Andrew's Biography & Sonnets

Sonnetto Poesia Vol. 1 no. 3

Andrew's Biography & Sonnets

Moonlight (after Henry Pether) ca. 1850

Andrew Belsey

Sonnetto Poesia Vol. 1. no. 3 Autumn/ l'automne, 2002

Our Featured Poet is Andrew Belsey.

Biography

Andrew Belsey was born in the Fenlands of East Anglia, England, where since Roman times people have battled with nature to keep the rivers and the sea off the rich farmland, some of it below sea level.

Andrew has lived for some 30 years now in Cardiff, Wales, where he teaches philosophy at Cardiff University. As a academic writer, he has jointly edited with Ruth Chadwick, the book, Ethical Issues in Journalism and the Media (Routledge, 1992). It has been translated into Italian and Turkish.

He has composed poetry in many genres, both free and formal, for over forty years. His formal verse includes sonnets. Amongst these, he counts some as slightly experimental, where he has sometimes allowed controlled irregularities of rhythm or rhyme. His poetry has appeared in many print and electronic journals, including New Headland, Peer Poetry International, Philosophy Now, Above Ground Testing, Poetry Life and Times, Comrades and Snakeskin. He is the author of Anaximander (Outposts Publications, 1974) and A Collection of Four-Line Poems 1962-1999 (Llwynywll Press, 2000).

Andrew's imagery tends to draw much from concrete and visual elements, examples of which have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, and in Going Round in Circles [and a Square]: Concrete Poems which Might or Might not be Circular Arguments (or Vice Versa) [Llwynywll Press, 2nd ed., 2002].

All of his sonnets, which appear in this issue of Sonnetto Poesia, have been previously unpublished.

You may wish to contact Andrew by sending him e-mail:

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I have seen the sun rise and seen it set,
Been dazzled by its brilliance in the sky,
A light no cosmic questor could forget
So beautiful it is to mind and eye.
I've revelled in its warmth and kissed its rays,
Stretched out with empty hands and pleading speech,
But such a perfect prize beyond all praise
Is also quite beyond my failing reach.
So now there's just a thin pale moon above,
Casting pale sad shadows on cold ground,
Too little light to fuel fresh thoughts of love,
I've lost the only hope I thought I'd found.
My heart aches full of memories and fears And on my cheeks two rolling streams of tears.

© by Andrew Belsey, 2002
This sonnet is reviewed in full in the October, 2002 Vallance issue of Poetry Life and Times (UK). Click here:

Poetry Life & Times: The Vallance Review (October, 2002). Is "Love's Labour's Lost" Lost on us Today?

Dry up those tears, and weep no more for me,
Let no more rivers run through banks of woe,
Remember always what will be will be,
The sun will shine, or blasts of north wind blow.
Make cracked old cheeks take on the hue of youth,
Force on those trembling lips a withered grin,
Forget the pain like snapping of a tooth,
Step forward so that new life can begin.
But no. No more illusion, no more fraud,
For one thing must condition a new start,
There must be someone to remove the sword
That's struck and stricken me right through the heart,
So if it's true that what will be will be,
Weep on, weep on, and never weep for me.

© by Andrew Belsey, 2002

I went out with this smashing bird called Alice,
But it wasn't her idea of fun to spend
Cold afternoons supporting Crystal Palace,
So this affair could never buck the trend
Of chilly disappointments. All Tulse Hill's
Bleak consolations lurked in dreary pubs
At bar stools. There I sat with half of pils
To drown my sorrows and the football club's
(They're bottom of the first division now)
With dreams of beauty, on and off the pitch.
That Alice must have been a silly cow.
To walk out on me like that, rotten bitch.
But no, I cannot fool myself -- she was
Real class, and I am desperate because.

© by Andrew Belsey, 2002

I sit beneath the moon in Brockwell Park,
Hearing the trains pass on the Croydon line,
I sit until enfolded by the dark
Plus the effects of all that British wine.
Things aren't too good. The poems will not come,
And nor would Sharon, so she buggered off
With Des, who had a rugby forward's bum
(Together with a nasty smoker's cough).
I doze and dream the ghosts of poets past
Who with one voice both sentence and accuse
In words which leave no hope and me aghast:
"You have no muse nor talent to amuse."
Life has no consolation when you're down,
The greatest unknown poet of the town.

© by Andrew Belsey, 2002