Most Read... John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Christopher MiddletonNotes on a Viking Prow
(PN Review 10)
Next Issue Between Languages, Howard Cooper 'Ur-language' Oksana Maksymchuk 'Multifarious Beast' Zinovy Zinik 'My Mother Tongue, My Fatherland' Philip Terry 'Lost Languages' Victoria Moul 'Bad Latin, Barbarous Inglishe'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 134, Volume 26 Number 6, July - August 2000.

Samphire Robert Minhinnick

After the hurricane blew
Through my head I knew

Things had to change. That silence
Was no longer a defence.

So walking on the eastern shore
I asked myself what I was for,

And on that beach I built a fire
For the pickers of samphire,

Their plasticbags and fingers thick
With the samphire's citric

Oils, our thoughts turning to supper
Of seabass, or a silver-

Side of sewin laid
In tinfoil in the pit I'd made

On a griddle over ingots
Of driftwood, white-hot
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image