4.14.2010

William Peskett

Did my weekly digging around at Peter Ellis today and found a collection called 'Survivors' by William Peskett. The dust jacket says he read Zoology at Cambridge and it's his poetry about animals that I find most powerful in this collection. He's got such an appreciation for the anatomy of animals and analyses them alongside everyday occurrences really beautifully.

I can only find two collections of poetry by him, and his first, 'The Nightowl's Dissection', is looking to be quite hard to get hold of, Amazon tells me it's going to set me back £89.49, so I wont be reading that for a while.

Here are some from the 'Survivors' collection.


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Mouse

The noises that we make are quite predictable -
the mouse is so ill it can only judder
in its tiny pain.

You said it was so pretty and ran upstairs.
You must have heard the iron on the step,
the lifting of the dustbin lid.

And I was so shocked-
on my fingers the little shame of urine,
the silent bravery of blood.


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Wasp

In dapper livery of threat
a nervous wasp invades my silence
and circles in a temper.

During quiet landings
I wonder what the wasp could need
in my flowerless, metric room.

Wasps don't want my company -
their feelers detail suspicious plans.
I read their soothing braille as blackmail.

An angry colonial in a strange domain,
the wasp exploits my land without respect.
Each dawdling skirmish is a tiny warning

to me to stay where I am.
All I have to say is, keep your proper distance,
insect, I'm mean as you.

Not noticing the time, she hurries out.
With empty pockets she coyly navigates
to her box of nagging sisters.