About the poet
Tom Vaughan is a former British diplomat who has served in the Middle East, Africa, and the US, and whose career has also included experience of conflict zones such as Afghanistan and the Balkans. He continues to work on international affairs.
Tom worked as a journalist before graduating from Exeter University and completing post-graduate studies at Oxford. His novel, No Second Prize, based on his experience in post-colonial Zimbabwe, was published by Andre Deutsch in 1993.
Tom’s poems have been published in several magazines and anthologies. One of his poems, Proposal, first published in Orbis, was included in the BBC series/anthology Essential Poems (to Fall in Love with). Tom is a member of the Original Poets of Clapham Stanza Poetry Group, and four of his poems were included in their 2018 anthology Uncommon.
In the words of Helena Nelson of the HappenStance Press, which published a short selection of his poetry in 2010 and a longer collection – Envoy – in 2013, Tom’s poems demonstrate that ‘elegant formalism and contemporary style can still go hand in hand’.
HappenStance Sampler
The Mower
I cut the grass again today.
It took three hours, but now I know
that man was made his lawn to mow.
It’s smooth enough to play croquet.
The shorn blades smell of long ago.
I cut the grass again today.
I’m basking in the afterglow.
I sit and sip a beer, although
under my feet it starts to grow.
Envoy
The poems in Envoy reflect Tom’s experience overseas, commenting (often with barbed wit) on people, places and the moral ambiguities of diplomatic life. His deepest concern is with the guilt carried by those whose decisions—however much they may or may not be justified—mean the death and injury of others. But the only certainty for all of us, as he concludes in Via Dolorosa, is that ‘suffering / is in the end / all we can share’.
Although hard copies of Envoy are sold out, you can buy and download an e-copy below.
Via Dolorosa
The light insists
there’s something here
the guidebooks can’t
explain, and then
illuminates
the stones’ idea
that maybe nothing
happened but
their task’s to bear
what ends in prayer
or protest that
the certainty
of suffering
is in the end
all we can share.
Poetry publishers
LINKS
Some of Tom’s poems have been published in the following online publications:
- Snakeskin online poetry magazine A monthly poetry webzine edited by George Simmers.
- Lighten Up Online The quarterly light verse webzine founded by Martin Parker and edited by Jerome Betts.
Get in touch with Tom here
Some Poems of Tom Vaughan
Midnight Mass in the Pyrenees
The village choir sings out of tune,
the ancient curé’s sermon
the one he must use every year
aimed at the awkward children
whose parents push them to the front
to crowd around the crèche
where one of them’s now tasked to put
the infant who’d unleash
the centuries in which these stones
would house the hopes and fears
of generations who’d accept
his legacy’s frontiers
as they’d accept this valley as
an all-containing world
in which the story of their lives
would day-by-day unfurl.
Now most of us are only here
for the skiing – if we believe
in anything, it’s not the tale
which goes with Christmas Eve
and yet, we’ve felt the need to come
where a thousand years of prayer
gave meaning to the spans of those
whose limits we compare
to our wider, deeper knowledge of
every question mark
which leaves us both enlightened and
forever in the dark
but wondering for a few hours if
tonight’s simplicity
has somehow blessed us, even in
our proud uncertainty.
Published in Snakeskin 257, January 2019
Happiness
It’s easy to forget they’d fought a war:
his father drowned, half-brother bayoneted;
her kilted sibling captured at Dunkirk,
locked up for five long years. But yes they met
in uniform, lost half their friends, before
the normal world re-started when they wed:
mortgage; children; grinding office work –
all I suppose they wanted when they set
out as a couple. We must have been a shock:
busting their rulebook; scornful of sacrifice;
mocking their past and their belief in ‘progress’;
too young, too smashed, too angry to unlock
their silence, or to understand the price
they’d paid for what they’d still call happiness.
First published in Dream Catcher 33, July 2016
Fire
In front of the fire after dinner
we talk of the friends who have died
not saying, but of course thinking,
why them, but not us, when we’ve lied
and we’ve failed and betrayed and we’ve squandered
just as much as the shadows we mourn
while we sit by the fire in the winter
while the fire keeps the two of us warm.
Maybe when we wake a few embers
will still glow in the ashen grate
and we’ll kindle new flames till the evening
the darkness to illustrate.
Published Snakeskin 302, December 2022
Brick by Brick
I took a brick and carried it
to where before there had been air,
and laid it carefully to fill
an emptiness I could repair.
some bricks are made for houses
some bricks are made for walls
but none are made to mark the place
where more than evening falls
That was the first – it’s now among
so many others I can’t be sure
which one it is, and why I built
here, not elsewhere.
some bricks are made for houses
some bricks are made for walls
but none are made to mark the place
which beckons but appals
Though it seems some spaces can’t be filled
however many bricks we pile
upon each other, and however
well we learn to shrug, and smile.
some bricks are made for houses
some bricks are made for walls
but none are made to mark the place
where all our building stalls
Published Poetry Review Salzburg No 37, Summer 2021
USP
If everybody has
a USP, what’s mine?
Is non-possession of a talent
a crime?
If I’m part of the crowd predestined to be
born with no great gift
is there a particular reason for
Fate’s thrift? –
since otherwise no one would rise
above a bland baseline
and no lacklustre horde would backdrop the stars
who shine . . .
Still there ought to be a prize
for the necessary many
whose qualities are minimal
if any
but who plod on as losers so
the few can upwards pop
relying on the rest of us
to flop –
so will they one day condescend
to look us in the face
and thank us for their happy state
of grace?
Published Lighten Up Online 59, September 2022
Proposal
Let’s fall in love –
in our mid-thirties
it’s not only
where the hurt is.
I won’t get smashed up
should you go
away for weekends –
we both know
no two people
can be completely
all-sufficient.
But twice weekly
we’ll dine together,
split the bill,
admire each other’s
wit. We will
be splendid lovers,
slow, well-trained,
tactful, gracefully
unrestrained.
You’ll keep your flat
and I’ll keep mine –
our bank accounts
shall not entwine.
We’ll make the whole thing
hard and bright.
We’ll call it love –
we may be right.
Original version published in Orbis 108/109, 1998
Included in anthology ‘101 Poems That Could Save Your Life;, ed Daisy Goodwin, HarperCollins 1999.
Included in anthology ‘Essential Poems (To Fall In Love With)’, ed Daisy Goodwin, HarperCollins 2003 (in arrangement with BBC, and read on subsequent BBC by Samuel West.
Pear-Shaped
‘I find that the earth is not as round as it is described, but
it is shaped like a pear . . .’ – Christopher Columbus
Of course, since he thought India was where
they’d landed, so much sooner than his sums
suggested that they should. I bet his chums
would have been happy had the world been square:
any firm ground the answer to their prayer –
after long weeks at sea, the flat earth comes
to feel as good as mythical kingdoms.
Me and my crew, however, are up to here
with startled landfalls: our jetlagged eyes have seen
whole towns destroyed, men killed and women raped –
mere footage for the voyeur’s TV screen.
We know how horror works: we’ve got it taped . . .
Not that we laugh at him for being green:
his insight was spot on – the world’s pear-shaped.
‘. . .like a pear, with a woman’s nipple in one place,
and this projecting part is highest and nearest heaven.’
But that bit’s something else – just think of it,
the seven day world in its pneumatic bliss!
Not something that you’ll find in Genesis . . .
Creation’s high point: one enormous tit,
almost as tall as heaven, a major hit
with passing Martians, evidence that His
artistic bent was sui generis –
sublime erotic flair; a wicked wit.
O Mother Earth, bend down and succour me.
I’ve lived too long with sorrow and with pain.
Fold me in your warm arms and let me be
young, and believing, innocent, again.
Then I’ll set sail, as though I could be free
one day, unchanged, to turn back home, to Spain.
Published in The Haiku Quarterly 41
Afterwards
Afterwards, I’ll shake the hand
of total strangers in the street
as though they were my oldest friend
and as and when that friend I’ll meet
we’ll stroll across Green Park towards
Crown Passage’s Il Vicolo
to dip our bread in olive oil
and drink wine till our faces glow
and talk of this and maybe that
as if we had all day to kill
then we’ll argue who should pay, aware
we’ll agree at last to split the bill
and when we say goodbye, we’ll know
how rare and wonderful it was
to be together, even though
neither will say so. Why? Because
why even hint the day might come
when public or private fresh disaster
prevents we two from sitting there
to share a salad and a pasta?
Published in Snakeskin 276, September 2020. Also in The Spectator, 10 October 2020.
Reprinted in Robin Helweg-Larsen’s 20 December 2021 blog (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5769613.Robin_Helweg_Larsen/blog)