John Stammers

John Stammers’s latest collection, Stolen Love Behaviour, was a Poetry Book Society Choice. He is convenor of the British and Irish Contemporary Poetry Conference.

Poem: ‘Black Dog’

John Stammers, 14 December 2006

From the interior night of the unconscionably tall, arched doorway, the shadows commence a faint unnerving undulation; they wear an awful sheen, as if the shade has been interminably brushed after being treated in some scenty new conditioner. The aperture takes on shape: the hard sway of a long, high neck, and the absurd tiny slope of what, in another creature, might have been its shoulders....

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