Month: August 2025

You Took the Last Bus Home (again)

News

It’s publication day for the new edition of my first poetry collection, You Took the Last Bus Home. It’s been unavailable for nine months, following the demise of its original publisher, Unbound. I’m so delighted that Picador stepped into the breach to bring out this shiny new edition.

Hopefully it will now be back on the shelves of most bookshops – and it’s available to order online from all the usual places. You can find a few links to where to order here: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/brian-bilston/you-took-the-last-bus-home/9781035086634

Roger’s Thesaurus

Some poems

Roger’s Thesaurus

In order to grow, expand, widen
his lexicological corpus,
Roger bought, acquired, purchased
a synonymopedia, a thesaurus.

Soon, presently, without delay,
he no longer ran out of things to say,
speak, utter, express, articulate,
give voice to, pronounce, communicate.

This was all very well, fine, great,
wonderful, super, terrific
but his friends, mates, pals found him
boring, tedious, dull, soporific.

So let this be a warning,
an omen, a sign, a premonition,
it’s all very well to show learning,
education, knowledge, erudition,

but here’s a top tip, a hint,
a suggestion, some advice,
don’t ever let it stop you
from being concise

.

ss

brief, short, clear, pithy,
succinct, compendious, to the point,
compact, snappy, laconic.

..

.

Breviloquent.    

Public Information Film

News

There now follows a short public information film containing particulars of Brian Bilston and The Catenary Wires’ autumn tour.

You can find more particulars here, in particular: https://brianbilston.com/events/

Neither Rhyme nor Reason

Some poems

To make poems rhyme can sometimes be tough
as words can seem to be from the same bough,
yet each line’s ending sounds different, though,
best covered up with a hiccough or cough.

Was this upsetting to Byron or Yeats?
Dickinson, Wordsworth, Larkin or Keats?
Did they see these words as auditory threats?
Could they write their lines without caveats?

What does it matter when all’s said and done
if you read this as scone when I meant scone?
It’s hardly a crime. There’s no need to atone:
language is a bowl of thick minestrone.

So mumble these endings into your beard –
this poem should be seen, rather than heard.

O do not ask if I am beach body ready

Some poems

O do not ask
if I am beach body ready.

Observe how the folds of my stomach ripple
like the wind-pulled waves.

Rub your hands over these pale buttocks,
sand-smoothed by time.

Note my milk-white limbs like washed up whalebones,
stranded and useless.

Consider these tufts of hair on my back and shoulders
sprouting wildly like sea-grass.

And listen to the lapping of my socks
at the shores of my sandals.

And still you ask me
if I am beach body ready?