Author Archive

  • David Grubb

    David GrubbPoetry 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)



  • Haiku

    her blue umbrella
              discarded by the roadside
                                         is a broken sky



  • Susan Taylor

    Susan TaylorSusan Taylor farmed in Lincolnshire until she was 30 and now lives with her husband, the poet Simon Williams, on the southern edge of Dartmoor. Her writing draws its moods from the natural world – its shifting patterns and constant energy.

    Susan holds a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. She runs regular poetry workshops in Totnes, and received a Tarka Country Millennium Award for her collaborative performance project, Reclaiming the Myths of Dartmoor.

    Sample poetry

    Personal website: www.susantaylor.co.uk

    Oversteps collections

    The Suspension of the Moon (2009)

    A Small Wave for Your Form (2012)

    Temporal Bones (2016)



  • Helen Kitson

    Helen KitsonHelen Kitson lives in Worcester with her husband and two young children. Her big breakthrough came in 1992 when her pamphlet Seeing’s Believing was nominated for the Forward First Collection Prize. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is currently working on a novel.

    Sample poem: Long Mynd Sheep
    Personal website: www.helenkitson.com

    Oversteps publications

    Tesserae (2003)



  • 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 WilliamsSimon 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

    Oversteps publications



  • Speakers of Eyak

    I speak the broken mouths of trappers
    and the men that come for trees;
    smooth words, rounded
    like the barrels of guns they polish.

    I have need of conversation.
    My years are many
    and to some that come and go,
    I will tell old truths as I remember.

    They may recall them,
    when the snow has covered me
    and act on any good that’s in them.
    I speak with their curved sounds,

    but there is also Yanwek –
    with her I can talk straight.
    Our voices sharp and cutting
    in our throats like old spears,

    talk as we have always talked.
    We say how now
    we can’t keep out the cold with furs.
    We sing of moons cut from the ice
    and other moons, reflected in the holes.

    There are believed to be 20 languages for which there is only one speaker left in the world. Eyak is still spoken in South-East Alaska by two aged sisters, if they meet.



  • 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.



  • Most recent successes

    Robert Stein has been shortlisted in both the Winchester Poetry competition and the Bridport Prize.

     

    Mark Totterdell was highly commended in the Winchester Poetry competition, received special mention in the recent Sentinel Literary Quarterly poetry competition and won the Happenstance Press competition for blank verse.

     

    A C Clarke was shortlisted in the Lord Whisky Animal Sanctuary competition, commended in the Poets meet Politics competition, won first prize in the Beyond Borders competition and first prize in the Second Light Long Poem competition.



  • A number of Oversteps poets will once more be reading at the Poetry on the Lake festival in northern Italy. Elisabeth Rowe will be launching her new book; and Alwyn Marriage will be taking part in a panel discussion on poetry publishing.



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