died this week. The poet has passed, long live the poet. He is seventy-nine. I got to know Shaun when Muswell Press published his fine collection ‘Van Gogh in Brixton’ . The writing is gentle yet tough, complexity (not complication) carried with clarity. To know Shaun and talk about writing was to up your game. I saw him read Shakespeare’s Last Drink at Pentameters Theatre in Hampstead two years ago. It’s one of the loveliest poems I have ever heard – and read. Like a fine piece of lace, not a thread is out of place. His illustrious writing life includes collections The Hardening Ground, Images in Winter, and Still Life. He also wrote children’s poems and was editor of the Poolbeg Book of Irish Poetry for Children.
His most recent collection Savannah and her Thirteen Moons, dedicated to his granddaughter gives us a poem for each moon of the year – but this – The Clutter Moon is his thirteenth: portentous, judging, loving, and hopeful. Jan Woolf
The Clutter Moon
