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
Last Page
We choose what gives us meaning. I
chose you. That’s why
when people ask
me to unmask
and tell them if I’m ‘happy’, they
head off astray:
that’s not the glue.
But what I knew –
in the first minute, when we met
(part pledge, part threat) –
was that our text
defines, connects.
Of course, it’s only when you turn
the last page, learn
its backward view,
say farewell too,
that you can fully understand
an author’s plan.
So bugger books
and how we’ll look
to hooked, impatient readers who
will hurry through
to reach the end.
Leave that unpenned.
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.
Are You An English Gentleman?
Are you an English gentleman
who always sees things through?
Are you an English gentleman
regular and true?
Are you an English gentleman
whose life of quiet despair
seen from the outside, looks to be
reliably square?
Are you part of the landscape
with a firm handshake,
understated savoir-faire?
Are you an English gentleman
avoiding the public glare?
Are you an English gentleman
unflappable under fire?
Annoyingly self-possessed,
genetically a squire?
Are you an English gentleman
never, never late?
Are you an English gentleman
completely out of date?
Are you an English gentleman
unable to cope
with foreign parts and feminists –
have you become a joke?
Politically incorrect
an existential retrospect
a species under serious threat –
are you an English gentleman
bewildered but bespoke?
Are you an English gentleman
although there’s no such thing?
Are you an English gentleman
whose timer has gone ping?
Are you an English gentleman?
If so, hang on old chap –
let’s dine out at my club tonight
and talk a load of crap.
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
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
La Croix du Requer, Clis
On one side, Christ already
rigid, cold, alone,
while on the other, Mary holds
a baby in her arms –
the years between are nowhere
and were only written down
much later, by those yearning
that darkness could be dawn –
but stone expresses clearly
how death remains distinct,
how at that final moment
all meaning was a blank –
and yet, I often pause here
on my weekly cycle ride
not from any sense of pilgrimage
or because it’s in my guide
but to think of the man who carved it
and generations since
imagining Jerusalem
in the grey granite of France.
Published in Snakeskin 295, April 2022
Notes from the Underground
The first time someone offered me a seat
on the Underground, it was a Hoodie who
if I’d met him on a darkened, empty street
I’d have crossed to the other side as he came into view,
worrying about being mugged. And number two
happened today, when a young punk female face –
plus studs – looked up when I got on, and smiled.
I couldn’t think why, till she half-rose from her place.
Clumsily, I said no. Had she been my child
I’d have wondered what I’d done wrong, that she’d so defiled
her fresh good looks. But it isn’t that which sticks,
or the jolt of suddenly seeing myself in their
green eyes, or the body blow to my politics
(Spectator preconceptions . . .). It’s wondering where
such acts are catalogued, and if they share
the folder in the Cloud once labelled Prayer.
Published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Spring 2015, under title ‘Underground’.
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
Service
I stopped believing many years ago
even in non-belief, so why sit here
this winter morning, listening
to Sunday Worship on the radio
from St Martin-in-the-Fields? And to a choir
not so much singing as inheriting
the chanted fables generations pass
each to the next, as though they were handrails
into the future and could guide
us through a lifetime in which nothing lasts
except their solace – a thought which both appals
and fascinates, for what if such well-tried
harmonies say something tuned and true
about the way we can atone with age,
how we should be with one another,
how I both could and should have been with you,
and could still be even at this settled stage
of our long discord? What if this chance encounter
is not mere chance, but one of those rare moments
which offer insight into how the world
is more than all we see or hear
or touch – some inner, outer, spiritual endowment,
an unexpected cadence overheard,
which everyone, and everywhere, could share?
So let the old words comfort if they can –
they’ve done good service down the troubled years
helping us to come to terms
with what usually seems not just absurd, unplanned,
but a void our shocked imagination fears
and that unsung language only silence learns.
Published in The Spectator, 15 April 2017
Aftershave
Men, when freshly shaved and smooth,
stroke their cheeks as though to say
others should touch them too, to feel
a newborn’s softness. Every day
the beardless have another chance –
what their mothers knew, themselves to know:
the wonder of such pristine flesh,
like virgin, unfootprinted snow.
Some go electric – Philips, Braun.
I need the cold edge of the blade,
the nicks, the blood, but then the sense
of innocence, not yet mislaid.
First published in Dream Catcher 33, July 2016
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