Our Spired Unicorn

is a place of worship.
A moveable feast beast.

Offer it fruits and flowers
at harvest, Easter and Christmas.

Baptise bairns, get married,
celebrate the dead in its presence.

Pray before its hooves and flanks,
comb its hair, feed it oats.

Don’t try to ride it, or steal its horn.
It is sacred and full of light.

Go where it goes, a disciple.
Some may say you believe in a myth.

Your faith keeps it alive. You
know it as a companion, a friend.

Though it has a life of its own
is nothing but itself.

behind our eyes we are all
mythical beasts to others

Bio: Paul Brookes is a shop asst. His chapbooks includeThe Headpoke and Firewedding(Alien Buddha Press, 2017),She Needs That Edge(Nixes Mate Press, 2017 2018)The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017),Please Take Change(Cyberwit.net, 2018),As Folk Over…

I have always enjoyed poetry that explores the workplace and have spent many happy hours with the work of Fred Voss at the aircraft factory, with Martin Hayes at the courier service and with Philip Levine on the assembly lines. Niall Oliver’s My Boss is another to add to that section on the bookshelf. His pamphlet was judged to be runner-up in Hedgehog Poetry’s Baker’s Dozen competition for pamphlets of thirteen poems, but I can see why editor, Mark Davidson, couldn’t resist the urge to publish it.

My Boss is an unusual, quirky pamphlet. All poems share the same title and first line, My Boss, and collectively build a picture of the sort of manager that is instantly recognisable as the boss we love to hate. This the narcissistic boss who believes the world revolves around him; the boss who believes he is always right (‘a businessgod’); the…

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The first instalment of the Winter 2020 issueof The High Window is now available. The following new material is available via the top menu:

1. A new selection of homegrown and international poetry from 36 poets
2. The American Poet is Ken Craft
   
3. A multimedia essay in which Dino Mahoney explores the work of Cavafy
4. A valedictory art feature from Penny Sharman, our resident artist.
5. There are also several new supplementary posts which have appeared since the autumn issue issue.
6. Finally, there are also four new poems in the Editor’s Spot

Enjoy!

David

The High Window‘s resident artist for 2020 has been Penny Sharman and I would like to express my deepest thanks to Penny, not only for the quality of the artwork and poems which she has supplied, but also for her unfailing enthusiasm and professionalism and hyper-efficiency.

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Penny was born in Oxford and brought up in Burford in the Cotswolds. She ventured north in the late 1960’s and has remained in love with the Pennines where she lives. As a poet, artist, photographer and complimentary therapist she seeks new ways of being creative. She is inspired by art and natural landscapes and has a surreal approach to her work. She has an MA in Creative writing from Edge Hill University and has been published in many magazines and anthologies. Her pamphlet Fair Ground (Yaffle Press) and her collection Swim With Me In Deep Water (Cerasus) are available from her…

Ken Craft ‘s poems have appeared in The Writer’s Almanac, Pedestal Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Spillway, Slant, and numerous other journals and e-zines. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Lost Sherpa of Happiness (Kelsay Books, 2017) and The Indifferent World (Future Cycle Press, 2016). His third collection, Reincarnation & Other Stimulants, is scheduled for release in 2021. His blog, ‘Updates on a Free-Verse Life,’ can be found at kencraftpoetry.wordpress.com.

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‘Though I taught poetry for years as an English teacher, I didn’t start writing it until I was in my 50s. The inspiration came chiefly from nature – a typical source, considering its historical importance to Chinese and Japanese poets as well as to poets like Robert Frost, Jim Harrison, Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson, and William Wordsworth, to name a few. Still, I feel that nature poems are somewhat out of…

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Note: You can watch Dino’s short film, The Poet of the City  by clicking on the title

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The Essay • The Poems

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CAVAFY: POET OF ALEXANDRIA (1863-1933)

Finally, here I am, Rue Lepsis, a narrow dusty street in central Alexandria, looking up at the second floor balcony, the only one on a shabby, turn of the century, mixed residential and commercial block – it’s the balcony from which Cavafy would sprinkle cooling water over the grateful bordello girls below. On the wall by the main entrance, a dusty plaque, in Arabic and Greek – Constantine Cavafy, 1863-1933, Poet of Alexandria – the great poet identified by a city, not a state. I walk through the open entrance door into an open stairwell area, graffiti on the flaking walls, a skewered heart, a phallus. On the second floor, a small sign at the side of an apartment…