It is a pleasure to introduce our February guest poet Rob Miles. I do not know Rob personally: we have been Facebook friends for some time. I bought a copy of his recent collection Dimmet which was published by Broken Sleep Books. See below the poems for Rob’s biography.

The glorious cover image of a murmuration was designed by Aaron Kent. Dimmet is a West Country word for dusk, twilight. Katherine Towers notes of the collection: ‘These are poems of great precision and delicacy’. I’ve chosen four poems which demonstrate these qualities.

Dimmet

His hands still bronzed, still
baling-raw. His voice
no longer snared, whisper-low
as decades ago, in this same field, he guided me

to not disturb that horse; circling
quietly, its half-scattered straw
an ingot melting, and my thin flames no match
for such a sunset anyway.

*

On this, another near-to-night, it’s clear
that he has no more kept his mind
from wayward sparks than I
have closed my eyes

before any fading fire, ever since recalled
a slow white shadow
steady on its dial
in the always almost dark.

Café Poem

Just when I think there is nothing
so boring

as someone else’s childhood
a toddler

in dungarees is guided
around our table

by his puppeteer parent, arms
up, in a vertical sky-dive, or

like a drunk, when walking
is more about not falling

every step forward
rewarded with a double high five.

I whispered to the dog

that she’d been a winner
a Crufts champion
 
at least twice. Once
she saw off a Dobermann, burglars, a werewolf
 
even the odd Sasquatch.
I reminded her

as her old eyes darkened     
that she had saved lives.

Making Way

A keeper, you said of the house, but I’d sensed everything
trying to make its way: those errant velvet fingers
from your orchid pots; the oak
putting on its chain mail of ivy and moss
and losing; the birds we fed still pinned
to their shadows; crisp wasps
electrocuted by views
through grubby double glazing, and you
just weeks before, showing your wrists
as if uncuffed, asking for my thoughts on a fragrance.

Biography

Rob Miles is from South Devon, and he lives in Leeds where he is Fellow in Film Studies in the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures at The University of Leeds. His poetry has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, recently in Stand, New Welsh Review, The Scores, Spelt, 14 Magazine, Ink Sweat and Tears, One Hand Clapping, Poetry Wales, and four Candlestick Press pamphlets. He has won various awards including the Philip Larkin Prize, judged by Don Paterson, the Resurgence International Ecopoetry Prize, judged by Jo Shapcott and Imtiaz Dharker, and the Poets & Players Prize, judged by Sinéad Morrissey.

Lucy Newlyn describes Dimmet as ‘the best collection of contemporary poetry I have read in a long while’, and John Glenday writes: ‘When it’s done as well as this, there’s nowhere on earth poetry can’t go.’