Biography

Antony Owen is from Allesley, Coventry. His first collection of poetry ‘My Father’s Eyes Were Blue,’ was published in May 2009 by Heaventree Press to rave reviews from award winning poets.

In June 2009 Owen was selected as part of a poetry collective to travel throughout Ireland and perform at a number of venues. This tour finally ended with a recorded reading at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens Unversity, Belfast.

Owen has been guest reader at several readings throughout the open mic circuit in the UK and is known for his brooding diction and passionate performances.

In November 2009, Owen arranged a poetry remembrance festival backed by famous Falklands soldier Simon Weston OBE. This peace themed remembrance event of poetry raised over £2,500 for a small charity and significantly raised awareness of the importance of poetry via extensive radio and newspaper coverage.

Owen has also been published in Avocado Magazine, Sherb: An Anthology Of River Poems, and in June 2010 will feature poetry in Ava Gardner: Touches of Venus by Gilbert Gigliotti (Entasis Press).




***************Book Reviews***************

"In his impressive debut collection, My Father's Eyes Were Blue, Antony Owen's approach to the often difficult subject of war is sensitive, dramatic and thoroughly contemporary."

Jacqui Rowe, author of Apollinaire: War poems; re-castings,re-visions.

"An affecting first collection tinged with melancholy and leavened with moments of black humour".

Jonathan Morley: Author of Backra Man & Eric Gregory Award Winner 2006

Antony Owen is a startling new voice in British poetry. Forceful, urgent and sometimes shocking images belie a beguiling tenderness, which is rooted in Owen’s clear admiration for honest, hardworking people. What attracts me most in these poems is the focus Owen gives to not-too-distant history, drawing our attention to hidden stories and characters, and detailing the highs and lows of post-War and post-industrial Britain.

Michael McKimm: Author of ‘Still This Need” & Eric Gregory Award Winner 2007

Owen’s verse can powerfully capture a child’s introduction to nature’s cruelty and a grown man’s painful recognition of the hold the past has on us all.
His images are often stark but always with a humanity that renders the common and uncommon equally new.”

Gilbert Gigliotti: Professor of English, Central Connecticut State University & Author of Frank Sinatra ‘But Buddy I’m a kind of poem’ by Enstasis Press.


"Poetry is like the workings of larvae, the drafts are like chrysalis that holds a butterfly that exists far beyond the moment."

Samples

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiF8tKgwBqs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SSy7oHJPCM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaoFSiRzNGg&feature=related

The Blooding

Twigs of blackbird trails
thawed to thistle.
A kneel of hills sang
from wolf throat snow,
their yawning Yorkshire moon
in smoky beards
spooled towards a cog of sun
rising with horn foxes.

Hounds scoffed at black jelly
From a vixen spilt like dusk
hat for a redcoats son.
His blooding carved a gentlemen
and a heart pounded with hooves
to a pint of real man’s bitter,
its head foaming down the glass
reflecting a coming of age -
thirteen years old,
with a fox stamped in his retina.

Forgiveness

Courage left you today
your 'real' husband for so long
My wife now a memory
I am married to mirrors of regret.

Forgive me for my weakness.

The times you walked on your own
asking me in laptop grey
I ignored you for a client
that always spelt my name wrong.

Forgive me for my ignorance.

The day of the envelope
when you were different
by being too much the same to me
I was indifferent to you.

Forgive me for my blindness.

The day you lit candles at 10am
stood naked next to them
and asked me if you were beautiful
saying my full name.

Forgive me for shaking.

The day you told me, was a Sunday
later you said you had waited for a frost
just like the first walk we ever took
when their was bonfire and love in my eyes.

Forgive me for hating you.

The day you lost your hair
refusing to wear a headscarf
choosing to wear the elements –
the wind, the rain and when we kissed, a smile.

Forgive me for loving you too much.

The days I stayed with you to the end
I noticed everything I hadn’t done
except for the only thing you wanted
to dance with you to Yared
you went in my arms from the flute.

I’ll never forgive you for that.

I won't go (a poem for Srebrenitsa)

Grief never fasts a widow said
prayers have shaped her bones
like the scythe of communism,
she is Srebrenitsa’s flag half mast
blowing at a name she breastfed.

A cleanliness of human darkness
washed in blood eight thousand times.
The tight knit community was splayed
yarned by clay the kalashnikov kiln
made muslim’s terracotta for paradise.

A widow said they resembled waste paper,
scrunched like the face of Milosevic
defiant in his villa where a pool wrinkled the sun.
The authorities came through teeth of glass
he refused to go like widows who kneel
to enclaves of themselves
at graves of themselves.


The Black Hole

Her hospice bag of ironed squares
still breathes spice from corridors,
where a black hole from his mouth
breathed in worlds he created
to implode upon snowdrops of cancer.

White line hypnosis from Valley Avenue
smeared a black mouth on the windscreen,
silently shape-shifting to hand prints.
This new world I had created
left a ghost gasping in amber.

I wiped away an entity and was haunted,
by the son you thought I was
and the son I knew I was.
Cold as the iron strangled in umbilical,
it's breath folded in storage,
like you Dad

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.

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