THE MASK

frontcover

My latest collection of poems published by Lapwing Publications, Belfast. 56 poems on the theme of identity and persona

can be ordered via paypal: anthonycostello23@hotmail.com or via Lapwing; lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com

£10

Poetry Salzburg Review

Six of my poems appear in the autumn edition of Poetry Salzburg Review 24

Here & Elsewhere

My latest collection – a homage to Yves Bonnefoy – can be ordered via:www.travelpoetry.bigcartel.com

Mutual Attraction

It seems a long time ago

that we climbed to the spiralling top

of Switzerland’s Geneva campanile,

the name of the church I forget,

(do you remember?); I remember

the intervale between the rocketing

Jet d’eau in the tranquil Lake’s water,

the wind-gap of the concrete vault

below our feet; I never told you

(and it has been lost since)

that I wrote a poem about you

that could only be expressed

in magnificent, death-resulting leaps

(how romantic!); there were no steps

from towers, just a slow moving

in different ways from one another,

your Pisa to my Suurhusen,

until the space between reached

the extreme of square law, inversed;

but did you know there are towers

separately leaning together (Bologna)?

I know it is too late (isn’t it?),

but tilting from similar ground

I could whisper over the drop between us

words in my best Italian for building bridges.

 

 

 

 

Mutual Attraction

It seems a long time ago

that we climbed to the spiralling top

of Switzerland’s Geneva campanile,

the name of the church I forget,

(do you remember?); I remember

the intervale between the rocketing

Jet d’eau in the tranquil Lake’s water,

the wind-gap of the concrete vault

below our feet; I never told you

(and it has been lost since)

that I wrote a poem about you

that could only be expressed

in magnificent, death-resulting leaps

(how romantic!); there were no steps

from towers, just a slow moving

in different ways from one another,

your Pisa to my Suurhusen,

until the space between reached

the extreme of square law, inversed;

but did you know there are towers

separately leaning together (Bologna)?

I know it is too late (isn’t it?),

but tilting from similar ground

I could whisper over the drop between us

words in my best Italian for building bridges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

St Malachy’s

I take from the Collection –

silver and copper

palmed off the platter

 

I grow to be King

of the game ‘Lookalikes’

picking out the faces of the famous

 

I keep a straight face

kneeling at Holy Communion

acting transformed and saved

 

I lip-sync hymns

in my Sunday best and dream

of the bowling alley afterwards

 

I play with panache

the child part of Saturday

Confession

 

the expert manner

I deal with made-up Sin

and Penance

 

Me,

Myself,  

I

FILM & BOOKS

In between the Film Guide
and the Saturday Review

you went out of focus
blurred – skewed

a blind spot in the Os of Books
a fleck on the neck of BBC2

I know in the beginning
and for a year or two

you read me
and I watched you

Ferry to Tiree

Ferry to Tiree

 

At once, I was Charles Arrowby

holding forth on the art of food combinations –

English mustard with vanilla ice-cream

Washed down with a bottle of rosé

 

then Charles in ‘Pipistrelle’,

a foil for my companion’s art of the bat philosophising

with – it flies, we watch it fly, it is avoidable

 

and the Charles. Himself. Dickens! –

I lecture from a homemade plinth at Hampstead Heath

‘On the art of saving Fallen women’

 

until I very nearly lose my senses

down a one-way street of palindrome (A compulsive art).

Repeat (not ad infinitum) after me –

94 toL fo gniyrC ehT samohT nohcnyP.

 

 

* Charles, a character in ‘Pipistrelle’ – a poem in Theories and Apparitions

by Mark Doty

 

** Charles Arrowby – a character in The Sea, The Sea

by Iris Murdoch

 

This poem first appeared in Orbis 156

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dreaming Tigers. Robert Louis Stevenson

is just one writer I discuss in the introductory essay to Dreaming Tigers regarding the nature of travel poetry. Other Poets I discuss are Charles Tomlinson, Edna St Millay, Dino Campana.

New Book

My latest collection, a book about my travels in southeast Asia last year is available for ordering. More details of the book can be found by going to: http://www.travelpoetry.bigcartel.com/