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Poem of the Month

Fiona Sampson

Angels and Dirt

‘The Resurrection, Cookham’, Stanley Spencer
Bodies the colour of earth,
clay-clagged
or rosy-pale as house brick:                          
the broad-armed locals
wrestle up.

Look – they’re everywhere                                         
in the stone garden;               
rising like hollyhocks,
like fresh loaves                     
leavening.

Here’s Poll
and Arthur (Hang about, doll!),           
all neighbourly beauty.                                               
And here you are
as if for the first time,

setting bread and salt
on the marble cloth –                                                                         
It was no struggle, you say,                           
this second birth                                                        
swimming up through soil

which crumbles                                                         
where you crown –                                                    
dust from dust –
but a yearning,                                                                                               
almost like love.

Each month, TATE ETC. publishes new poetry by leading poets such as John Burnside, Moniza Alvi, Adam Thorpe, Alice Oswald and David Harsent who respond to works from the Tate Collection. Subscribe to the Poem of the Month RSS feed.

This October Fiona Sampson presents her poem, Angels and Dirt,, based on Stanley Spencer's The Resurrection, Cookham. For the Tate Collection online, visit www.tate.org.uk/collection.

The Poetry Society is curating this year's selection in the organisation's centenary year. Founded in 1909, the Society is now one of Britain’s most high-profile arts organisations, helping poets and poetry thrive in Britain and beyond. Membership is open to all, though members include many of the UK’s most eminent poets. It publishes the highly-respected journal Poetry Review; and also works to deliver a programme of poetry in education, supporting and developing creativity among young people and communities. Visit http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk for further information.

Fiona Sampson’s latest books are Common Prayer (2007), and Poetry Writing (Robert Hale) and A Century of Poetry Review (Carcanet) both published this October. She has won the Newdigate Prize, been short-listed for the Forward single-poem and T.S. Eliot Prizes and recently received a Cholmondeley Award. As well as editing Poetry Review, she is at work on the Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures, which she will deliver in 2010, and her next collection, Rough Music, due out in May.

A Century of Poetry Review is published to mark the Society’s centenary. Poetry Review, published quarterly by the Poetry Society,is the oldest and most widely read poetry magazine in the UK, with a reputation as one of the world’s leading literary periodicals. Previous editors include Mick Imlah, Andrew Motion and the indomitable Muriel Spark. It gathers a compendious selection of key poems that were first published in the magazine. From Rupert Brooke and Thomas Hardy to today’s famous names, such as Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, the anthology plots the story of poetry through the past hundred years. This attractive, 400-page book is published by Carcanet Press (ISBN 9781847770165), and can be bought through the Poetry Society website http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/shop/product/333