A Straight Up Giant

Mark Waldron was born in New York in 1960 and grew up in London. He works in advertising and lives in East London with his wife and son. He began writing poetry in his early 40s. He published two collections with Salt, The Brand New Dark (2008) and The Itchy Sea (2011), which were followed by two from Bloodaxe, Meanwhile, Trees (2016) and Sweet, like Rinky-Dink (2019). His fifth collection, A Straight Up Giant, is published by Bloodaxe in 2023.

11 Panic Room
13 Hippopotami at the Water Hotel
16 Swapping Clothes with a Friend
18 How a Poem Works
19 (Implacable doom-trod sky notwithstanding
21 A Feather in My Cap
23 Tender is the born
25 A Trap or a Net

eleven grim poems
29 Blossom
30 The Garrulous Horse
31 The Bitten Ball
33 A Goodly Fly
34 gone off
35 The Traumatised Fox
38 The Woodman Prince
40 Fungi
42 The Piece of String
46 Little Men
48 The Princess and the Pea

51 Is it Honey
53 Burn Down
55 Contingency
57 In the wayward place
60 When you were dead
63 Puppetry
66 The Trees
67 No kind of cow
69 Quids in
71 We listened to the cows
73 I adore
74 I miss

I am not a bad bird
77 Marcie says
79 Marcie says
80 Marcie says
81 Marcie says
82 Marcie says

85 Bluebottle Modus Operandi
88 Cadavre Exquis
89 Turkey Shoot
91 All your life is out
93 Henry
95 A Poisonous Midnight
98 Hôtel des Champignons
104 Crocodeelio
106 I don’t know
108 Bacon and Egg