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Lesley Harrison ~ poetry etc

December 15, 2025

Poetry London

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December 15, 2025

Writing with Ghosts

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August 11, 2025

‘Do Birds Sing?’

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July 21, 2025July 21, 2025

Orkney International Science Festival 2025

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June 16, 2025

‘The Fog House’ (NSP substack, 16th May 2025)

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June 16, 2025

NSP online poetry workshop, Mon 23 June 7.30pm BST

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March 31, 2025

Rabelais, WS Graham and the Northeast Passage

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March 1, 2025March 1, 2025

North Sea Poets

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February 17, 2025March 31, 2025

‘The Whale and the Gannet’

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DISAPPEARANCE

DISAPPEARANCE     [extract]

I must have disturbed him when I came up the companion .… He was unapproachable, as a misfit should be.
– Donald Crowhurst, logbook of the Teighnmouth Electron. 29th January 1969.

 

[…]
How, singlehanding in a bad storm,
light-poor, deprived of sleep, beyond isolation

and fatigue as the boat took a beating
shedding green tons, letting the dark in

through shuddering deck boards;
working at waking, the tiller jammed hard

at his side while the boat leaned and leaned,
the second up front, watching the sea’s sliding surface

as it brimmed and fell while he nursed the boat across
great holes that closed and opened

beside them, the two of them watching for minutes
as the storm fretted and at last began

to fail, the boat butting forward, correcting its roll
in small calms, riding weightless

as the surface formed
itself and held, the wind sighing

in one vast outbreath,
and then he was alone again.

 

From Disappearance : North Sea Poems, publ. Shearsman, 2020.

[Photo from Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, by Door Jan Verwoert. MIT Press, 2006.]

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