About Mike Barlow:

Mike Barlow was winner of the National Poetry Competition 2006 with his poem The Third Wife. He has previously won First Prize in the Ledbury Poetry Competition 2005, and First prize in the Amnesty International Competition 2002. His first collection Living On The Difference was overall winner of the Poetry Business Competition 2004 and subsequently short-listed for the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection in 2005. It has been described as a collection with ‘cumulative power, cohesion and a particular, individual voice’(Gillian Clarke). Reviews have referred to a ‘questing intelligence and… a refusal to accept or offer easy answers’(Acumen) and ‘free verse so weighed and paced it shows an elegance and care beyond any achieved by formal styles’(Dreamcatcher).

Quelle: poetry p f

Winter Coat

We were dancing when they came
but the four four of heavy boots put paid to that.

The chill sent us indoors to dig out what we could
for warmth. I found my uncle’s greatcoat from the war,

heavy, drab and mildewed, but double-breasted,
with brass buttons and a collar I could hide behind.

It taught me how to stoop, to shuffle and queue
like an old man suffering from damp and memory.

I patched the lining with bits of coloured rag,
embroidered words there, whatever came to me:

tomorrow, sweetheart, polka, apricot, yesterday,
and the names of friends I’ll never see again.

Sometimes I’d stand out on the corner, whip it open
like a flasher, then run for the shelter of an alley.

One night I dreamt thunder, woke to hear the city sigh,
as if a heaviness had just passed down the street.

Dead leaves scratched the pavement.
Across the yard someone tuned a fiddle.

Today we’re in the square again, dancing.
I wear the old coat inside out, sweat a fever underneath.

winner, Amnesty International Poetry Competition, 2002
in collection Living On The Difference, 2004
ISBN 1-902382-63-3, Smith/Doorstop