Frank McMahon lives in Cirencester and has been a member of Somewhere Else Writers for six years.
Although he’s written short stories and plays, his main creative interest is poetry. “ Poetry can say much in a few well-chosen, memorable words.”
He’s been widely published, including two collected volumes of work, “At the Storm’s Edge” and “ A Different Land” both produced by Palewell Press. Last year he won the GWN Poetry Prize and, this year, read at both the Cheltenham Poetry and Literature Festivals.
He’s also helping promote the Poetry Together Initiative, which brings children and older people together to share the pleasure of poetry. He’s one of the founding members of the monthly Writers in the Library sessions.
His third collection of poems, “The Light will Always Return” is being published by Tim Saunders Publishers in April 2024.
This month’s featured poem, ‘Winter Bleak’, imagines mid-Winter life in pre-Christian times. Read it at cirenscene.com.
WINTER BLEAK
Fire spark and sputter in the pit of winter,
in the deep nocturnal terminus
between harvesting and sowing.
Each day, hunt in the fields and woods,
until the time to slaughter a beast,
feast and fill the moon-flecked hours
with ale and mead, open up
the story hoard, the epic journeys
of gods and heroes, warriors and mythic beasts;
bowls of words spiced, refilled,
passed from lip to ear, carried outside
to catch the dancing of the stars.
Then the crabbed months of counting stores,
eking out on longer nights
the small essential change
of what grew well or failed,
the seasons’ mutability, burials and births,
the enduring sub-text
of fear and aspiration. Until longer nights
when speech is locked in frozen ponds
and a sort of sleep, alert for the dog’s alarm,
the musky scent of wolves.
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