Carol Rumens

Welcome

Welcome to Carol Rumens's website

I hate attaching labels to myself. Am I a poet? I hope so but how can I be sure? I would rather describe myself simply as someone who loves language, and who tries to make various things with it – poems, chiefly, but also essays, plays and journalistic odds and ends, etc. As a teacher, I also enjoy helping others to be makers. This poem expresses the self-doubts and private delights of writing, and it is addressed to words themselves:

And If It Was

If it was only for you
all along, all the time, all the way,
and nothing was left of our brightest exchange
of brain-light and blood-sugar; if
it turned out to be just for the flirt and the fling, the great luck
when it worked, when we came, and I caught
the whiff of your sweat, like human sweat,
and your glow, saw your feathers and hair
flare like an Inca head-dress, though
no more than a match-flame, over and out, not catching
anyone’s fire but mine, any time but now,
would you forgive me, words?

from Blind Spots (Seren, Bridgend, 2007), p. 97

On the website you can find out what I have been working on Poetry & Fiction, Criticism, Translation & Editing, Teaching & Drama, Festivals & Prizes


Carol Rumens, Poet

Read my weekly blog for the Guardian newspaper online, Poem of the Week

Comments always welcome!

Review:
"...tonally diverse as it is thematiclly and formally eclectic...Certainly it is the sheer plurality of Blind Spots that makes it such an exciting and important collection. " - Laura Wainwright in Planet 193, Feb 2009


 

Cover for Carol Rumen's book Blind Spots To buy a copy of Blind Spots please visit the Seren Publisher website

 

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