Football Poets

Joe Hart or Hart Crane?
Mesut Ozil or Osip Mandelstam?
Seamus Heaney or Seamus Coleman?
Joe Allen or Allen Ginsberg ?
Charles Bukowski or Bob Lewandowski?
William Soutar or Graeme Souness?
Derek Mahon or […]

We bought you in the Window
and we got you on the cheap,
just after we let Luis go
(grown men were seen to weep).

You’re not his twin, or next of kin,
(was Brendan half asleep?)
and who but him would t […]

The superb athleticism of Gini Wijnaldum.
I reserve no skepticism for the genie, Wijnaldum.

We deserve no criticism, we, his fandom.
The absurd cynicism that his skills are random!

The midfield at Anfield […]

First, you need a pen. But in order to get one
you’ll have to go down in the box
that you keep them in.

Next, you’ll need paper.
Not the back of that fag packet
that you scribbled next Saturday’s team on, n […]

Who’s that bloke in the dugout?
I’m sure I’ve seen him before…
those glasses, the hair, that Devil-
may-care insouciance of his grin,
but is it he, is it he, is it Him?

He looks like a normal bloke, […]

a new arena
for the old football poets-
Chinese takeover?

I know they’re shouting I flagged late,
Up there among the crowds above;
Those that I flag I do not hate,
Those who dissent I do not love;
I disallowed Kilmarnock’s cross,
A ball boy cried: Kilmarnock’s poor! […]

Well, Emily, after last Saturday’s performance you have
to admit that hope isn’t the thing with feathers – a parrot is.

Hope is the Thing of Leather—
That Nestles in the Goal—
We Sing our Tunes, Belt out the W […]

You don’t need to see the armband
to know who is the captain-
it’s written all over him.

His number is twice
the value of his
England shirt.

Eight is a perfect
cube, a Fibonacci
number.

Eight is a per […]

When you go, please don’t send back
a sweater from America.
And please never turn back
from Manhattan to Edinburgh.

After the match the other day
I spent my bus ride thinking about
all the talent that’s dra […]

When I wake up, well, I‘ll have a cup of tea
and after that I think I’ll have an Irn Bru.
When I go out, yeah, I’m gonna head for Leith,
I’m gonna head out on the number 22.

When I get drunk I’ll have all my ma […]

I
Among twenty two men,
the only moving thing
was the blur of the football.

II
I was of three minds,
like a field
on which there are three officials.

III
The football whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small […]

I looked to the streets, the bars, the Bingo halls;
the Legion, the betting shop, the fields
of Anfield Road.

I listened for a solitary voice
whispering my name
in the massed throng of the Spion Kop.

I felt […]

Your rosette might have painted the first splash of blue
on the Anfield gates that Saturday the news from
Sheffield threatened to crush the spirit of Shankly.
You might even have been there, the Henry Winter
of […]