Born in Surrey in 1940, I studied at Leeds University where I edited Poetry and  Audience and learnt 
 much from Geoffrey Hill, Jon Silkin, Tony Harrison and G Wilson Knight. After teaching in African 
 and German universities, I settled in Newcastle in 1971 where I am now professor of poetry at the 
 University of Newcastle. Through the seventies I edited the Second World War poet Keith Douglas 
 and published a biography of him (OUP, 1974). In the mid-eighties I published The Truth of War 
 (Carcanet, 1984) on the poets of the Great War and reviewed contemporary poetry  for Stand.

 Since my poems appeared in Bloodaxe's Ten North East Poets (1980) I have published various 
 pamphlets and four full collections: The Lie of Horizons (Seren, Bridgend, 1993), The Marching 
 Bands (Seren, 1996), Not Falling (Seren, 1999) and After Shakespeare (Flambard, Hexham, 
 2001; translated into Polish as Cien Makbeta, Gdansk, 2002). The poems in 
 After Shakespeare are drawn from people living in the West End of Newcastle and 
 portray the varied moods of inner city life - its pungency, neglect and energy. Much of my work 
 deals with people and places and is political. East European writing has greatly interested me, 
 making a significant part of my Poetry of the Second World War: An International 

 Anthology (Chatto, 1995). I have co-translated from Polish the poems of Anna Kamienska: 
 Two Darknesses (Flambard, 1994) and my life is divided between Newcastle and Germany. 
 If much of my writing life has been devoted to anti-war writing, my recent work has often 
 been love poetry of various kinds, including a forthcoming collection of Milena Poems on 
 my daughter's first twelve years.
 

THREE POLISH PORTRAITS

The Baltic Fisherman

The one who brought fishes
by the bucketful -
we had loaves enough
but no fish -
and made miracles
from the flat Baltic grey
has rounded Finisterre
in his old trawler
now The Wall has fallen,
tilted up and down the seas
towards Gibraltar
on to Greece
and moored himself at leisure
among islands
where he watches fishermen
land fish in a bucket,
slap out squid,
while he sits
counting his lucky stars
in broad daylight.

The Sopot Electrician

He came all eyes 
from his charger,
as though with eagle feathers
fixed like cavalryman's
to his back,

put down
his emptied glass
as if the final shot
to spur him on,
then flashed that smile,
suitable for melting
ice-bound rivers,
blinding enemy artillery
or making you feel
that just this once
 
he could not stop 
for supper
then he lifted up 
his Shoei helmet
and roared away.

The Gajowka Wedding 
(for Mik and Marta)

Where once the Polish bride dressed
with her feminine petticoats and the groom
dashed with cavalry kepi, button boots
and sash, on small stands in Pewex,
 
today they serve canapes in an old barn
to a cast of pilgrims eager to see love
flourish, take heart it is still possible
to be beautiful and young.