MARK G PENNINGTON

 Buy Mark G Pennington's books directly from him at ​[email protected]

​Konstandinos Mahoney, poet and playwright, writes about That Summer they broke the Birds::
'The poems in Mark G Pennington’s second collection are sensual, surreal outpourings that flow from the page often with no stanza breaks, turbulent streams of consciousness marshalled by a metric discipline and an underlying symbolic cohesion achieving a musicality that binds the surge of startling juxtapositions and collocations into a powerful whole. Decadent Baudelairian themes of love, sex, drink, drugs, travel are explored through a build up of original, exotic imagery; spirit of place: Amsterdam, Berlin, Spain, Mexico, USA , is evoked through a daring dislocation of the expected. Pennington’s is a muscular, minotaur voice roaring from the centre of an elaborate labyrinth.'

Barren Stories for Moonlit Mannequins

ISBN 978-1-907435-61-4
2017
45 pages
perfect-bound paperback
​148mm x 210mm
​RRP ​£7.00

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​That Summer they broke the Birds

ISBN 978-1-907435-85-0
2019
​perfect-bound paperback
70 pages 148mm wide x 210mm tall
​RRP ​£9.00

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. Mark G Pennington is a writer based in Kendal, Cumbria. He has  been nominated twice for The Pushcart Prize for poetry. His third poetry collection was published in 2021. His first novel, She Will Return, was published in 2024.

His books can be ordered directly from him at [email protected] and from his store at amazon.co.uk

Prayers written by queens
​(from "That Summer they broke the Birds"
 
The long grass blades sweating up to my knee,
mountain as breasts - a little rain in the sky,
auld grey town snuff and shoes.
The valley on a river of damson, blowing east
in the marine west coast climate, fowl, sheep,
cattle perfume ringing like dust.
Footprints on a shallow marsh leading out to
the range - in the distance a pecking sun.
The schoolyard now temporarily deserted for
summer with grass short, shot with vast emptiness.
Perched high I see greens with amateur
filmmakers, black dogs pounding, breathless, no
leash, free.
Meadow trees catching ribbons and ropes,
a river from Bela to Winster soaking your land,
a moody winter is coming.

​The town’s twin – her secret lover is the lower Saxony
sister with English landscape gardens, markets for sun
climates and wishbones.
In this place I know the land is living, quiet
bells from prayers written by queens; factories
pumping to the sky, air bitten left rash and taut.
A gesture to the drink and the boys play
gladness, served under a row of chimney tops;
the gas blows out, gin talk and rum affairs, it is
night to the midnight walkers. 
Roses almost washed, now the rain coming to clean
the roof slates - limestone as buckets, fences, shelter
from the storm, a bed for the libertine, and the
town is best swallowed in a Japanese diet.             
​​                                                   © Mark G Pennington