The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

Rory Waterman

A blurry image that shows the sky in a light lilac hue. There are brown buildings at the bottom and three birds fly in from the right.

Across the border

Isabelle Thompson reviews Come Here to This Gate by Rory Waterman (Carcanet, 2024)
An abstract image (yes, yet another poetry book cover featuring an abstract image ... sigh) showing what looks like various shades of light to mid blue water clolour paint daubed in a swirly pattern on a light blue background.

Let the morbid fancy roam

Rory Waterman reviews Donald Davie, Selected Poems, ed. Sinéad Morrissey (Carcanet, 2022)
Abstract painting with splashes of colour. Shades of blue and purple on a cream background, some splashy shapes, some more kind of smudgy. All looks a bit cataclysmic.

A spill of yew

Rory Waterman reviews Apostasy by John Burnside (Dare-Gale Press, 2022)
An old Russian Tank and the front of a US military plane in a museum in Korea

North and South

Rory Waterman talks about his time as international writer in residence for Bucheon UNESCO City of Literature and his commission to write about the border
Dark grey circle with a light grey line drawn eel circling within. It sits on a textured grey background that could be an abstract shoal of eels.

I was nothing but a heretic cormorant

Rory Waterman reviews The European Eel by Steve Ely (Longbarrow, 2021)
Coda

Coda

by Rory Waterman — In our perfected future, there will be / a bedroom in the loft, a baby boy / to fill it, and we’ll kiss on sun-kissed sand / in every paradise we dreamed about // before you changed, when I first took you
Photo of Rory Waterman wearing a blue sweatshirt, sitting in front of a purple wall.

Sort of Irish and sort of famous

Rory Waterman reveals the story behind his poem 'Like Father'