New Poetry From Cornwall

Our new title is the latest collection from contemporary poet Alan Bleakley – now shipping.

The Bio-illogical explores the power of the imagination to distort nature for aesthetic purposes, in 33 finely crafted poems which offer a rich and exhilarating journey across his native Cornwall.

Alan Bleakley |The Bio-illogical | The Artel Press (2023) RRP £10

Buy here online direct from the Artel Press or contact your local bookseller.

THE HEART AS A BIRD ESCAPING A BURNING BUSH

Can you imagine a wagtail
With a tar-black heart
And a heavy head
Caught in a burning bush?

Of course not, although the knot
That is her heart
Must be heavy with grief
On every brief note of her song.

The human heart, a rib-caged oath,
Grows as a tangled bush of holly green,
Where a bursting fire can cinder
The holly head’s rush of growth.

The heart can play away sometimes,
But will always come home to its bower,
A cradle for the crimson engine in the chest.
The locked box in which the heart rests

Is a holy chest fired dry and fired again,
A cindered mesh from which
The pied wagtail strides, guileless,
Its two-beat callow call now air made flesh.

© 2023 Alan Bleakley
From The Bio-illogical published by The Artel Press. All rights reserved.

IMAGE CREDIT: Susan Bleakley ‘Signs of the Times’