Maitreyabandhu, a regular contributor to Triratna News, writes with news of his latest publication - and a poetry reading. He says - “I'm having my first ever pamphlet of poems published, courtesy of my winning the ‘Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition’ this year. It's called 'The Bond'.

The judge, Simon Armitage described my collection as ‘Nostalgic, but not sentimental or wistful, the poems have a real sense of the here and now that holds the attention to the last line. They strike home.’ As you can imagine I’m really excited to finally have a short collection in print (23 poems in all). You can buy it here.

And in case anyone’s free, I'm doing a reading tomorrow night (18th October) at the Poetry Business in Sheffield, with Simon.

This

There’s no law against my listening
to this thrush behind the barn,
the song so loud it echoes like a bell,
then it’s further off beyond the lawn.
Whatever else there is, there’s this as well.

There’s no law against this singing –
nesting I suppose – up in the silver birch,
even though we build a common hell,
have done, and will make it worse.
Whatever else there is, there’s this as well.