Chester City Walls

My debut poetry collection Chester City Walls, is published by Poetry Space (http://www.poetryspace.co.uk).  You can purchase a copy here – see details at the bottom of the page – or through Poetry Space.

Chester’s Walls form a unique landmark that not only contain a City, but also many aspects of the City’s story over centuries. The collection walks the reader round the City Walls in space and time, reflecting on their meaning as well as their making.

 

Chester City

Walled city: playing card compact,

defined by ranks of Roman spades,

ramparting turf and timber lines

till Empire’s eagle fluttered, fled.

 

Here, Charles watched his Royalists lose

heart in battle on the baize plain.

Queen’s faces too, have graced the pack –

Aethelflaeda, Victoria.

 

Scuffed and dog-eared sandstone edges

once patrolled, now promenaded.

Tourists, traders, shoppers, buskers’

coins clink; jewellers’ trays glint diamond.

 

Resting square in England’s green palm:

Field and forest etched by Welsh hills,

face-up till dark turns out clubs, pubs:

“I would walk the Walls at night.”

Julia D McGuinness

 

Chester City Walls Cover

‘Chester City Walls is an exceptional first collection. These are lyric poems and historical narratives of the highest order: expansive, impeccably controlled, assured, and full of an imagery that lingers long in the memory.’

Dr. Nikolai Duffy, Lecturer in American Literature

Cost: £7.95  + £1 postage and packing

Available from juliamcg@creativeconnectionscheshire or order now via Paypal:




  • About Julia

    Julia

    From writing stories for my younger brother, to penning poems for the School Magazine and filling a growing pile of personal journals, the written word has always been part of my life’s journey.

    I started out as an English Teacher and subsequently retrained as a Counsellor. I have counselled in a GP Surgery and worked with various Employee Assistance Schemes and Charitable Trusts alongside seeing private clients.

    Although I have done some freelance journalism and written four non-fiction books, creative writing has become my main focus in recent years.

    My poems have appeared online on sites including Amaryllis, Silver Birch Press, Clear Poetry, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Riggwelter and Ink,Sweat and Tears. I have been published in Curlew and Bucks Mill Magazine, and anthologised in Our Hearts Still Sing. My first poetry collection, Chester City Walls, came out in 2015.

    Read more about Julia

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