I think it’s time we built a new annex for The Churchyard; perhaps in that area overgrown with blackthorn; that area where no one goes; somewhere to entomb that other passion of mine, poetry. I shall be including a selection of the old and the new, from dead poets and the not yet dead.

Of course, only a certain type will be suitable for When Churchyards Yawn. I’m looking for the drear, the dark, the dismal and the disconsolate. I’m looking for the Gothic, the Weird, the Folkloric, the Esoteric and, to quote Conrad, . . . The horror! The horror!

If you’d like to send me your own work for consideration then please do, either through the contact form on this blog or email me at johncnash@live.co.uk

Previously published work is welcome, but do let me know so that I can give credit where credit’s due.

And the title of this endeavour, ‘This be the verse’?

Perhaps it has become best known as the title of Larkin’s wonderfully misanthropic poem, but he borrowed it from Robert Louis Stevenson’s self-composed epitaph which now adorns his tomb:

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.