AUTUMNAL Now the rains have come and days cool and shorten, time curls around itself like a soaked cat. But now and then the sun will out to ease the path down. Autumn is our time. All that late fruit - pears, apples - and dead leaves piling in rust-red gutters.

A 25 minute film based on interviews with me in England and in Hungary on the occasion of being awarded the King's Gold Medal for Poetry. The film is in English with Hungarian subtitles www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbNz...

SOMEWHERE IN LANGUAGE Somewhere in language there is space for the world. See! Stand there and watch it appear then vanish. In script, in the yawning gap between parts of speech, there is a house, night, dogs, vicissitudes, murder, delight, the absurd or that’s what we say.

Spring waits on summer Spring waits on summer like an enthusiastic bride properly dressed for the occasion. Hawthorn, apple blossom, whites bobbing in the wind in mild excitement. Weddings are in season now. Surely something good is in the offing.

You turn off the light and sense the room rearrange itself around you like a different space where you yourself are different. So simple to leave a world. So simple to stand still. Now you are here, now gone. Turn it off and walk, keep walking.

THE DOOR After a warm day the coolness of evening shocks the skin. It pleases and revives something that must have been felt after birth when the world entered through a sudden door and announced itself. How cold everything can be, it says. How alive.

THE LOST When they arrive, they listen to their own breathing with rapt attention. Long trees lean in. Light hangs on the wall. Birds repeat their usual calls. Life attends on such things. To be lost requires intense concentration. Night will wait on their dreams.

Night in Budapest in a quiet district past midnight. The sleepless turn in silent beds, listening to their own thoughts, neighbours in courtyards locked on to their lives. Where would night be without them? Where are the bright moons of their faint breathing?

Now it is quiet. Friday night streets are silent and the pubs have closed. You would not believe alternatives existed except in nightmares lurking round corners of the imagination. The windows are closed against the frail wind.

The night is frozen in its long moment. The stars are frozen to night. Sooner or later morning will come to melt stars into pools of light and clocks into time. There will be voices speaking of the loneliness of clocks and cold stars.

FIRST DAY OF SPRING The first day of spring spreads its palms to receive light and buds and first growths. How keen the world is to expand into itself, to full ripe blossom and mild temperatures. Demons of frozen nights have nowhere to go but there where it's coldest.

There used to be a country called America.

Our February books are out today! New poetry books by Belgium's Charlotte Van den Broeck, Romania's Ana Blandiana, & Hungary's Krisztina Tóth (trs @georgeszirtes.bsky.social). Our online launch event featured readings and discussion from the poets & their translators. youtube.com/live/SiYFLYP...

After the rain After the rain stopped they stepped out into fresh air. Air was what they breathed, sharp as blades of grass, multicoloured like the day. Always there’s something to hope for and this was as good as it would get as if the earth could spin faster, spin free.

Evenings, Midnights Those empty evenings when time sits on its bare hands and closes its mouth. Those evenings waiting for a midnight that never arrives. Those evenings when world holds its breath hoping history turns up with gifts of kindness so long overdue.

Across the two books, a wide range of forms are on show: sonnets, prose poems, abecedarian, villanelle, ekphrastic meditations. The #poets discuss how form and subject interplay. George Szirtes (@georgeszirtes.bsky.social) is particularly interesting on how a challenging form can unlock new meanings

VAMPIRE CHOIR I’ve joined the Vampire Choir We only meet at night We constantly aspire To make our music bright We do have such fun making it Till someone puts a stake in it.

GHOST TOAST I prefer Ghost Toast It doesn’t make you fat One calorie at most, Transparent and quite flat And when you come to chew it There’s nothing to it.

GHOUL IN A POOL There’s a ghoul in the pool. I know him from school. He has work to prepare So he shouldn’t be there But he’s wild and unruly, Naughty wee ghoulie.

From the book published by The Paekakariki Press in 2018, 67pp, I'm posting this to see if it is legible. These tales were composed of series of Tweets.

Night Fields A few late cars cruise the Sunday street. A small town dreams cars and a moon that has to be dreamt into being. It lies down on its back, Venus above it, waiting for something like a taxi to ferry it home across the night fields.

Yes, it's my book launch tomorrow 🤩🤩🤩 Totally free, but you do need to register. They'll be lots of amazing poets there @georgeszirtes.bsky.social @judithnangala.bsky.social Judith Beveridge, Anthony Lawrence, Jaya Savige, Sara Sarah, Mark Tredinnick, Audrey Molloy, and hiding in a corner, me 😅

Polluters Somehow it mattered which way the words were facing. Wind blew between them, a hot blasting air that tried to cleanse them of all their uses. Polluters, screamed air, and tried to purge them, leaving the language vacant. But words roost like birds, glide air and fly home.

LAUNCH! BLANDIANA, TÓTH, VAN DEN BROECK The event will be available on Youtube on the evening. You are most welcome to be part of it. Just click on the link. youtube.com/live/SiYFLYP...