Paul Hawkins

Biography

I’m a Bristol based poet, writer and storyteller. I’ve performed my work at The Royal Opera House, WOMAD, Boscombe Fringe Festival, The Shelley Theatre and other venues and festivals across the south-west. I have two collections out; Claremont Road (erbacce-press 2013) and Contumacy (erbacce-press 2014). Other publishing credits include the Maintenant, CUT UP! anthology, Rising, Stride, Domestic Cherry, Fit to Work: Poets Against ATOS, The Occupy Wall Street Anthology, Primal Urge, Quincunx, The Interpreters House, London Lit Project, The Bath Lit Festival, Museum of Alcohol, Verba Vitae, PPigpenn, M58 and Lit Kicks. I'm a co-editor of poetry/flash fiction pamphlet Bosc:Rev and co-run Hesterglock Press with Sarer Scotthorne. I'm working on my third collection, Place, Waste & Dissent, due to be published by Influx Press late 2015.

Samples

#10 (hawkins) We chew our fucking gums raw, high on nightshift CIA amphetamine, and punch co-ordinates, dial-up a drone raid. It’s air-con dry and four hours into Thursday. Chemtrail traces a lazy flight across morning’s lapis sky (burning charcoal, mint tea, a palm full of figs, flies and sand in the honey, a mother breast-feeding). Eyes closed in the shimmy-shimmer; a grey-blue-grey-white sky. Two hundred and seventy nine minutes of The Simpsons later, (blink white-silver-yellow-silver) all that’s left out there is half a dog. A Poem About an Electric Blanket Is your new lover hot enough for you? Does he gather up your hair and hips, dreams and tears, then warm you through - do you wake with his love covering you like a blanket of fresh snow?   On this cold morning I hang my breath over the bed we slept in. Feet and hands are iced blocks cut from glacial plates. Breath is frozen saltwater, crystals hanging together. And you, in your bed, warm as an Eskimo, fumbling, half-awake, under an electric-lover, still fingering his button to turn him on.

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