mervyn linford

Biography

I am a poet, author and publisher: the Littoral Press. I have been writing for some forty five years or more and have published 11 poetry collections and nine works of prose. My latest Poetry Collection 'Credo' was published this year by the Mica Press of Wivenhoe, Essex. My own Littoral press has just published my Collected Poems. I lived in Essex for nearly sixty years and still spend half of my time there with my partner of thirty eight years. I have been a member of the Southend Poetry Group for nearly forty years. I now live in Lavenham in Suffolk and am a member of Poetry Aloud in Bury St Edmunds and also a member of the Suffolk Poetry Society. I have recently published another prose work - a country journal entitled 'Lavenham to Leigh on Sea' - subtitled: 'Country Ways - Coastal Waters'

Samples

Black-tailed Godwits – Mersea Island Three godwits – three black-tailed godwits standing at the tide’s full edge. One - on one leg: head tucked in beneath a wing - snoozes. The others – busier with worms and molluscs – and all such things secreted in the ooze beneath their feet are almost black silhouetted in the heat of late September and the sun-shot, glittering, shatter of the sea in smithereens. Bladder wrack and eelgrass seep into the senses with the smell of oyster smacks and cockle spits and brine and early, but expected, from the east the darkening skeins of those dark-bellied geese who write their cursive script across a sky as wide as winter. Essex Skippers Trying now to remember those fields where I as a child stared into the sky amongst the flowers is never easy. I can see in my mind’s eye the vetches and the willow herb and poppies but time has taken something from the light that was my vision. I cannot see or feel such fleeting things as burnet moths or lizards or the wings of Essex skippers. Images it seems are not enough I need the actual touch that words can’t bring of butterflies between the cupping hands whose gentle tickling beat is like a heart that leaves behind a powder and the mark of all ephemera. Both of these poems are from my latest collection 'Credo'

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