Ox-Eye

Anne Rouse lives in East Sussex. Her Bloodaxe retrospective The Upshot: New and Selected Poems included the new poems of The Divided (2008), along with selections from her first three critically acclaimed earlier collections, Sunset Grill (1993) and Timing (1997) – both Poetry Book Society Recommendations – and The School of Night (2004), and was a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2008. A new collection, Ox-Eye, is published by Bloodaxe in 2022. A former health worker, she has been a Hawthornden Fellow, and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Glasgow (2000-02), Queen's University, Belfast (2004-05), and the Courtauld Institute, London (2008). Her short plays have been given rehearsed readings in Edinburgh and Hastings in the UK and in Virginia in the US.

Anne Rouse’s poems are watchful and amused, sardonic and appalled. They are also in the best sense political: the big picture of our whole society informs her miniatures of city life where dossers and shopping jostle for attention alongside love and death.

• 7 Polaroid8 Moonrise 20219 Landfill10 Feeny’s Yard11 Finish Line12 Seyton13 Night of the Monkey Puzzle Tree14 The Town15 To the Night Market16 Ballad of a She17 Haymaking18 Late Swim19 Greetings from Hastings Pier20 Change21 Request to a Neighbour22 The Builder’s Mates23 Inconsequence24 Fling25 Cyclops in Cythera26 The Waves, and a Bang27 It Greens Again28 Uncertain Ode29 A Thank You Note30 The Morvoren31 Morvoren (Variation)32 Ode to a Puritan33 From the Dark Tower Came34 Man Ironing35 Monterey36 The Scholars’ Hostel37 Before I Left on Friday38 High Wall39 Graffiti40 Heel41 Again42 Notes from a Moon Station43 Oil45 Speech Act46 Ildeth in Bela47 Warriors48 A Calenture49 A Lothario50 Obits51 Domestic Animal52 Report on Local Damage53 Clematis54 Found Poem for Beryl Markham55 Louse56 Suburban Pastoral57 The Beat58 At Chincoteague59 Return to Sender60 The Maying62 Grotto64 Acknowledgements