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. Tom’s poem Beltway Blues, from his Envoy collection, was included in the Songs of Love and Loss cycle by painist/composer Sir Stephen Hough, premiered in a Wigmore Hall concert on 2 January 2023, sung by Nicky Spence.
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
My Last Beer
I left my last beer in the fridge
meaning to open it tonight –
no note tells me who’s taken it.
I kid myself that it’s all right,
that sitting in this hard-earned peace
I can even taste its cool, clear gold –
but I’m not fooled. It’s so unfair.
And other drinks can’t slake the thirst
for what’s not there.
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’.
You can download an e-copy of Envoy here.
Helmand
I was in the room when we all said yes
knowing it would mean the death
of some of those we sent.
But not so many.
Which of us now would still say the same –
if any?
Some Poems of Tom Vaughan
On Top
I
These days, the woman has to be on top,
astride the guy with whom the roles have flipped –
she sets the pace on their erotic trip
until her flagging partner pleads – stop . . . STOP!
On stage, an actress plays the male lead part;
on screen, she’ll be the bright detective who
solves murders, managing a family too,
attractive, empathetic, super-smart.
About time too: for centuries their role’s
been whore or virgin, while assertive blokes
were down the pub exchanging dirty jokes
or in the cockpit, at the plane’s controls,
or in the pulpit, putting all the blame
on Eve, for having knowledge as her aim.
On Top
II
All well and good, and yet the gloomy stats
reveal that worldwide men remain the sex
who make the rules, earn more, and – more complex –
are still the longed-for (even by mothers) brats.
The charge sheet darkens: most murders are committed
by men, on women – often husbands killing
wives they’ve used as punchbags after drinking
sessions with their mates. And why’s God pictured
in most religions as a bearded male?
Why should it be crack-brained even to hope
that one day there might be a female pope?
Did a feminist colleague hit it on the nail? –
ninety percent of culture and belief
is men claiming the right to give us grief.
On Top
III
The issues nowadays of course go wider:
LGBTQIA+, Roe/Wade,
what to think of comments JK Rowling made . . .
Yesterday’s liberals are now outsiders
unless they’ve learnt the Newspeak. When the Taliban
kick women out of schools and jobs, and gays
in Africa are treated as depraved
it’s easy to know exactly where one stands,
or when Putin sends his troops into Ukraine.
But here what’s right/politically correct
can change so rapidly, with no respect
for those with question marks, although Montaigne
observed that while we’re hard-wired to seek truth
it’s only known to God, for all we sleuth.
On Top
!V
Time to confess: I wasn’t the perfect husband.
My own career came first, and even now
I flunk my half of household chores, somehow
(despite myself) instinctively old-fashioned.
I can claim to be a victim in my turn,
of upbringing, of school, of peer groups or
the era I was born in, and ignore
the voice of conscience and this deep-down churn
about my failure to do as well as you
in translating love into daily life
and keeping pledges made when, man and wife,
we promised to be not merely physically true
to one another, but also that we’d dare
much more than tasks, our inner worlds to share . . .
On Top
V
Dover Beach has always been a favourite
but I wonder, did she feel a bit ignored
and (Dover Bitch!) rate him a gloomy bore
to be fussing over a verse on their wedding night?
In any case, that yearning still hits home,
to bind together, in bold equality
in a world in which there is no guarantee
of anything but taxes and the tomb
and loss, and suffering. Is it too late for us
to start again, to try this time to find
a way to be as gentle and as kind
as look the couple Larkin could not trust,
lying movingly – since hand-in-hand – nonstop
for centuries, with neither one on top?
Published in Snakeskin 304, March 2023
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.
Odd
When you think of it, if God exists, it’s odd –
if this is the only place in the universe
he set up to be able to converse
with conscious creatures (aka our awkward squad) –
if he focused his main effort on a tiny planet
in a minor galaxy; if his son were born
on the edge of an empire, in an unremarkable town
under-equipped to host the infinite –
if you need a microscope to spot his hand
at work in history, always at the edge of vision
where things get blurred, where the Good Samaritan
fulfils his humble, unreported mission
on an unpaved road in a distant, backward land,
not knowing the heavens hang on his heart’s decision . . .
Published HQ Poetry Magazine 58, March 2022
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)
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