£9.50

Peter Cash’s ninth collection of poems – his second hardback – was written between 1980 (when he was teaching at Trent College and living in Draycott, Derbyshire) and 1995 (by which time he had moved to Newcastle-under-Lyme School and was living in Staffordshire).

No less formal and personal than his earlier work, Pitying the Planet expresses his compassion for all creatures great and small and meditates with special poignancy upon lost landscapes, lost loves and lost lives. The collection covers the period from his success in The National Poetry Competition of 1982 to his three prize-wins at the Lancaster Literature Festival.

On 1st November 2008, The Times listed his ‘six favourite modern poems’ – among which were D. H. Lawrence’s Snake, Robert Lowell’s Skunk Hour and Edward Thomas’ Adlestrop … Peter Cash’s reading informs much of the writing in this collection. He cites the end of Middlemarch (1874) where George Eliot concludes that “things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been … owing to the number [of good men and women] who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.” He cites also A Passage to India (1924) where E. M. Forster takes up Lawrence’s stance towards the snake and insists that all creatures be “embraced” and no creatures – not even “the jackals” and “the wasps” – be excluded “from our gathering” (Chapter 4). For this collection, an alternative title, he says, would be A Gathering.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Round was published first in STAPLE 35 (Spring 1996)
and then in STAPLE 50 (2001).

The Widow was commended in The National Poetry Competition 1982
and published first in POETRY REVIEW (January 1983) and then in ENGLISH (Autumn 1984).

The Tap	STAPLE 48 (Summer 2000)
Crane Flies	THE DARK HORSE 6 (Spring 1998)
Moths	STAPLE 46 (Winter 1999)

Ladybirds was published in OTHER POETRY 15 (2000) and won
First Prize in Fosseway Writers’ Poetry Competition 2018.

Slugs won a prize in the Lancaster Literature Festival Poetry
Competition 1995 and was published in its anthology
of 30 prize-winning poems, POEMS 18.

Heptonstall

STAPLE 27 (Summer 1993)

Adlestrop was commended in The Housman Society Competition 1996
(adjudicated by Gillian Clarke and Wendy Cope) and published first
in its anthology of 40 prize-winning poems, Remembered Place.
It was re-published in THE USE OF ENGLISH (Autumn 2014).

Danilo Blagojevic was published in KLAONICA: Poems for Bosnia
(Bloodaxe 1993).

The Birds won First Prize in Southport Writers’ Circle Poetry
Competition 1993 and was published in SEAM 2 (Winter 1995).

Green Venice

STAPLE 20 (Spring 1991)

Last Afternoon with Herrick Brown won a prize in the Lancaster
Literature Festival Poetry Competition 2000 (adjudicated
by U. A. Fanthorpe) and was published in its anthology
of 30 prize-winning poems, POEMS 23.

In Memory of Ann Jones was commended in the Staple Open Poetry
Competition 1997 (adjudicated by Carol Ann Duffy) and published
in STAPLE 41 (Spring 1998).

The Names won a prize in the Lancaster Literature Festival Poetry
Competition 1996 (adjudicated by Fleur Adcock and John Burnside)
and was published in its anthology of 30 prize-winning poems,
POEMS 19.

THE TAP

Somewhere, a tap is leaking: if not
in that squat cricket-pavilion, bolted up
and abandoned by an unmown plot,

then in an annexe of this church hall
in which – when there were people –
they’d hold a whist-drive or jumble-sale.

Somewhere, a bird – pigeon, crane –
is slowly beating out its life;
struck by bus or truck or train,

it flaps beside the fly-over or rail.
Increased traffic passes it;
snow falls like braille.

Somewhere else, a woman proposes
a programme for coming to terms
with her consultant’s shock-prognosis;

her husband and four children are with her.
Dog, too. They take a picnic
to the sunlit Downs. Either

that or this seventy-nine-year-old man
is feeling unwell. Something he ate?
He rinses his face and wonders
how much older he can get.

Nowhere, an inkling
of that land where sun bakes Downs dark-gold
and running water’s a brook tinkling

nor of that endless lane
up which a charm of chaffinches
trills in summer rain.

Instead, a continual tap
as into a metal cattle-trough
– a cold and dripping thought
that cannot be turned off.