Simon Pomery
In Simon Pomery's poems, elemental matter becomes unstable
- people feel themselves composed of light and colour, snow melts
and begins to walk, wind becomes birdcall. Even when mirroring
the musical processes of Steve Reich, or recalibrating ancient voices,
the poems have an essential clarity.
Simon Pomery was born in Galway, Ireland in 1982 and grew up in Buxton.
He read English at the University of Leeds and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He won the Alison Moreland Prize for Poetry at Leeds, a Brewer Hall Prize at Cambridge, and received an AHRC award to study Creative Writing at St. Andrews University. He is lecturer in Creative Writing, a musician,
screenwriter, and also wrote the soundtrack for his latest short film.
Lyrical and precise, these are poems that make the reader shiver.
Whether tracing the journey of thawing snow or mapping the world
of Seneca, the streams that run through this collection entice us in at
the source and carry us to surprising destinations. This is a compelling debut from a poet of vision. Helen Mort
the stream
number 18 in the pilot series
£4 inc p&p
ISBN 978 1 904551 76 8
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A Drop of Snow
As the day draws in
and I know that once again
I should be packing
I see how it must have been
for the first to settle in the county –
belonging to no-one,
having no-one
to touch up or sing
in your ear, as the snow
crystals off the branches,
becoming unfrozen
there and then,
littering the thawed floor of snow
over ancient roots; knowing
each dropped powder dot to be an infinity
of chance, choice, aloneness,
accident and cause – with one
thing growing certain – outside, something
made of the beads of water and the sap of trees
is walking. I am sure of it.
Water is walking.
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