Published on 10 July 2025
ISBN: 978-1-915108-30-2
82 pages
During (and after) lockdown, Alan Buckley walked the same route daily through the Lye Valley. The result was this collection of poems, the fruit of an embodied experience; observing the landscape and being part of it. The poems are all 'douzaines', a form invented by the author as a visual representation of what lockdown was like - all that had been lost and what remained to hold onto.
*
Stream
And in the year my skin was
abandoned, I walked each day
to the valley full of reeds
and rare wildflowers. Months passed.
Then something changed. The valley
began to evolve, startling
me with a daily freshness.
But in truth, I was the one
being renewed. It cradled
me, and quietly gathered
the rain of my grief, feeding
the stream that never runs dry.
*
Still asks the reader to notice the ordinary moments that often contain profound connection – human to human, human to the natural world, and that human observing the natural world interacting with itself. Written on daily walks, the poems quietly suggest that “some things aren’t meant to be looked / at straight on”, that a deeper observation of one’s surroundings can also work to “regain…balance.” (Even the couplet form of the poems points to encounter; how experience is changed by space or proximity to another.) I found myself reaching for these poems again and again as a reminder of how to see magic in the ordinary world that I might “otherwise have missed”, and how often it’s those small encounters that save us “when nothing else / will”.—Marjorie Lotfi
Alan Buckley is one of those secret gems of UK poetry whose work can’t help but grow and grow in stature. His latest book is a truly virtuoso performance – an entire collection written in an entirely new form. These ‘douzaines’ are crammed with incident and insight. They are vital, enthralling waymarkers on a path we can’t help but follow, through landscape, through time, towards ourselves.—John Glenday
Still by Alan Buckley
Holly
January 1st, 2022
Not paying close attention
(a cardinal sin) to what’sin front of me, I brush past,
wince as I’m minutely stabbed.That glorious PVC
sheen. The wood’s high priestess scornsthose trees with chameleon,
come-and-go leaves. Unflinchingpresence, she pricks me into
awareness – Where am I? andWho am I? share one answer.
I hurt when I forget this.*
Robin
Did he pinch fire from heaven?
Gatecrash the crucifixion?Red swelling. Bullet wound that
stains the landscape’s white dress shirt.He’s not one for blending in.
All week he’s been flitting by,pint-size prize-fighter, puffed-out
puncher-up. Today he’s perchedin a holly tree, giving
it straight. The woo-woo shit? Look:you’re on the right fucking path.
Now write me a poem, cunt.
*
Muntjac
Months back I’d startled one off
the path, the fear in its blankgaze a mirror of my own.
Now, walking up from the brook,I glance ahead at the gap
in the spinney, see a strangeanimal in silhouette,
with four wings raised on its back.A small reminder – thank you –
that fear can be close to joy.The deer bolts, hurling the pair
of magpies into the air.
Alan Buckley is a poet, editor, and poetry tutor. He was brought up on Merseyside, and now lives in Oxford. The author of two pamphlets – Shiver (2009) and The Long Haul (2016) – his first full collection, Touched, was published by HappenStance in 2020. His work has been highly commended in the Forward and Bridport prizes. He was a founding editor of the award-winning pamphlet publisher ignitionpress, and has taught creative writing to young people with both Arvon and First Story. He also works as a psychotherapist.