PBS: Henry Shukman

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Henry Shukman
In Doctor No's Garden Cape £8.00

	Henry Shukman’s work finds poetry in the most unlikely of places; a Japanese skijumper, a trawlerman’s Friday night out, moving house.Without unnecessary verbal tricks or flourishes he creates poems that help us remember, help us understand better our own lives. A momentary description, a word or phrase perhaps, is all it takes in a Henry Shukman poem to open our eyes to the extraordinary nature of every life. Click here to return to the list of Next Generation Poets

Leaving

A last wade through the fields. Home
comes up to your waist. I know this view:
the camouflage of woods,
a single plane crawling into evening.

My wife, who doesn’t want to leave,
takes solace in a tub under that red roof,
longing for a mutual longing – a cottage
sunk in grey hills, an oceanic window.

The larks are going crazy.
Swallows skim the grass like fish.
A train sighs to Oxford, unseen,
and the grass hisses, stay, stay.

from In Doctor No’s Garden

Biography
Henry Shukman won the Daily Telegraph Arvon Prize in 2000, the Times Literary Supplement Prize and the Aldeburgh Festival Prize (2002). In Doctor No’s Garden is his first collection and was shortlisted for the 2002 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His collection of stories, Darien Dogs,was published by Jonathan Cape in May 2004 and will be followed by a novel, Sandstorm, in May 2005. Until recently, he was Poet in Residence at the Wordsworth Trust but he now lives in Oxford.