By Grasmere mountains, patched like camouflage,
Tornados fly in glamorous great-paced dressage,
Their pilots like augmented spirits, one
With banking fellside and omniscient sun,
And air is roaring like a rending veil
From Steel Fell all the way to Patterdale:
Frisson of terror, but what shrink and burn
This time are only fern fronds as they turn,
And walkers trace the muscular, vanilla
Spectacle of our champion, our good killer.

 

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Kieron Winn’s first collection of poetry, The Mortal Man, was published in 2015. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was awarded a doctorate for a thesis on Herbert Read and T. S. Eliot. His poems have appeared in magazines including Agenda, Agni, The Dark Horse, Literary Imagination, The London Magazine, The New Criterion, New Statesman,Oxford Magazine, Poetry Review, The Rialto, The Spectator and The Times LiterarySupplement. Selections of his poems have featured in two anthologies: Carcanet’s Oxford Poets 2007 and Waywiser’s Joining Music with Reason; he has also read his poems on BBC TV and radio. He has twice won, in 2007 and 2013, the University of Oxford’s most valuable literary award, the English Poem on a Sacred Subject Prize. He lives in Oxford, where he is afreelance teacher. His website is www.kieronwinn.com.