Glenn Hubbard lives in Madrid, where he teaches an English which is often rather ugly. Perhaps for this reason he started writing poetry.

He has had work published in a large number of online and paper journals. One of his poems was submitted for the Forward Prize

in 2019 and this year he won the Bangor Literary Journal’s FORTY WORDS competition with his poem Thirlage. He can occasionally

become a little obsessive about a poem but this is amply compensated for the marvelous experience of losing all sense of time while

he writes. His poetry owes a great deal to that of the late R.F. Langley.

Dead Swan

Crying,
he walks along
the A47,
in his arms a dead swan. Her head 
lolls at
the end
of her long neck, swinging to the
rhythm of his steps. He
stops to lift it
again,
sighing
audibly when 
it slides down her back to
fall once more, resigning himself
to the 
shocking
indecency of her final
journey, hoping to earn
her forgiveness,
later,
trying
to imagine 
how the composition
of Dead Swan On Deal Table will
allow 
him to
restore her dignity beside 
an assortment of fresh 
fruit and veg in
season.

Bald’s Leechbook, a book of medical remedies, dates from the early 11th century. A colophon at the end of the second books suggests that a certain Bald ordered a certain Cild to compile the text. The story of Cild’s reaction to being thus tasked is entirely my own invention.