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‘The Harlot and the Rake, poems after William Hogarth.’ Publication Day for My Debut Pamphlet.

I’m delighted that my pamphlet, an heroic crown of sonnets after William Hogarth’s prints, is published today by Culture Matters. It comes with a wonderful introduction by Fran Lock, and cover art by the Guardian’s Martin Rowson.

You can purchase a copy for £7.50 (plus £1.50 P&P, UK) at

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/praynard/9 , or Worldwide https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/praynard/12

From Fran Lock’s introduction

Peter Raynard’s heroic crown of sonnets after William Hogarth’s (1697–1764) of A Harlot’s Progress (1731) and A Rake’s Progress (1733) run the same gamut of moral and social concerns but bring a contemporary socialist sensibility to bear on the interconnected fates of Tom Rakewell and Moll Hackabout. Raynard uses the connected but very different downfalls of Tom and Moll to interrogate the complexities of ‘choice’, the notion of complicity and the limits of our sympathy.

The Heir

A rich Father dies, so a son’s life as heir begins.
Vanity’s the sling which Tom will throw family
chains from: his Father, a staid suit of a man
battened down by the clamp of God’s utility

mother weeping, wife with child warming inside her.
He will leave enough to oil their grief, but says there
is no need to pray. With old money, time does shun
less miserly ways ending troughs of emotion

such wealth held: when men lay idle no-one need read
King James’ bible. New clothes fit both size and stead
with enough silver to sail a ship. London ho!
with its trade winds blown by slave labour. God well knows

the streets men of off-note graze on. All benighted
in the Capital’s treasures of sin but not be sinned

“What Hogarth etched and engraved, Raynard successfully recreates in verse.
The comparisons of life in Britain today are there to be made.” (Owen Gallagher)

“The tone Raynard manages to hit with his quite ravishing language and the use of the 3rd
person voice as witness carries you along like you’re on some kind of walking tour of the
grubby streets of the human mind/body leaving you eager to turn the next page, the next corner, to see what has next befallen Moll or Rake.” (Martin Hayes)

Featured on Planet Poetry Podcast

I had the great pleasure of talking about masculinity, class, disability and fatherhood with Peter Kenny and reading poems from my collection ‘Manland‘ on his and Robin Houghton‘s Planet Poetry Podcast. I hope you enjoy it.

Here is the link on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3S47nmrsdLCYQQMPvLrkQ8

If you don’t have Spotify you can listen to it on other platforms by going to,

https://planetpoetry.buzzsprout.com/

You can buy a copy of Manland from myself for £10 (incl. P&P UK only) or £13 (incl. P&P worldwide)

or direct from my publisher Nine Arches Press by clicking here

Pink Pyjama Suit by Deborah Alma

white middle classWhen a person walks out their door, whether going to the shop, to work, or for a night out, I imagine it is only the lucky ones, who are not conscious, or made conscious of, who they are. I imagine the stereotypical, white middle class male, irrespective of their political hue, on this journey imbibing the day without constraint; not physical, psychological, nor spiritual. They may believe they are completely unbiased in respect of how their position, influences their decisions, or perspective when dealing with other people. They may give to charity, volunteer, despise racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, whilst at the same time, feel totally at peace with the world – that for all its faults, see the world moving in the right direction. And on the whole, they are right – headline figures, which the late Hans Rosling so eloquently showed, see many indicators of human development (child mortality, mortality, rates of disease, etc.) on a positive trend. However, this position is also the problem. On whose backs were these improvements in quality of life carried? Often, it was either the existing poor, and when there weren’t enough of them, immigrants, such as the Windrush generation. (more…)

The Pay Poke by Owen Gallagher

Owen Gallagher PicEvery Thursday in the bookies, men would rush in after four o’clock, look up at the board of an upcoming race and the prices of the horses, quickly scribble something on a betting slip and hand it over to me. As I looked at the bet to see if I needed to lay it off, I would hear the crackle of cellophane and the tear of an envelope. The man’s wage packet. His ‘pay poke’. Opened in front of me instead of his wife. They would often go home with an empty envelope.

Owen Gallagher takes the ‘pay poke’ and writes from the perspective of a son who has to deal with the death of his father and the payments to be made from his father’s last wage packet: to the man from the loan company and the Priest, who was paid in silver and made them ‘feel special when he gave the house/a blessing, called each of us by our name.’ Thereafter there is a change in roles where the ‘mother became the man‘ and ‘now I set aside the money‘.

This is a rights of passage poem; (more…)