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A VOYAGE ROUND THE MOON
Poems by John Gohorry
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John Gohorry was born in Coventry in 1943. He was educated there and at the University of London, where he obtained an M.Phil. in English in 1970. Since then he has been a lecturer in further education.
His previously published work includes five pamphlets of poetry – Joining The Dark (Dodman Press 1975), Five Poems (Kit-Cat Press 1977), A Galanty Show (Fearnhill School Press 1979) Understudies(Priapus Press 1980), and The Coast of Bohemia (Mandeville Press 1981) – and a number of short stories, including Acts of Merit (Encounter 1984). In 1981 he became the co-editor of Grand Piano, the magazine of new poetry. In the same year he won 1st prize in the Michael Johnson Memorial Poetry Competition. A Voyage Round The Moon is John Gohorry’s first full collection.
’John Gohorry is a fine and skilful writer, who ought to be much better known than he is . . . George Szirtes, Albion
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Coming Home
Coming back to the empty house,
we do not ask what it has done
in our absence. The chairs have
remained chairs, the carpets
undertaken no voyages to remote
lands. The china dog and the
Sevres cat have not quarrelled.
Nothing has got on anything’s
nerves, nor have confidences
been exchanged. No book-battle
has taken place in the study.
We repossess what we left, just
as we left it; there is no
scuttle of things re-arranging.
To suppose otherwise is fanciful
nonsense. Not for us the naïve
frisson of imagining rooms
devoid of our voices, variations
on the domestic fallacy. That breath
filling the house as we hang coats
commonsense tells us, must be ours.
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A VOYAGE ROUND THE MOON
Price £7.95 per copy post free (£5.30 post free to Associate Members)
Cover illustration: from Saverio Bettinelli’s Il mondo della luna. Poema eroico-comico. Printed by Remondini (Venice, 1754). Courtesy of E. P. Goldschmidt and Company Ltd and the Curator of Rare Books at the William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
Publication: 1984 (78 pages laminated paperback)
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