​Paul Surman

The theme of Paul Surman's fourth collection of poems, Telling the Time, comes from a lifetime musing unsuccessfully about what it is to be a conscious entity. That is the spirit in which this and all his collections have been written. To ask the question 'what is the meaning of life' is a mistake, because it contains the assumption that life has a meaning. Maybe life is simpler than we think. Perhaps the meaning, if there is one, is, as the dictionary suggests, that the meaning of life is life. That there is no grand scheme is the grand scheme. Poetry is a form of life and vice versa.

Michael Swan comments on Telling the Time:
"Paul Surman's poetry engages directly and deeply with his surroundings. At the same time, he sees the 'dangerous ambiguity' of nature, with its lack of clear boundaries. 'I'm no longer me, but the night looking at itself.' He laughs at philosophers 'with their pith helmets / and their blunderbusses, / hunting for the elusive answer / in a jungle of the mind', and missing the beauty of simple things.  But he shares their anxieties: 'This juxtaposition of bird and machine / says something simple that is too complex / for me to disentangle.' And what is the role of our consciousness, he wonders, in the vast cosmos that 'has no opinion but its existence'? Few poets have captured, as Paul Surman does, the inbetweenness of ourselves and our wonderful but confusing world. This is a welcome addition to his already considerable achievement: a very fine collection by a very fine poet."

Telling the Time
ISBN 978-1-913329-99-0
2024
62 pages
RRP £9.99

Buy direcely from the author: https://paulsurman.weebly.com/ or using the button below.

ISBN: 978-1-913329-40-2 
​2021 Paperback, 148 x 210mm,
​62 pages   RRP £10.00

Seasons ​of Damage and Beauty
by Paul Surman

Paul Surman's second collection of poems, published in June 2021, is remarkable as a deeply reflective account of a man's inner life.

Paul explores what it is to be human and vulnerable in the cyclical natural world.

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​“This is a poetry of question and reassurance. Beauty resides in small moments of disturbance. There are poems that mark the passage of time and the inevitability of death. Many poems here explore the hinterlands of sleep and wakefulness, imagined worlds and imagined states of being. 

Surman doesn’t believe in magic, but he is no stranger to magical thinking. He invests “a vast invisibility” with the power to scratch graffiti into the sky amidst birdsong and the quiet business of lives being lived. 
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A pure and gentle curiosity underpins much of this work.”
                                     — Pat Winslow

"These philosophical poems... explore imagined worlds and imagined states of being. A questioning mind that is alert to all sorts of possibilities is at the heart of this volume." - Neil Leadbeater, WriteOutLoud

"Paul Surman’s new collection settles at the crossroads between landscape and mindscape. Surman witnesses and bears witness to birds, squirrels -- all the small things to whom the land really belongs—with a keen eye and keener affection. His greatest miracle is a blackbird’s song, or a murmuration. He also ponders the imponderables. Night, self, philosophy, light — the poet wanders through them, muses, sits quietly, aware that he is neither more nor less than he is, another animal. An assured, beautiful collection."  — Jennifer A. McGowan

​​THIS PAYPAL BUTTON IS FOR UK ORDERS ONLY
For international orders, please contact the author through our CONTACT page. We regret that if an overseas order is sent to us through Paypal, we can refund only 90% of the payment made, because there will be a 10% handling charge.

ISBN: 9781913329730
Perfect-bound paperback, 63 pages
​RRP £10.00

The Ghostly Effect
by Paul Surman

'The Ghostly Effect' is Paul Surman's third collection of poems, published in September 2022

"Paul Surman's assured poetic touch is much in evidence in this new collection as he returns to his signature preoccupations with the world's mutability and the transient individual's perceptions of it, taking a humane and generous pleasure in recording the minutiae of daily life with wry affection. This is artfully phrased poetry which fairly crackles with sharp observation, its focus free-wheeling over natural, social and psychological realities – quietly but firmly resisting easy metaphysical or otherwise grandiose conclusions and declaring an acceptance, won through careful consideration, that "being alive is meaning enough".
 — Steve Xerri

"Paul Surman's poetry has always straddled an uneasy line between sharply observed reality and a shadowy dream world of the subconscious. In this new collection, he explores philosophically the nature of this subterranean mind-world and its 'ghostly effect', while never losing sight of the beauty of the natural world and the ongoing threat to it, in poems which sometimes attain a visionary or transformative quality."
 — Jeremy Hilton

THIS PAYPAL BUTTON IS FOR UK ORDERS ONLY
For international orders, please contact the author through our CONTACT page. We regret that if an overseas order is sent to us through Paypal, we can refund only 90% of the payment made, because there will be a 10% handling charge.

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​Paul Surman was born in Oxford where he has lived all his life. He has written poetry since he was a teenager, but first made a serious effort to get his work published when he retired early, in 2004. Since when his work has appeared in numerous magazines. A first collection, Places (Oversteps Books) was published in 2018. He belongs to Back Room Poets in Oxford, and helps organise, and has participated in, their workshops and readings. He maintains it is only partly true that he thinks the world only exists so that you can write poems about it, but is sure that writing poetry is as good a reason as any for being alive. When he is not writing he enjoys walks with his wife Christine, especially in the Chilterns, somewhere he regards as paradise on earth. But he has no interest in otherworldly paradises. Many years ago, in his spare time, he used to manage a nature reserve that was previously part of C. S. Lewis’ extensive garden, but never found any wardrobes there with access to a magic land. He thinks that, even at its most mundane, being alive is the real paradise we sometimes fail to recognise.

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