English Poetry - Worlds and Lives

4 Quotes for Thirteen

“You will be four minutes from when you will be cornered by an officer.”

“You’ll laugh. Thirteen, you’ll him: you’re thirteen.”

“You were all supernovas, the biggest and brightest stars.”

“Dying stars on the verge of becoming black holes. “

3 Quotes for An Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria

“Hello, she said, and startled me. Nice day.”

“I was thoughtful … I was again thoughtful”

“What part of Africa is Jamaica? she said. Where Ireland is near Jamaica.”

4 Quotes for Name Journeys

“I have been chastened through trial by fire.”

“My name a journey between rough and smooth,”#

“the rough Mancunian vowels”

“My name became a stumble that filled English mouths”

4 Quotes for Homing

“For years you kept your accent in a box beneath the bed.”

“We heard it escape sometime a guttural uh on the phone to your sister,”

“You could like the coal from. I wanted to swallow them all”

“ I wanted to forge your voice in my mouth,”

4 Quotes from A Century Later

“The school-bell is a call to battle, every step to class , a step into the firing line.”

“Here is the target, fine skin at the temple, cheek still rounded from being fifteen.”

“Surrendered, surrounded, she takes the bullet in the head and walks on.”

“A murmur, a swarm. Behind her, one by one, the schoolgirls are standing up”

3 quotes from In a London Drawingroom

“The sky is clouded, yellowed by the smoke.”

“Cutting the sky with one long line of wall like solid fog:”

“No bird can make a shadow as it flies … where the golden rays are clothed in hemp.”

3 Quotes from Like an Heiress

“Like an heiress drawn to the light of her eye-catching jewels, Atlantic draws me”

“except for a lone wave of rubbish against the old seawall”

“heading back to my hotel loke a tourist to the sanctuary of my hotel room"

4 Quotes from Lines Written in Early Spring

“Heaven be sent … Nature’s Holy plan.”

“Every flower enjoys… “The budding spread out their fan”

“I heard a thousand blended notes.”

“Periwinkle trailed its wreaths… through primrose tufts.”

3 lines from Shall Earth No More Inspire thee

“Thy mind is ever moving… Come back and dwell with me.”

“Let my winds caress thee… Thy comrade let me be.”

“Since passion may not fire thee … Return and dwell with me.”

3 quotes for England in 1819

“An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king… dregs of their dull race.”

“Leech-like to their fainting country cling.”

“Religion, Christless, Godless - a book sealed.”

4 quotes for pot

“ You could almost be an English pot but I know your not”

“ someone somewhere will have missed you pot.”

“ Must’ve slipped onto the white sailing yacht.”

“ If I could shatter this glass I would take you back myself pot.”

4 quotes for the jewellery maker

“He sits straight-backed, lays out pointed tools the way a surgeon might.”

“ Her only jewellery a plain gold band, worn thin”

“gold butterflies dance; flowers bloom; silvery moons wax and wane.”

“He imagines the women who will wear what he has made, clear-eyed, bird-boned”

4 quotes for A Wider View

“searched for spaces in the smoke-filled sky to stack his dreams”

“We stand now, timeless in the flux of time”

“drowned the din of engines, looms and shuttles”

“eyes dry with dust from hours combing flax”

4 quotes for With Birds you’re never lonely

“When all sound disappeared, I was tuned into a silence that was not an absence”

“I can’t hear the barista over the coffee machine. Spoons slam, steam raises.”

“I felt sorry for any grey tree in London for the family they don’t have.”

“Deep in Zelandia forest with sun-syruped Kauri trees.” 

4 quotes for A portable Paradise

“concealed so no one else would know but me”

“be it hotel, hostel or hovel”

“your white sands, green hills and fresh fish.”

“Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope of morning.”