed mostly to be winners of major prizes! There were no on-line magazines when I started; and when they first came on the scene I was reluctant to submit to them because I thought that print-on-paper was the only proper way to be published … but I have now revised that opinion because there are some very good well-edited magazines on the internet.
6. What guidance might you give to poets who are only just beginning their literary career?
It is very important to read lots of poetry. You should certainly read more than you write! And, if possible, you should go to readings and join a workshop group. In this way your ideas will get broadened and you will begin to discover what kind of poetry you really like and also how it works – so you can try to emulate it. It is important to read contemporary poetry – not because it is ‘better’ than classical but because editors will think your work sounds old-fashioned if your poetic ears are only full of Keats or Tennyson. Having said that, I myself probably still don’t know the classics as well as I should.
7. You’re the poetry editor of the online magazine London Grip. What do you typically look for in the poetry you publish? Are they any common errors/pitfalls in work that is submitted to you that results in rejection?
This is a very interesting question. I have recently been thinking about what my unspoken guidelines are for London Grip submissions. Of course there are no hard-and-fast rules because a good poem can surprise you into liking something you didn’t expect to like. But, in general, a poem that gets into London Grip is likely to be about people rather than a ‘nature poem’; it will probably display some structure and craft rather than being loose and free-form; and it will feature some surprising images and metaphors but will also tend to understatement rather than extravagant or clichéd poetic language. I like poems which display a sense of humour. And I am always sympathetic to poems which make serious political points – but without turning into a manifesto or rant.
Two common ‘errors’ that occur in submissions are: sending in too many poems at once (we ask for no more than three at a time); and not reading the magazine before submitting and hence sending in work that is either wildly experimental or ponderously old-fashioned. It does not create a good impression to send in poems without any kind of covering letter and perhaps a short biographical note. On the other hand a long and boastful biographical note does not create a good impression either!
I try to be a sympathetic editor and will sometimes offer suggestions for improvement if a poem doesn’t seem quite good enough as it stands. In a few cases – typically when there has been an informative covering letter – I will try to offer helpful advice even when none of the poems comes very close to being accepted
8. You’ve also published full collections of your poetry. Was it difficult to transition from single poems to an entire anthology?
My first two full collections were largely put together from poems that had originally been written as singletons with no thought of making a book out of them. Assembling the collection was largely a matter of grouping these poems by theme (and seeing that I had repeatedly been writing about certain subjects without fully realizing it!) and then arranging them in such a way that each poem had (at least) a tenuous link to the one which followed it.
My third full collection 'Fred & Blossom' was however planned from the start as a narrative sequence (about two real people and their romance in the world of aviation in the 1920s and 30s). This meant that for three or four years I was consciously writing poems that were connected with one another and with the background reading and research I was doing. It was therefore important for me to be really enthusiastic about my subject
9. Do you have a favorite place to write your poetry? What does your writing process look like?
I am lucky enough to find it quite easy to work at my own desk at home. Unlike some authors, I don’t seem to need to get away to unfamiliar and peaceful surroundings in order to be able really to concentrate on their writing. (Of course, it is possible that I would write better poems if I did go away to somewhere tranquil …)
My poems usually start as a scribbled line in a notebook which is transferred to my computer as soon as I start to build a poem around it. I often finish a first draft pretty quickly – maybe in a few days. That draft may then stay untouched for a while – perhaps until shortly before I share it at a poetry workshop and certainly after I have had some workshop reactions. I will probably review and revise it again when I am putting together a magazine submission. In other words my poems are seldom judged to be finished until somebody has published them! And maybe not even then…
10. You’ve participated in several reading series. Do you see a difference between your poems when they’re written and when they’re spoken? What advice can you give to poets preparing for a reading series?
I try to read my poems in a way that is faithful to their layout in the page, respecting the line breaks and stanza breaks. If a poem feels awkward when read in this way then it may mean that its form is still not quite right.
When choosing poems for a reading I try to remember that my favourites on the page may not always be the best ones to read. On the page it is possible for a reader to go over a difficult passage more than once; but an audience only gets a single chance to appreciate a poem. If there is too much complicated syntax or if the poem is simply too long then the hearers can get lost and lose interest.
It is important to rehearse for a reading and to be sure to speak clearly and project your voice (or learning to use a microphone if the venue provides one). A common fault is to drop the voice at the ending of a line or a sentence and this can be very off-putting for the audience. Learning one’s poems by heart is an impressive trick if you can do it. But it is just as good simply to know the poems well enough that you do not rely 100% on the book and just look down every so often for a quick reminder of what comes next. You can then make eye contact with the audience and pay attention to the expression in your voice and even a bit of helpful body language.
If I look at the question from the point of view of an event organizer I would say that the single most important thing is that each reader should stick closely to the time that they have been allotted. To do otherwise is very unprofessional and discourteous to your fellow readers. And it certainly spoils the evening for the hosts of the event – so you will probably not be invited again!
***
Poetry in the Crypt was an occasional reading series which takes place in the crypt below St Mary's church on Upper Street, Islington. From October 2022 these events took place in the main church and were rebranded as Poetry above the Crypt
Next event: No events currently planned
Poetry in the Crypt had its origins in a series of informal poetry reading evenings arranged by Graham Claydon, vicar of St Mary’s church in Islington. Nancy Mattson and Mike Bartholomew-Biggs took over the running of these events when Graham moved on to another church.
Mike and Nancy introduced the idea of inviting one or two guest poets to complement the contributions from church members. At the same time – and with the support of the new vicar, Graham Kings – they began charging a small entry fee to help raise funds for “Mary’s”, a project run by Tom & Barbara Quantrill to offer meals and support for the homeless. In return, Tom and Barbara took on responsibility for providing refreshments at Poetry in the Crypt readings – and thus began the famous “free coffee & cakes” tradition which continues to the present day.
The Mary’s project came to an end in 2006 when St Mary’s crypt was closed for extensively redevelopment. This meant that, for a couple of years, Poetry in the Crypt became Poetry “in” the Crypt and took place in the Neighbourhood Centre next door to the church. At the same time, Tom and Barbara decided, reluctantly, to withdraw from refreshment duty. In their place, Mike and Nancy were able to recruit a team of “poetry elves” who take it in turns to help with creating a welcoming poetry cafe and bookstall.
With the closure of the Mary’s project, Poetry in the Crypt switched to providing support for two members of St Mary’s congregation, Paul & Claire Furbey, who went to work with HIV-affected women and children in a refuge at Purnata Bhavan in India. Money from Poetry in the Crypt was earmarked for a fund which enabled Paul and Claire to provide birthday treats and outings for the children in their care.
In 2009 Paul and Claire’s work at Purnata Bhavan came to an end; and Poetry in the Crypt (by now back in the crypt again) began supporting Hospice Care Kenya (with whom St Mary’s has a connection through congregation members Liz Salmon & Sally Hull).
Thanks to the ongoing support of the St Mary’s leadership and the current vicar Simon Harvey, Poetry in the Crypt has now been running for more than ten years – as can be seen from the list below which shows all the events since 1998. There are usually four or five events a year, mostly taking place in spring and autumn. The present format of a Poetry in the Crypt evening involves three guest readers, who each have about 25 minutes of reading time (In two slots either side of the interval), together with some (very good) readers from the floor. Audience size varies of course – for instance when an Arsenal home fixture disrupts local transport – but is usually between thirty and fifty people. The audiences are always very attentive, appreciative and willing to buy books. This last is important because guest poets agree to forego a reading fee and it is good to see them go home with some material reward as well as applause ringing in their ears..
The Covid pandemic brought Poetry in the Crypt to a standstill in 2020. In autumn 2022 however it resumed events in the body of St Mary's church and was relaunched at Poetry Above the Crypt
Poetry in the Crypt at St Mary Islington since 1998
1998 November Christmas/Advent theme - no advertised readers
1999 November Graham Claydon (at Camden Head pub)
2000 November Christmas/Advent theme – no advertised readers
2001 May Ascension/Pentecost/Spring theme
- no advertised readers
2001 November Graham Kings, Peter Daniels, Rhona McAdam
plus actor Tom Mannion (reading Shakespeare
Edwin Morgan),
2002 February Actor Janet Henfrey reading Elizabeth Jennings
2002 June Carol Hughes, Nell Keddie, Philip Wells (The Fire Poet)
2002 October Sarah Lawson, Godfrey Rust, Caroline Wright
2002 November Micheal O’Siadhail (from Dublin)
2003 May Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, Cahal Dallat,
and Jehane Markham
2003 November Homegrown theme – no advertised readers
2004 May Shoestring publisher John Lucas introduces
Ann Atkinson, Michael Bartholomew-Biggs,
Malcom Carson, George Parfit
& Deborah Tyler-Bennett for Take 5 04
2004 July Mario Petrucci
2004 October Martyn Crucefix
2004 November Donald Atkinson (from Hebden Bridge), Sue Hubbard
2005 March Stephen Watts, Tamar Yoseloff
2005 June Perse Peett, Jo Roach
2005 October David Loffman, Micheal O’Siadhail (from Dublin)
2006 February Leah Fritz, Angela Kirby
2006 March Anne-Marie Fyfe, Paul McLoughlin
2006 June John Weston, Carol Hughes
2006 November Nancy Mattson, Rhona McAdam (from Canada)
2006 December Shoestring publisher John Lucas introduces
Nancy Mattson, Ruth O’Callaghan
and Rosemary Norman for Take Five 06
2007 March Peter Bennet (from Northumberland) & Chris Beckett
2007 May Martha Kapos & Kathryn Maris
2007 November Myra Schneider, Jacqueline Gabbitas,
Katherine Gallagher, Valerie Josephs & Sue Rose
from Images of Women
2008 May André Mangeot & Robert Vas Dias
2008 June Mimi Khalvati & Alice Major (from Canada)
2008 October Siobhan Campbell & Robert Seatter
2008 November Mike Bartholomew-Biggs, Graham Kings,
Hugh Underhill
2009 January Brian Docherty, Anna Robinson, Hylda Sims
2009 March Shanta Acharya, Maggie Butt, Danielle Hope
2009 May Judi Benson, Todd Swift, David Perman
2009 September Anne Berkeley, Cahal Dallat, Siriol Troup
2009 October Claire Crowther, Wendy French, Maurice Riordan
2010 February Linda Black, Andy Croft, Deborah Tyler-Bennett
2010 March Joanna Boulter, Phil Kirby, Katrina Naomi
2010 April Alan Brownjohn, Peter Daniels, Mary Michaels
2010 October Murray Bodo (from the USA), Sue Rose, Susan Utting
2010 November Tim Dooley, Rosemary Norman, Penelope Shuttle
2011 January Philip Hancock, Allison McVety,
Samantha Wynne-Rydderch
2011 March Mike Barlow, John Lucas, Jane Routh
2011 May Wendy Klein, Jeremy Page, Anne Stewart
2011 October Martin Figura, Helen Ivory, Eve Pearce
2011 November Jane Duran, Jane Kirwan, Ales Machacek, Cristina Viti,
Stephen Watts
2012 March Elizabeth Cook, Glyn Maxwell, Cheryl Moskowitz
2012 May Liz Berry, Jenna Butler (from Canada), Nancy Mattson
2012 October David Black, Murray Bodo (from the USA),
Sheila Hillier
2012 November Pat Borthwick, Martina Evans, Norbert Hirschhorn
2013 February Peter Daniels, Jacqueline Saphra, Lesley Saunders
2013 March Tamar Yoseloff (substituting for Ian Parks)
and Robert Stein
2013 April Maggie Butt (substituting for Maria Jastrzebska),
John Godfrey and Jane Yeh
2013 September Sharon Morris & Maitreyabandhu
2013 November John Greening, Maria Jastrzebska
and Pauline Stainer
2014 March Clare Best, Robert Chandler and Jean Sprackland
2014 May Rebecca Goss, Hannah Lowe and Alan Murray
2014 October Peter Daniels ( presenting Vladislav Khodasevich),
Emily Jeremiah (presenting Eeva-Liisa Manner
& Sirkka Turkka)
and Paul McLoughlin (presenting Brian Jones)
2014 November Yvonne Green, John Harvey and Lorraine Mariner
2015 May
.........................Katie Evans-Bush, Kate Foley & Michael McKimm
2015 October
...................Fiona Moore, Allen Ashley & Roisin Tierney
2015 November
............... Barbara Marsh, Kit Wright & Ian McEwen
2016 March
..................... Derek Adams Alison Hill & Christopher Reid
2016 April
................... ....Matthew Caley Sarah Doyle & Vishvantara
2017 March
.................... John Freeman, George Szirtes & Ruth Valentine
2017 April
.................. ... Don Atkinson, Lynne Hjelmgard, Kay Syrad
2017 November
............... Hilary Davies, John Mole, James Norcliffe
2018 March
.....................John McCullough, Kate Noakes, Clare Pollard
2018 May
........................Martyn Crucefix, Alwyn Marriage, Will Stone
2019 April
.......................John Clegg, Sasha Dugdale, Geraldine Paine
COVD!
2022 October ...................Launch of the anthology Smokestack Lightning
2022 October
.............. ....Caroline Maldonado, Nancy Mattson, Rhona McAdam
2023 March
....................Jenny Lewis, Nigel Pantling, Adnan Al-Sayegh
2023 November
...............Launch of the anthology Contraflow
2024 March
.....................Launch of Paul McLoughlin's Selected poems
2024 April
........................Launch of Identified Flying Objects Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
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