MARCHES OF FAMILIAR LANDSCAPE
Poems by Keith Howden

_________________________________________________________________________________

Acknowledgements are due to the editors of Country Life, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, Gong, and, in particular, Omens, in whose pages some of these poems first appeared.

Parts of Joe Anderson’s Sensual Lyric and All My Dead Uncles were broadcast on the B.B.C (Poetry Now).

The title poem of this collection was one of the ten best poems in the Cheltenham Festival of Literature Poetry Competition, 1976.

This collection is formed around a previous pamphlet, Joe Anderson, published by Omens, 1976.

“dynamic and impassioned . . . Keith Howden has done something impressive and original.” – Fraser Steel, Poetry Editor, BBC Radio

_________________________________________________________________________________

Joe Anderson’s Sensual Lyric

1. INCIDENT ON THE MOOR

Boys found, bird-nesting on the April moor,
not far from where we lay, a hand-grenade.
Larks climbed and fell. The squeal of sudden fear
we heard, the dull explosion; someone ‘Dead’

was shouting on the ridge. We saw the men
returning with the body and the wastrel,
soaring larks upthrust in spring’s momen-
tum; charred moor grass stinking in my nostril.

About us, poor forked animals, as we lay,
black larks cascaded, climbing a new air
in flights unconsummated over the boy
with blown-off hands. And then that other -

that demon boy, white-legged, long-shorted howled
along the ridge; larks black as time, but older,
fiercer than spring, took air beneath them, held
his cry in scorn. Over the rim of the moor

I saw him lurching. ‘Dead’ he was shouting.
Black Haired, he wore thick glasses; and larks hung
black at his head; charred grass exploding
black at his feet. ‘Dead’ he was shouting.

_________________________________________________________________________________

MARCHES OF FAMILIAR LANDSCAPE
Price £7.95 per copy post free (£5.30 post free to Associate Members)
Cover illustration: by Keith Howden himself.
Publication: 1978 (64 pages laminated paperback)