It’s my pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Patrick Wright. Patrick and I met years ago at Manchester Poets. Earlier this month his poem Archive, inspired by Anselm Kiefer, featured on the blog. You’ll find Patrick’s biography at the end of the post.

Today I’m sharing more poems from his substantial collection Exit Strategy, a ‘vivid exploration of grief and loss’. Tamar Yoseloff said of the collection: ‘Patrick Wright is one of those rare poets who can translate the complex images of visual artists into precise and pitch-perfect language.’

Patrick has been inspired by artists past and present (Rousseau, Klee, Rachel Whitehead, J M W Turner), to mention some well-known names.

The collection uses a wide range of forms (couplets, tercets, stanza, sonnet, ghazal, prose poem) and makes excellent use of white space through columns and indents. WordPress can’t do justice to formatting. Therefore, I’ve chosen poems with a more traditional lay-out.

COLD DARK MATTER

After Cornelia Parker

Thanks to you I am learning to see again
through a sparseness of particles—

like how I learned to listen to an eyelid
twitch once yes and twice no through a coma.

Darkness I’ve come to realise is a privilege—
known at 4am & sleepless

the sun rising like a scalpel
& turning the room purple.

Somehow, we go on & somehow it never ends
& we go on like a double pendulum.

Perhaps love is like this fixed explosion.
Perhaps you’re nearer now than the word belief.

SHADOW OF A GIRL PLAYING WITH A HULA HOOP
After Giorgio de Chirico

It used to scare me, what this girl is doing,
or those around her, off in the blind field.
Seemingly a girl playing with a hula hoop,
or just a shadow, no source, just a shadow
next to a wagon, its backdrop here a dusty
plaza. Somewhere, I feel, from an upstairs
room, an eye looks at me. Somewhere, off
screen, a murder is taking place, this shade
a clue. Even so, things are too belated now,
this girl clearly a phantom and not a muse,
like she’s in a toy shop or inside its puzzle,
no girl playing so nonchalant with a hoop.
The sun, at these times, is no longer a sun,
more likely a lamp. My fingers are syllables.
And this pine table where the postcard sits
is full of knots, staring like gods from above.

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG’S UNTITLED

& already I see alpines
prise their way through the brutalist grey
of Chernobyl floors. Through the sarcophagus
they reach for sunlight. Maybe we only learn
what the burn of graphite means once blind.
I know you better after knowing disaster.

I’ve studied the colour theories
of Goethe and Albers where the wheel
& the wheel of life are a way to feel closer.
I am the stalk through the fallout, one that insists
on pushing its way & one that’s been patient.
On the surface we share the mark of detonation.

They say a town like this is void
though one pulse of a deer’s heart
makes it a plenum. A full spectrum will reveal
itself only when you’ve pledged to cease
hurting. Through this I see what you saw
when the sun set & made shades on a radiator.
We are both on the side of art.

WINTER LANDSCAPE WITH SKATERS AND BIRD TRAP
After Pieter Bruegel the Elder

I find no pleasure in the ice.
Everything about me lies still—save for murmurations.

Peasants weave between trees: each crystalline
like coral on a seabed.

I give you a winter landscape in place of a mirror.
The bird trap is my heart.

Soon it will be still, a skull in a crypt, lit by candles.
My hills are a wishbone. They undulate under great tension.

The skaters are insouciant, crows peck their shadows.
My face startles—a chance alignment of stars.

Skaters are on slippery ground
and if they should slip, they have nothing to cling onto.

Biography

Patrick Wright’s poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, The North, Gutter, and The London Magazine. His debut collection, Full Sight of Her, was published in 2020 by Eyewear and nominated for the John Pollard Prize. His pamphlet, Nullaby (2017), was also published by Eyewear. His second collection, Exit Strategy (2025), was published by Broken Sleep Books. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the Open University.