I talk to “Peter Philips’ Part Book Talks to Brueghel”, commended in the 2015 National Poetry Competition

Some other historical figure
once said

when it comes to consciousness
you’re either inside the fishbowl looking out

or outside the fishbowl looking in
although this was my dealer in 201

who was in the process
of selling me mushrooms

so he may have been
talking about mushrooms

but he was not talking about poems
which unlike mushrooms

you do not let grow or change you
but are for administration only

I’m in a corduroy tabard
dressed for reenactment

the double grey tick, unread, last seen
in the late sixteenth century

people and their poems
seem taller on stage

years later when I tell
my dealer about poetry

and about you and
show him the anthology

he rips out your page
to parcel my order

and soon I will open you up
like an acronym

Published in in the Verve 'Poets & Poetry' Anthology (2025, ed. Hannah Lowe). "I talk to “Peter Philips’ Part Book Talks to Brueghel”, commended in the 2015 National Poetry Competition" was not commended in the 2015 National Poetry Competition. "Peter Philips' Part Book Talks to Brueghel", the poem referenced in the title  "I talk to “Peter Philips’ Part Book Talks to Brueghel”, commended in the 2015 National Poetry Competition", was commended in the 2015 National Poetry Competition.