Frank Kuppner

Frank Kuppner lives in Glasgow, and it may be possible to read ‘Scotland’ for ‘Albania’ in the ‘Folksongs’ published in this issue. His latest collection of poems, The Intelligent Observation of Naked Women, was published by Carcanet last year.

Poem: ‘Not’

Frank Kuppner, 12 May 1994

1.

My mother sits in a chair, beside the tape-deck which is at present playing Kathleen Ferrier singing something by Gluck. By far the most usual something, I suppose. Orpheus’s lament for Eurydice, now dead and beneath the ground. And where is the singer? Where is she even though her voice is among us? And doubtless without the hope which Eurydice had. For Eurydice will return, which...

One foot on the second-top step of the small flight Of stairs which lead to the door of her fine house, The other on the third, the very old lady Stands, staring dead ahead, clutching the railings.

At one point in my tortuous, interrupted walk Linking up all the second-hand bookshops I know of In this city which I visit too rarely, I pass by her, guiltily, without speaking.

2.

Where a few...

Sperm’s-Eye View

Robert Crawford, 23 February 1995

The family, stuff of novelists as different as Rose Macaulay and James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, is absent from much great poetry of the early 20th century. T.S....

Read more reviews

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences