Angela Topping

Biography

Angela is primarily a poet, although short stories and critical books are also areas of interest. She is partially disabled and a blue badge holder, after a serious fracture in 2021. Angela is a full time freelance poet, performing and leading workshops in libraries, schools, festivals and other venues. She holds an annually updated DBS certificate. She has teaching experience in both FE and secondary schools. Poems have been included in over 100 anthologies, appeared in The Poetry Review, The Dark Horse, The Interpreter's House, The North, Orbis and many others. They have also been set on the A level syllabus and featured on BBC Radio's Poetry Please. Solo Poetry Collections: Dandelions for Mothers’ Day (Stride 1988 and 1989) The Fiddle: New and Selected Poems (Stride 1999) The Way We Came (bluechrome 2007) The New Generation (Salt 2010) poetry for children I Sing of Bricks chapbook (Salt 2011) The Lightfoot Letters (to accompany the art/poetry collaboration with Maria Walker) (Erbacce 2011) Catching On (Rack Press 2011) Paper Patterns (Lapwing 2012) Letting Go - a selected poems on Parenthood and Childhood (Mother's Milk Books 2013) Hearth - a joint pamphlet with poet Sarah James (Mother's Milk Books 2015) Listed by the PBS as an 'Autumn Pamphlet' and a co-written poem was highly commended in Cheltenham Poetry Festival's competition for co-written poems. The Five Petals of Elderflower (Red Squirrel Press 2016) Title poem won Buzzwords first prize in 2013. Critical Works: Focus on Spies by Michael Frayn (Greenwich Exchange 2008) Focus on The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (Greenwich Exchange 2009) Focus on Selected Poems by John Clare – Everyman Edition (Greenwich Exchange 2015) Editor: Sweet Tongue and Acid Breast; The Scratching of Pens; Advice on Proposals (Like this Press 2014) - a pamphlet set based on Shakespeare, The Brontes and Austen. Sculpted: Poems of the North West- co-edited with Lindsey Holland (North West Poets 2013) The Robin Hood Book: Verse Versus Austerity - co-edited with Alan Morrison (Caparison 2012) The Least Thing (Stride 1989) Foreword by George Szirtes Making Connections, A Festschrift for Matt Simpson (Stride 1996) Manchester Poets Competition Anthologies I & II Brando’s Hat editorial board Residencies St Luke's Hospice 1989 Gladstone's Library Writer in Residence post 2014

Samples

Twilight Twilight is my kind of person. She wears the moon in her hair, a lustrous pearl slide in the darkness of her sleek bob. Stars make her earrings and necklace of diadems. Over one shoulder peeps Daylight, look the other way and there’s her brother, her dark older brother, handsome as the devil himself. She hangs out in the coolest places, afraid of no-one. When she dances, her cloak swirls around her like tulle. I am a little afraid of her; she leads me into bad company, into strange bars and places I would never go alone. ‘It’s OK’, she says, ‘I’ll bring Night. He’ll keep us safe’. Myself, I am not too sure. I’ve seen him looking at me with smouldering eyes. So why do I like her? She never makes up her mind shifts her views from one minute to the next, never deciding; she changes tack, fashion, is never dull. She has hidden depths too. I caught her reading Proust the other week, holding the book in hands covered with silver, nail polish and rings, and net fingerless gloves. Her appearances are always fleeting though. She never sticks around. She says ‘I’ll leave you with Night now, he likes you’. I look into those eyes so dark I cannot tell which is pupil and which retina. He smiles and takes me by the hand. A Casting-Off She sits and briskly knits, her needles clack, and grimly add the seconds of her life. Her head is bent so she won't see his chair whose vacancy insists 'no longer wife.' She chooses factory-wound wool, as skeins would underline his absence, sharpen need for deft controlling thumbs to gather threads, his held-out arms that always took the lead. And at her knee she taught me purl and plain; she'd pick up stitches, undo and put right my every tangle; tackle garter, rib, till lymph, and blood, and bile snapped off her light. Her knitting bag was needle-sharp , and full - unfinished work, and ball on ball of wool. Translate This For Anne Stevenson All language is the translation of hungers into sounds Michele Roberts Language lies on the tongue. Its babble rises from hungers in the dark; in a need for answers; in black water, stiff with ice. Fire, food, warmth, water - words of people finding sounds can signify. Rhythms of words beaten out in dancing feet or echoing drums, words - the first ordering of sense. 'I see' is amazement, 'No' is power, and calling for things brings them magically to hand. Words too few to lie. Feel them in your mouth, come to know their texture after the tongue tires of rattles and spoons of slop. Signs on the page that can speak in the private mind mean stories whenever they are wanted, soothing a whining child to silence, make a world to crawl inside, to travel time and spin the galaxy like a roundabout. Language on the page whispers 'I'm here', when the writer's formless dust. Take Catullus’ hendecasyllables - insinuating hate, sharp insults centuries old, to fit live tongues though his is dead. From dead empires disseminated words infect the air. In libraries words sleep, waiting for readers' eyes to wake them with a glance. Listen, as soon as books open voices command, babbling of hungers lying in the dark.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.

Blog entries by Angela Topping

Title poem of my new collection The Five Petals of Elderflower. (06/10/2017)

Blog link: https://www.writeoutloud.net/blogs/angelatopping