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 Room13 Hippopotami at the Water Hotel16 Swapping Clothes with a Friend18 How a Poem Works19 (Implacable doom-trod sky notwithstanding21 A Feather in My Cap23 Tender is the born25 A Trap or a Neteleven grim poems29 Blossom30 The Garrulous Horse31 The Bitten Ball33 A Goodly Fly34 gone off35 The Traumatised Fox38 The Woodman Prince40 Fungi42 The Piece of String46 Little Men48 The Princess and the Pea51 Is it Honey53 Burn Down55 Contingency57 In the wayward place60 When you were dead63 Puppetry66 The Trees67 No kind of cow69 Quids in71 We listened to the cows73 I adore74 I missI am not a bad bird77 Marcie says79 Marcie says80 Marcie says81 Marcie says82 Marcie says85 Bluebottle Modus Operandi88 Cadavre Exquis89 Turkey Shoot91 All your life is out93 Henry95 A Poisonous Midnight98 Hôtel des Champignons104 Crocodeelio106 I don’t know108 Bacon and Egg

I get nervous for Mark Waldron's readers – I can hear them begin to laugh a little, becoming too comfortable too quickly, while reading a poem of his and I want to warn them. I want to yell at them to get out of the way, tell them that what's really happening is that they are about to get their hearts broken. Poor monkeys.