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
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
Beltway Blues
Beyond the Beltway
there must be
a better life
for you and me.
We’ll slip the Net
and go to ground
where no e-mail
can track us down –
no telephones,
no televisions,
no talking heads,
no politicians.
Off-stage, off-screen,
off-line – together
we’ll find ourselves,
we’ll find each other.
You know the life
I have in mind,
the real thing
not the virtual kind –
I’ll light the fire,
we’ll watch the flames
consume the past,
sure what remains
is older, deeper,
firmer . . .
Strange
how every time
we talk this way
we heave a sigh
and here we stay.
Published in HappenStance Envoy, 2013
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.
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)