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Fiona Sampson
© Ekaterina Voskresenskaya
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the poet
Leading British poet Fiona Sampson has been published in 38 languages and received a number of international awards. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the English Association and the Wordsworth Trust, Fiona has 29 books to her name, and was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature. She is Emeritus Professor of Poetry, University of Roehampton, has served on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a Trustee of the Royal Literary Fund. Other honours include the Cholmondeley Award and Hawthornden Fellowship, as well as various national Book of the Year selections. Most recently, Fiona's Come Down was awarded Wales Poetry Book of the Year 2021. Fiona has also been a broadcaster and critic, editor of Poetry Review, and acclaimed biographer of both Mary Shelley and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
the poems
At Lechlade
The church was full of dead bees
somehow a swarm had gathered
high inside a transept window
back and forth the bees flew
through the crossing their too low
wrong note like a moan
the building held as if holding
itself moaning as it held
the condemned bees passing
to and fro in air
that hung sacred etcetera
between pillars but could not
save them
bees are angels too
who will save us if we let them
but now they flew uselessly
offering themselves brown
gifts in air above our heads
and dead in the house of death
on pews and on the red tiles
of the aisle
at the welcome
table the steward refused
to let us call the bee man
we must wait till they’re all dead
she said and I’ve always wondered
why she wanted to deal death
to the living bees in
the gold church what fury
or what loss would make you kill
the life-givers the velvet
singers in plain sight knowing
no-one quite would dare stop you
knowing we are obedient
and that she could close the church
against the life that comes flying
in by accident
as words
do sometimes or a truth
glimpsed in the high evening air
Coming Of Age
In the beginning the waters covered
the earth but before that earth
was fire surely the air made fire turn
to water air made water-fire like
the Northern Lights flaming green and gold
and blue through your iris in the beginning
was like a game of scissors paper
stone and I could not decide which
to trust cold fists poking from anorak
sleeves or paper blowing against
the chain-link fence long mornings
when maybe our teachers were bored
too but we were igneous then
we must have been cooling already for
steam covered the sky the sea the sun
when it settled on the window glass
and still the sea was always at the foot
of our day like a beginning
like coming into language like
God in the hymn books setting breakers
of blue fire across the horizon
At Mukito
For Jaan Kaplinski
What’s here now when I come
like Jaan’s sheep like Sappho’s lamb
stepping down into the valley
as the bright evening light
slips and pools beside a wall
along the water with the gnats
and water-skimmers bright and dark
falling across the stepping shoulders
of the careful beast so quiet
so inevitable little
lamb of death calling the poet
home although he called you first
into the clearing with the pond
the long-armed well the barn swallows
and in the dark the nightingales
sing inexhaustibly
about the forest going on
forever beyond the fence rail
as poets do singing in darkness
up among the wooden beams
of habitation while the lamb
comes to lie down at the threshold
comes gently to your feet
Jaan I didn’t call him here
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb