The Poetry of Brexit!

This England

This little raft, this tub, this oil-drum-lashed
construction on the waves, this fragile thing
with sails constructed from a ragged tablecloth
so proudly independent as it bobs and slaps
against the heaving seas, survives with crew
hand-picked to stare the foreign rabble out.

This floating island, sufficient to itself,
this little England all alone like Crusoe
on his empty beach beneath the palms,
in contemplation of its lovely littleness
while seabirds scream and glide above
and all the ocean and the skies look on.

Nicholas Murray

Published on the website of New Boots & Pantisocracies

Crossings: A Journey Through Borders

My latest book, published on 7 July, can now be ordered in advance from Seren Books.

From the blurb: Why do we erect borders? What are they for? Can we do without them? Why do they generate such passion? With a major global refugee crisis and a highly polarised debate in the UK about membership of the European Union, poet and biographer Nicholas Murray’s lively and original exploration of the idea of borders – literal and metaphorical – could not be more timely.  Drawing on personal experience, anecdote, literary and imaginative sources, he crosses and re-crosses our idea of the border, examining the dividing lines, margins, barriers, limits, thresholds, liminal spaces, exclusive categories that we erect between ourselves and others or even inside ourselves. 

A Poetry Reading in the Welsh Marches