Part D of Peake in print: verse contributions to periodicals

Peake’s contributions to periodicals in verse

In this part, the following conventions apply: poems titled by Peake have a Capital Letter to Each Word, whereas poems named by their first line have a capital letter only on the first word. Where a title is ambiguous (e.g. ‘Poem’) it is followed by the first line [between square brackets]. All Peake’s poems (but for ‘The Touch o’ the Ash’) and their associated illustrations are now included in either Collected Poems or Complete Nonsense. See also the index to Peake’s poetry on this site.

Not included in this listing are the nonsense poems by Peake that have been printed in Peake Studies since 1988. See the list of contents of past issues.

Cassell’s Magazine, March 1932, p.59
‘Vikings’ in three 7-line stanzas, signed ‘Mervyn L. Peake’. Reprinted (for the first time) in PS 8:ii (April 2003).
Satire (London), December 1934, p.17
‘Practically Poetry’: ‘He must be an artist’ and ‘Ode to a Bowler’ (illustrated), under the pseudonym ‘Nemo’.
Reprinted in MPR 16:26.
New English Weekly, 13 May 1937, p.90,
‘Poplar’
Reprinted in PS 2:iv, p.6.
New English Weekly, 27 May 1937, p.130,
‘The Cocky Walkers’
Reprinted, unchanged, in S&S.
London Mercury, August 1937, Vol.36, No.214, pp.325 & 325–6 (respectively),
‘Coloured Money’ and ‘The Metal Bird’
The former was reprinted (substantially revised) in S&S. The latter was reprinted in PS 2:iv p.7.
New English Weekly, 23 September 1937, p.390,
‘The Crystal’
Reprinted in PS 2:iv p.8.
London Mercury, October 1937, Vol.36, No.216, pp.507–9,
‘Rhondda Valley’ (illustrated)
Reprinted, revised and without the illustrations, in S&S. However, the 1937 version can be found in WD, p.24, with the illustrations (badly reproduced).
Listener, 1 December 1937, Vol.18, No.464, p.1206,
‘Sing I the Fickle, Fit-for-Nothing Fellows’
Reprinted (with revisions) in Gb.
New English Weekly, 30 December 1937, p.230,
‘The Meeting at Dawn’ [‘Body and head and arms . . .’]
Reprinted (with only one line revised) as ‘Poem’ in S&S (A2a: p.21; A2d: p.38).
New English Weekly, 6 January 1938, p.250,
‘Autumn’ [‘The lit mosaic of the wood . . .’]
Reprinted in PS 2:iv p.9.
New English Weekly, 26 May 1938, p.130,
‘Spring’ [‘The palmerworm’]
Reprinted in PS 2:iv p.10.
New English Weekly, 9 June 1938, p.170,
‘El Greco’
A substantially revised version was printed in RoB and reprinted in PP. SP (p.34), however, reverts to the unrevised version of 1938.
New English Weekly, 14 July 1938, p.260,
‘Autumn’ [‘I stretched the shrilly limbs at cuckoo time’]
Reprinted (unchanged) in 12P, where it is attributed to 1940.
London Mercury, January 1939, Vol.39, No.231, pp.285–6,
‘Overture’
Reprinted (with revisions) in S&S under the new title, ‘If I could see, not surfaces’.
This poem, and the differences between the two versions, is discussed in MPR 9:4–10.
New English Weekly, 20 April 1939, p.8,
‘I, while the gods laugh, the world’s vortex am’
Reprinted, unchanged, in S&S.
Pinpoints, May-June 1939, No.4, p.25,
‘Watch, Here and Now’
Illustration by Leslie Hurry on f.p.
Reprinted in PS 2:iv p.11.
Picture Post, 29 July 1939, Vol.4, No.4, p.67,
‘Epstein’s Adam’
Reprinted in PS 2.iv pp.12–13.
WD (p.23) prints a working draft of this poem.
Eve’s Journal, July 1939, p.48,
‘Au Moulin Joyeux: September Crisis, 1938’
Printed with an illustration by Leslie Hurry.
Reprinted, without Hurry’s illustration, in PS 2:iv p.14.
Eve’s Journal, August 1939, p.63,
‘Burgled Beauty’
Reprinted in PS 2:iv, p.15.
Listener, 2 November 1939, Vol.22, No.564, p.848,
‘Where skidded only in the upper air’
Reprinted in Living Age, January 1940, No.357, p.429, and in PS 2:iv, p.16.
Spectator, 25 July 1941, Vol.167, p.81,
‘The Spadesmen’
Reprinted (with revisions) in S&S.
Spectator, 8 August 1941, Vol.167, p.130,
‘The Two Fraternities’
Reprinted unchanged in S&S.
Now, Fall 1941, No.7, p.24,
‘The Craters’
Reprinted (with revisions) in S&S.
Spectator, 12 December 1941, Vol.167, p.555,
‘London 1941’
Not in fact the first printing of this poem as S&S was published in November 1941. However, in view of the revisions in the S&S version, this may be assumed to be the earlier version.
Counterpoint, 1946, Vol.2,
‘Belsen 1945’, two poems
Seen only in photocopy. The two poems and accompanying sketches were reproduced in PS 1:ii. The sketches (‘Girl Coughing’ and ‘Girl Dying’) were also printed as plates 30 and 32 in Drawings 1949 (see Part A). Cf. Part E, WI, p.38, item 16.
Phoenix (Lewes), Autumn 1946, p.19,
‘All Eden was then girdled by my arms’
Reprinted, unchanged, in Little Reviews Anthology (1948) p.161, and in Gb (p.23) with slight revisions.
Strand, November 1946, Vol.112, issue 671, p.58,
[i] ‘The Enforced Return’ and [ii] ‘If the Earth were Lamp-lit’ (illustrated)
Both were reprinted in Gb: [i] as ‘The vastest things are those we may not learn’ (p.14), unchanged except for the punctuation at the end of line 1; [ii], with minor changes in punctuation and without the illustration, as ‘Poem’ (p.35). This second version is reprinted in SP, p.42, under the title, ‘At Times of Half-light’.
Life and Letters, March 1948, Vol.56, No.127, p.235,
‘Poem’ [‘My arms are rivers . . .’]
Reprinted, unchanged, in Gb (p.25).
Poetry Quarterly, Spring 1948, Vol.10, No.1, pp.4 & 5,
[i] ‘Truths have no Separate Fires’, [ii] ‘O this estrangement forms a distance vaster’, and [iii] ‘Poem’ [‘He moves across the bleak’]
All were reprinted in Gb: [i] unchanged on p.40; [ii] revised on p.10, and [iii] unchanged on p.29.
Spectator, 21 May 1948, Vol.180, p.613,
‘Poem’ [‘I watched where the tall trees shook’]
Reprinted in PS 2:iv, p.17.
The last ten lines were reprinted (with revisions) in RoB under the title, ‘And I thought you beside me’.
New English Review Magazine, September 1948, Vol.1, No.1, p.48,
‘Poem’ [‘As much himself as he is Caliban’]
Reprinted (with revisions) in Gb (p.9) and in SP (p.35), where it received the new title ‘Caliban’ – although it is not about Caliban at all.
The Wind and the Rain, Autumn 1948, Vol.5, No.2, p.95,
‘An ugly crow sits hunched on Jackson’s heart’
Reprinted (with revisions) in Gb (p.28).
New English Review Magazine, July 1949, Vol.3, No.1, p.42,
‘As a Great Town Draws the Eccentrics in’
Reprinted (unchanged) in Gb (p.11).
3 Arts Quarterly, Summer 1960, No.2, pp.5, 6 & 7,
[i] ‘Victims’, [ii] ‘On Fishing up a Marble Head’ and [iii] ‘Great Hulk Down the Astonished Waters Drifting’
[i] reprinted (virtually unaltered) in RoB (p.7); [ii] reprinted, unchanged, in P&D; [iii] reprinted, almost unchanged, in 12P (where it is attributed to 1963).
3 Arts Quarterly, Autumn 1960, No.3, pp.22–31,
‘A Reverie of Bone’
Reprinted in RoB (p.11).
TLS, 1 September 1972, p.1027,
‘Squat Ursula’ (illustrated), ‘Come, break the news to me, Sweet Horse’ (illustrated), and ‘I have my price’
Printed in BN (pp.74, 35 & 48), which was published two months later.
Observer Magazine, 12 November 1972, pp.37, 39 & 41,
‘O Here it is and There it is’ [the drawn version], ‘Aunts and Uncles’, ‘I Cannot Give the Reasons’, and ‘Of Pygmies, Palms and Pirates’
Precedes publication in BN by eleven days.
The Mervyn Peake Review, No 26, 1993,
Ten poems: ‘My malady is this’, ‘I cross the narrow bridges’, ‘Heaven lures me’, ‘Moon’, ‘As over the embankment’, ‘Staring in madness’, ‘No creed shall bind me’, ‘O heart-beats’, ‘At such an hour as this’, ‘Often, in the evenings’.
All previously unpublished; with introduction and notes by Brian Sibley.
The Mervyn Peake Review, No 27, 1994,
Eleven poems: ‘Swung through dead aeons’, ‘Suddenly walking along’, ‘To the Illegitimate of War’, ‘Dreams’, ‘The World’, ‘The women of the world inhabit her’, ‘The Eclipse’, ‘A Presage of Death’, ‘For God’s sake draw the blind’, ‘The sap of sorrow’, ‘The crazy balance at the edge of time’.
Nine poems previously unpublished; ‘Suddenly walking along’, and ‘Crazy Balance’ had already appeared in SP (p.9), the latter with a different last line: ‘Is only the long moment’ for ‘Is always the long moment’.
With introduction and notes by Brian Sibley.

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“Peake in Print”

Part D

Peake’s contributions to periodicals in verse