Peter Phillips was born in London in 1948 and apparently still lives there. Besides poetry he wrote one-act stage plays. His pamphlet collection, Frayed at the Edges was published in 1997, his first full collection Looking for You was published in 2001, followed by Wide Skies, Salt and Best Better, 2005. In this sequence Phillips grants insight into most private experiences as biographical events move along in the content of language. His mothers Alzheimer disease, the death of his first wife and the finding of new love. Night Tales takes us into the poet’s intimate night-time world, while Fox Tales records some off-beat encounters with foxes. But far away from personal, Phillips turns to various, seemingly random subjects in his poetry, like camels, hypochondria, cows and human frailty as he whizzes you from his native London to Prague, Palm Beach, the French Riviera and New York.

Quelle: poetry p f

Conjuring Tricks
i.m. Julia Casterton

I'm rehearsing my sleight of hand,
craft of the illusionist

when reason translates to the spiritual
with the tumble of words

to the next line and everyone
gets excited, exclaiming

ooh and ah. How is that done?
It's when I say "abracadabra"

reach into a top hat
for a rainbow of bunting

flapping in predictable rhythms,
wave my wand and they become

lines of light and art.
Then the magician in me

opens his palms and out flutter
twenty doves (from Finisterre of course)

into the air, your years of inspiration,
to fly in couplets round the page

sensual and eloquent
beautifully lineated.


Peter Phillips
published in Acumen, 59, Sep 2007