Voice Mail

by Forbes, Duncan

• ISBN13: 9781900564922
• ISBN10: 1900564920
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-01
• Publisher: Enitharmon Press

Summary

Voice Mail is Duncan Forbes’s first poetry selection since Taking Liberties appeared in 1993. A sparkling and varied collection, Voice Mail displays the growing range and depth of the poet’s talents and marks a number of new departures. Accomplished and observant, witty and touching, often in the same poem, Forbes’s work moves from serious elegy (‘Father’) to comic turns (‘Downing Street Cat’). The poems’ moods, personnel and forms are as varied as the locations, which shift from the banks of the Severn to California via Greece, Northumberland, Niagara and Melbourne Zoo.

Author Biography

Duncan Forbes was born in 1947, read English at Oxford and was Head of English at Wycombe Abbey School. His poems have appeared in the Observer, Poetry Review, Spectator and Times Literary Supplement, and have won him a Gregory Award. His first collection, August Autumn, was published by Secker & Warburg in 1984 and he won First Prize in the TLS / Blackwell's Poetry Competition in 1998. Forbes is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Worcester.

Table of Contents

La Brea	9	(2)
Anno Domini	11	(2)
Brinkburn Priory	13	(1)
Hothouse at Wallington	14	(1)
Severn Bore	15	(1)
New Year's Eve	16	(1)
Misery	16	(1)
Job Description	17	(1)
Melissani	18	(2)
Ithaka	20	(1)
Animal Passion	21	(1)
It	22	(2)
Ipomea	24	(1)
Alec	25	(1)
Father	26	(4)
Happiness	30	(1)
Good Friday	31	(1)
Enigma	32	(2)
Sub-Minoan	34	(1)
Reprisals	35	(2)
Mission	37	(1)
Guzelyurt	38	(1)
Eclipse	39	(1)
Dragonfly	40	(1)
Holly	41	(1)
Day at the Dewhursts	42	(4)
Combing the Beach	46	(1)
Breaking the Silence	47	(1)
Bougainvillaea	48	(1)
Bombylans	49	(1)
Beached	50	(1)
Looking for Driros	51	(2)
Auspice	53	(1)
Arrivals	54	(2)
Arykanda	56	(2)
Anubis and the Wet Nurse	58	(1)
Memento	59	(2)
Auntie Millie	61	(2)
Niagara	63	(1)
Ghost Town	64	(1)
Open 365 Days	65	(1)
At Pismo Beach	66	(1)
Pacific	67	(2)
Petrified Forest	69	(1)
San Francisco Bay	70	(1)
Agave Americana	71	(1)
America	72	(1)
A Better Berry	73	(1)
Spring	74	(1)
Seed	75	(1)
A Burnt Out Case	76	(1)
Appointment	77	(1)
The Shade of Sir John Betjeman Revisits Bletchley, Bucks	78	(1)
No Time Wasters Please	79	(2)
Sometimes	81	(1)
Song of Innocence and Inexperience	82	(1)
Impasse	83	(1)
Insomnia	84	(1)
Nature of the Art	85	(1)
Inconsequence	86	(1)
Origin of the Species	87	(1)
Shark	88	(1)
Snakes and Meteros	89	(2)
Two Tigers	91	(3)
Vision Mixer	94	(1)
Zoological Gardens	95	(2)
Sunday at Messanges Plage	97	(1)
The Great Pirarucu	98	(1)
Theasurus	99	(1)
Thought	100	(1)
Hong Kong Island	101	(1)
A Million Licensed Guns	102	(2)
United Nations	104	(2)
Wild West	106	(2)
After the Sermon	108	(1)
Best Before End	109	(1)
Bloodsucker	109	(1)
Chapter One	110	(1)
Equal Opportunism	111	(1)
Common or Garden	112	(1)
Neighbourhood Watch	113	(1)
Not Today	114	(2)
Target	116	(1)
Tears	117	(2)
Downing Street Cat	119	(2)
Euroland	121	(2)
Seeing the Light	123	(1)
Sitting on the Harbour Wall	124	(1)
On Both Fronts	125	(2)
Next of Kin	127	(1)
Presences	128	(1)
Rio Ter	129	(1)
Watercolour	130	(1)
Parc Liais	131	(1)
Welcome	132	(1)
Exit	133	(2)
Why Can't I Be Poet Laureate?	135	(1)
Wine and Cheese	136	(1)
Self-Deceit	137	(1)
Cyclical	138	(2)
Song	140	(1)
Fair Copy	141	(2)
`A Poem Written in Blood'	143