THE NEW LIVERPOOL POETS

Born in Widnes in 1963, I now live in Liverpool with my husband and 5 children. I’ve a first degree in Law from Liverpool University and an MA in Creative Arts from Liverpool Hope University.

In 1993 my first pamphlet – City Confessions -was published by Lark Lane Poetry Books. In 2005 Driftwood Publications published my pamphlet Playing Out Time.
I’ve been published in The Rialto, The Reader, Smoke, The Interpreter’s House, Dreamcatcher, Smith’s Knoll, Envoi, Obsessed With Pipework, Fabric, Iota, Cadenza, Orbis, The Frogmore Papers etc., Also I had a regular opinion column in The Liverpool Echo from 2004-2005

I was shortlisted for the Frogmore Poetry Prize for 4 consecutive years (2001 – 2004)
I made a Poetry film with First Take after being selected as a finalist in Nothing Rhymes with Poets competition, July 2006.
In 2004 I wrote a libretto for a choral work – in collaboration with a local composer, Dominic Gannons – based on The City of Benares disaster in the second world war (its premier was in December 2005)

I had a poetry pamphlet – Playing Out Time published by Driftwood in 2005. I am currently working on a collaborative theatre piece and crime novel. I have recently been published in the anthologies Enabling Voices and Life-Marks, and am included in the forthcoming Bluechrome Messages anthology.

I edit the new Liverpool magazine The Accent. I’m a founder of and current Co-ordinator of the charity North End Writers and can be contacted at pauline.rowe@northendwriters.co.uk

Poem:

Engagement

I’ve got a beat in my throat –
blood, maybe music
I can’t pin down, like a clock
measuring time between words
so loud that I can see my heart
in my mind bruised a little
thumping its way to my ears.

If I stand before you
like a shadow at a wall
you will taste my pulse
where our skin touches,

will know that my hair
smells of autumn burnings:
we walk unable to see

as a violent burst
of white sun startles us

- an angel, perhaps, demanding
our immediate conversion
to this unreasonable faith
of love that terrifies,
writes our names
side by side in stone.