Alan Buckley
Originally from Merseyside, Alan moved to Oxford in the 1980s to study English Literature and has lived there ever since.
His debut pamphlet Shiver (tall-lighthouse) was the Poetry Book Society pamphlet choice for summer 2009.
In 2010 he won first prize in the Wigtown Poetry Competition, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Picador Poetry Prize.
He has previously co-run a live literature programme in HMP Grendon, and is currently working for the charity First
Story in a local secondary school’s inclusion unit.
Sleeper
I use it partly through stubborn nostalgia,
the kind that draws me to a red phone box
when I see one, despite the slim Nokia
tucked in my pocket. It’s not the website’s gloss,
its bold promise of waking fully refreshed
at my destination; no bed can give you
that, once you’re past twenty-five. I guess
there’s also the simplicity – that bijou
containment, everything to hand – and the trick
where you slide under the sheets, Euston grey
and too familiar outside, then unclip
the little blind early the following day;
a plate-glass loch you can’t put a name to,
the morning sky a brighter, fuller blue.
published in Magma 51
© Alan Buckley