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
Crime Scene
I left a window open
all day, but no one came
to steal my laptop, or my books,
my passport, or my name –
nothing has moved, nothing has changed,
the flat looks just the same
as when I walked out this morning –
no tampering with the shame
of my unmade bed, my un-ironed shirts,
the plate-piled kitchen sink,
your farewell letter on my desk,
listing my faults. I think
when I go to work tomorrow
I’ll play a bolder game –
take the front door off its hinges:
fuck the insurance claim.
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.
At the King David
If you retire you’re dead. That’s what Shimon
Peres said to Tony Blair, who’d just
flown in from China to Jerusalem.
How do I know? Because I was there.
How do you do it, Shimon? TB asked.
His face looked grey. Peres seemed to shine –
he was somewhere over eighty at the time.
Becoming President still lay ahead.
I looked out from the sixth floor at the view
of the Old City sparkling like a gun.
Blair was still PM. The two men smiled.
Old friends. Or at least old politicians.
Tony must have got the message – after all
since leaving Number 10 he hasn’t stopped.
So I can say I personally witnessed
the moment that particular penny dropped.
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
Glance
I met her eyes
and in that glance
a lifeline passed
it seemed a chance
step in advance
which could not last
though now I know
it was the first
tread in our dance
and in that trance
a lifetime passed
as in a glance
Published Dream Catcher 44, January 2022
Two of Us
You won’t give up – ‘which song do you like best?’
Your man’s McCartney – Get Back, Hey Jude. Me –
I’m still hooked on the startling energy
of the early years, till Rubber Soul, the rest
(it’s true, a disappointment then suppressed . . .)
lacking that pastless spontaneity
which meant being young, and seeming to break free
of all the grey, dead rules. I was obsessed,
buying every disc the moment it came out,
listening to it time and time again,
adding it to the story – while for you
right from the start there’s been both Twist and Shout
and Two of Us, the loss of Penny Lane
already in Paul’s voice on Love Me Do.
Published in HQ Poetry Magazine Number 57, 2021
True?
if nothing’s true
it can’t be true
that nothing’s true
if no-one’s true
it can’t be true
I’ve been untrue
if you’ve been true
then yes it’s true
I’ve been untrue
but were you true
in thought, not just
as someone who
kept all the rules
but broke my heart
when you withdrew
inside yourself –
or is it true
that’s my fault too
or is it best
never to face
what might be true
if we both want
(true, or untrue?)
to start anew?
Published in Snakeskin 297, July 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
Wild
Time to go wild
to take a bottle of whisky on the beach
at midnight
to stay until I’ve cracked
the signals from the fishing boats
the lights far out at sea
winking a code
I’ve been too sober
to understand
Published in HQ Poetry Magazine Number 57, 2021
Awake
At our age, it’s more funerals than weddings –
both equally good for catching up on gossip
although now more usually about whose suffering
from what than who’s sleeping with whom – whose hip
joint is ceramic, or whose by-passed heart
pumps as well as the one they were gifted at the start.
Then the big C-word – the weird one-upmanship
of comparing which particular body part
is caught in that disease’s pincer grip,
and calculating the chances of survival.
We note when memory begins to slip –
a first sign of Alzheimer’s? The removal
chapter by chapter of the storied self,
a death before a second death, by stealth.
Yet there’s always the occasional daredevil
boozing and smoking, and still in robust health . . .
But courage should mean a brutally frank appraisal:
life’s just an actuarial calculation
and there’s only one direction for our travel –
towards, surely, complete annihilation.
It’s strange that such farewells are called a wake
when friends go out forever, and daybreak
won’t bring them back, or herald their salvation,
or comfort those who loved them, for whose sake
we offer words we all pretend can ease the ache.
First published in The Spectator 1 April 2017
Also published in uncommon, an anthology by Clapham Original Poets, 2018
Desert Island Discs
I must be past my sell-by date:
I’m fifty, frazzled, overweight.
My mother glares at me to show
she’s not to blame; my wife groans no
on those infrequent nights when I
clumsily lonely, reach out and try
to make/wake love. Asleep, I snore.
My kids think I’m a dinosaur ‒
if up to them, I’m not an App
they’d download. Just a bank to tap . . .
I’m running out of things to say
to friends, except pub chatter – they
wear the same puzzled, sober frown
however many pints they down.
We watch the football on the box,
the stars who earn more than Fort Knox ‒
my job’s a grind, my boss a jerk,
my pay’s a joke, I’ll have to work
until I’m seventy at least:
my pension pot has lost its yeast.
Is this what life is all about,
the rules the multitude can’t flout? –
frustration, failure, stuck ruts, time
speeding up as we decline,
the bitterness we try to hide,
the sense of plenitude denied,
our bodies failing part-by-part,
but in the ageing, aching heart
the troubled yearning to be free,
to say my prison walls aren’t me . . .
The souls on Desert Island Discs
seem to have bypassed all such risks
when they complacently review
their trek to join the Happy Few
chosen to choose the tunes they’d take
to their solo isle . . .
Unless it’s a fake –
what if always and everywhere, everyone’s
a castaway, and oceans
separate us from each other, full
of animal eating animal?
Dear God, if you exist, please teach
me patience on my private beach
where yes, I’ve got your Bible to
ponder eternity’s point of view,
but also Shakespeare, confirming how
the hand-picked favourites you endow
with stardom live more fully than
those in the ranks who also ran –
even when his heroes’ fates are tragic
their pain, and poetry, are magic.
Above all, I’d appreciate
as daily I deteriorate
sight of a sail, far out at sea
but on its way to rescue me . . .
Published Snakeskin 286, July 2021
All at Sea
What does a German Bight
in Sole or the Irish Sea?
Fitzroy’s lips are sealed
while Viking helms to lee.
No word from the absent Wight –
has he slipped away to Shannon?
Do they sound the depths in common?
Are they also trying to fathom
what does a German Bight
while the first or the final light
illuminates his squadron?
Take me to the Hebrides
past Rockall, east of Bailey
where I shall glimpse the far Fair Isle
and sheltered there, or maybe
in Fisher, Forth or Fastnet
I’ll meet someone who’ll say
what does a German Bight
to ease his appetite
in Malin or Biscay.
Southeast veering southwest
four or five and maybe six
sad and/or happy endings
could complicate the mix.
Be moderate and good
but if you cannot, tack
to where cyclonic Humber
paints the grey sky black
and ponder these two questions
as you gaze on that bleak sight –
is Dogger in the secret?
What does a German Bight?
Published HQ 58, March 2022