Glyn Hughes, from "A Year in the Bull-Box"

I have been reading Glyn Hughes' latest collection of poems, an important and moving sequence called "A Year in the Bull-Box", Arc Publications, 2011. The bull-box is an isolated stone hut retreat in the Ribble Valley. The book was launched on 26 February. I couldn't get to the launch, or to Glyn's exhibition of paintings, but I spoke to him yesterday on the phone, and he gave me permission to reproduce one of the poems from "A Year in the Bull-Box" here. A poem to read on the top of Maiden Castle.

Escape

In my first escape I was aged five or six
observing larks above a bristle of corn.
When following oracles in the countryside
I seemed to pass through a pane of glass
and feel an inner rising, as a lark in a field
that is a clod of earth until it sings
and sprays horizons with its song.


I first met Glyn Hughes in Thessaloniki, in December 1980. We visited Petralona Cave together, and shared the same view of Mount Olympus as Petralona Man had done.

Several of Glyn's books, and many of his poems, deal with Greece in whole or part:

Fair Prospects (Gollancz, 1976)

The Summer the Dictators Fell (Goldmark, 2005)

Dancing Out of the Dark Side (Shoestring Press, 2005)

see also www.glynhughes.co.uk