Books

Between the River and the Stars ; a collection of poetry 2013.

Little Red Tree Publications, Nebraska, USA.

Without Surprise : “Here’s a wise owl, for your birthday....” 2013. Pilgrimage Publications, Arles, France.

Seven Mirrors for the Moon : a book of riddles: in press 2017

Winner of the Bill Winter Poetry Competition Italy '02, Poetry on The Lake, Orta, Italy
 
 
 
Stolen Days read by Tony Maude on BBC Radio Ulster, May 2011

Stolen Days

 
Answering Dad back

What have you achieved this week?
Your gentle question
Stuck
In my ear.

What have you achieved this week?
I hear it ringing down the years 
The thousand times
the boy has racked his brain,
"Let me see, let me see,
What can I drum up
Present for scrutiny?"

So what have I achieved this week?
Let me see, let me see
I've earned a couple of hundred quid
Painting an apartment,
Not sure that even registers
On the meter of achievement..

I had a chat in Sainsburys
With a friendly cashier,
She told me 'bout her holiday,
Mykonos this year

So what have I achieved?
Let me see, let me see
Not very much I'd say
If this poem's to be believed,
But there was one thing
Maybe this.
Seriously.

In your house at the beginning of the week,
This cold, dark January,
I got up at ten past six,
Drew the curtains, half asleep,
In the night, the frost had come,
Jack Frost, the famous one
And covered everything in sight
With sparkling jewelry
The cricket field, the russet pine,
The iron railings, the washing line,
The bird-table, the wooden fence,
The garage roof, the bare stems
Of creepers and the sleeping flowers.
Everything
Sizzling,
Bubbling in the cauldron
Of Winter's alchemy

I stood and gazed for twenty minutes
through the steam
from a cup a tea.
So what have I achieved this week?
No feat of great renown,
But,
I've seen the visible world on a winter's
dawn
and managed
to write it down.

TONY MAUDE ©


If all the music were

"If all the music were
hoovered up,
The whole world would
suddenly stop.

If all the paintings were
blotted out,
Windows would cease to let in
light.

If all the poems were collected
and burned
In a way, that would be the
end.

If all the books were drowned
or wiped.

We'd have to hide paintings
behind the eyes
Stored beside the tanks of
tears.
Music and songs on shelves
along
The tubes that run from the
soul to the ears 
And poems jogging down the
track 
From the heart to the mind to
the tongue and back."

TONY MAUDE ©

 

WISHFUL THINKING
………for 2012

A Dingle Hotel – Co. Kerry


Checking out, I heard Reception say:
“You get a coffee with the bill”
this place gets better by the hour,
Rosier by the day.

Could you serve it now, if we sit down here?
I asked the girl who, in return,
Looked a classic-case of “I’m sorry…. I beg your pardon?”
What she’d actually said ,
I’d simply misheard:

“You get a copy of the bill.”

But that won’t stop me
Thinking Wishful.

TONY MAUDE ©