Poem: ‘Fir, Fallen’
Frances Leviston, 10 September 2026
how it didn’t wake us fritful sleeperspunching up the coverletnever interrupted him snoring a stormmy ear plugs’...
Frances Leviston
Frances Leviston lectures in creative writing at Manchester, and is the author of two collections.
From The Blog
21 June 2019
In April, I asked Denise Riley if I could put her name forward as a possible Oxford Professor of Poetry. To my delight, she agreed; not because she wanted to win, or believed she would (we soon learned that Alice Oswald was in the running), but because, despite her strong reservations about the culture of literary competition, she thought that it would be good to present a field of female candidates. But Riley’s name did not appear on the ballot. Like several other potential candidates, Riley turned out to be ineligible because of her age.
Poem: ‘I see thee better’
Frances Leviston, 2 August 2018
For Helen at the NPL
Behind her now the National History Museum Pocket Microscope she always screwed down to its farthest extension of nested rings, straining to focus
the peacock feather stolen from the dining room’s display of stiff dried flowers and fed forwards on to the stage, a blurred blue petrol and purple
fronding of fine barbules and barbicels netting white light, broken...
Poem: ‘Emily’s Electrical Absence’
Frances Leviston, 25 January 2018
I hope you may have an electrical absence, as life never loses its startlingness, however assailed.
Emily Dickinson, letter to J.K. Chickering, autumn 1882
1.
Technologies – are not abrupt – Though Pole-vaults may appear – The lever bends a longer spell Than Morals – in a Fire
And clatters off the Bar before It ever clears the way – And makes the Mass...
Poem: ‘The Paperweight’
Frances Leviston, 4 July 2013
From Chambord-pink at the base, it clears to where the upper curve reflects a skull-cap of charcoal, giving the earthʼs atmosphere in miniature: the sea, the air, then space. Erupting from that wavy cocktail is a white flower like a frozen whale-spout arrested mid-expulsion, a filigree fuchsia trumpet, petals peeling in a spray, bearing among them a bubble shaped like a long inverted...
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