Oversteps Books

Anne Lewis-Smith

Anne is a poet and journalist, who has edited five magazines over 30 years (including Envoi). Her first poem appeared in the Daily Mail when she was eight. Eleven collections of her poetry have been published. She has been involved with ballooning for forty years (receiving the Tissandier and Debbie Warley Awards); and she lives half-way up a mountain in Wales.

Sample poem: Sea Poetry

Oversteps publications

Every Seventh Wave (2006)

There, at the edge,
winds slice sharp
and seabirds rocket up
eighty empty metres
from cold uneasy sea.

Extract from “Dun Aonghasa, aran”

Will Daunt

Sample poem: Goodbye, Islands

Personal website: www.freewebs.com/willdauntpoetry

Oversteps publications

Running out of England (1999)

A car which threw the group who drove
against the swell of trippers, south,
recorded, in a glaze, the land
of bright and focused genocide.

from “Cumbrian Junctions”

Miriam Darlington

Miriam Darlington’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies across the UK. She is an English teacher and lives in Devon where she also works as a freelance writer. She performs at open mic events, at festivals (recently at Glastonbury) in a duo called ‘The Honeytongues,’ and is a member of Moor Poets, a group of writers from Dartmoor.

Sample poem: In this Bowl

Oversteps publications

Windfalls (2008)  OUT OF PRINT

It’s that dangerous-red-feeling; that tonight
why not make it hot? thing, and you reach
for that squeaky red leather skin -
that bright-red-slapper-red, like
the red heels you dream of; red

                  to topple over in…

From “On cooking with chilli peppers”

Charles Hadfield

Charles Hadfield has published four poetry collections: Border Disputes (1995) and Inventing Waterfalls (1997) from Salzburg University Press, Reflections (1998) from Mirage Press with photographer Marina Wilson, and The Nothing We Sink or Swim In (2002) from Oversteps. After over twenty-five years working and travelling in France, China, Tibet, Madagascar, and several African countries, in 2003 he emigrated to New Zealand where he now teaches at Auckland University. With his wife Jill he has published two travel books: Watching the Dragon, Letters from China 1983-85 (1986) and A Winter in Tibet (1988) both from Impact Books, and he is now working on a new collection of poems and prose poem . His published teaching books include Writing Games and Reading Games, both from Longman, and the Oxford Basics series including Introduction to Teaching English (2008).

Sample poem: Looking Back Down

Oversteps publications

The Nothing We Sink or Swim In (2002)

James Cole

James Cole was born in Torquay and has lived in the West Country for all of his life. He gets much of his inspiration from walking on Dartmoor and from the sea and coastline of the South West. He is a member of the Company of Poets and has had some of his poems published in their anthologies.

Sample poem: Grandparents

Oversteps publications

From The Blue (2002)

Long Mynd Sheep

At the scrag end of the world,
It seems, this blasted heath
That falls to a dried riverbed.

Where water once flowed,
Now there are slabs of slate
And the skulls of sheep:

A reminder of the thin line
Between life and death; the slip
Of a once sure foot.

What bleached these old bones?
The living sheep are unimpressed
By death. They live with it.

They graze instead among the bracken
And heather bitten to the quick.

Lean and hardy, we call them stupid
As they skitter away.

The red brand on each flank
Looks like a patch of dried blood.

Simon Williams

Simon Williams began writing poetry at Loughborough University, where he worked under the influence of the two resident poets, Roger McGough and Pete Morgan. He has developed a poetic voice which flexes into disparate characters with subtlety, wit and affection. Now living on Dartmoor, he performs regularly and often enhances his readings with acapella songs.

Sample poems

• Speakers of Eyak (2006)
• Goats (2012)
• Trajectory

Oversteps publications

• Quirks (2006)
• A Place Where Odd Animals Stand (2012)
• Inti (2016)

Moonshine

My eye is a little scapegoat
running around on the moon,

which is rock face,
soft faced anchor of light.

I kneel and
my knees are bathed in light.

I swing and it keens
my tilt and move.

I gasp as its shine
shivers along the back of my hand.

That push-me pull-me angel
trails its fingers through the tide.

The tracts of darkness dissolve,
now ocean’s a box which opens.

Tsunami

26^th December  2004

A new word,
savoured on the tongue
like sushi,

sweeps in, swamping languages
with all the inevitable
bitterness of brine.

At such apocalypse
the earth quakes and
the sea coughs up its dead,

choked on the horror of a force
not seen or understood.
Such indescribable malignity and might

requires a strange new
foreign word to bear
its drowning weight.

David Grubb

Poetry collections include The Memory of Rooms, The Elephant In The Room, Out Of The Marvellous and It Comes With A Bit Of Song. Runner up in 2007 Bridport short story competition. Tutor of Creative Writing at University of Reading, the River and Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames, Norden Farm.

Sample poem: Slow Music

Oversteps publications

An Alphabet of Light (1992)