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John McCullough was born in Watford in 1978. His poetry has appeared in publications including Poetry London, The Rialto, The Guardian, Magma and London Magazine. He teaches literature and creative writing at the Open University and the University of Sussex and has a Ph.d from Sussex on rhetoric and friendship in English Renaissance writing. He lives in Brighton.<p>John McCullough's debut collection introduces a writer acutely aware of poetry's transformative power, its ability to question assumptions and subtly shift perspective ... Sharp yet compassionate, formal yet nimble, the poems glitter with slang and modern culture while maintaining an engaging seriousness.</p>
- Ben Wilkinson, The Guardian
<p>[T]he sheer heart-stopping quality of the better poems, however, which make this collection such a rewarding and moving debut.</p>
- A.B. Jackson, Horizon Review
<p>McCullough has a very distinctive style of voice, creating a close affinity with the reader which builds to a wonderful empathy with the voices in this collection. A remarkable debut, he offers a playful, yet serious set of poetry which is full of nothing other than sincerity.</p>
- Liam Parkin, LoveReading.co.uk
<p>John McCullough is a delight to read, the poems sit there waiting for you to look at them again ... He’s an origami poet and the pages turn from horses to white capped waves to Sargasso seas to bathetic abyss and back ... It’s a lovely journey to take with a master of his art and I’d recommend this first compilation as an excellent gift for anyone with an interest in contemporary poetry, poetry that explores the LGBT experience of love and intimacy and anyone who likes a damn good read.</p>
- Eric Page, Gscene Magazine
<p>At the core of John McCullough’s The Frost Fairs is a hard-won and solid-as-granite foundation, a lasting literary achievement that’s replete with range, control, and ambition. Regardless of how far this achievement carries him — and all indications promise that the ascent will surely be a lofty one — my affection will remain for the figure at the end of his poem “The Dictionary Man,” the lone boy who’s asleep at his desk, dreaming over the words.</p>
- Jason Roush, Popsublime
<p>Tipped with voyeurism, each of the poems within displays a real lightness of touch and mischievous freedom, manifested as whisper and anecdote concerning lives glimpsed in passing. Ultimately, this collection needs to be dipped into, in order to get the most impact from each poem. Read all in one go, the quiet play of each interaction risks blurring into the next, as skaters and stallholders on the arrested Thames.</p>
Dr. Fulminare
<p>In his fine debut collection <em>The Frost Fairs</em>, John McCullough turns out tender love poems and imaginative thought experiments with equal aplomb.</p>
- Suzi Feay, The Independent Books of the Year
<p>The judges were impressed with the polish and precision of the language, the confidence of the writing and the scope of the work. The Frost Fairs isn’t a one-note collection, but one that covers many themes and strikes many chords, from modern transatlantic relationships to hidden gay lives from the past. It’s also surprisingly mature for a first book – a debut which doesn’t feel like a debut.</p>
- Paul Burston, Head Judge for the Polari First Book Prize
Winner of the 2012 Polari Prize
A Book of the Year for The Independent and The Poetry School
Holiday Read in The Observer
The Frost Fairs is a compassionate book with a global and historical scope, tackling science and city life from a range of surreal yet poignant angles. It explores love in many forms, from modern transatlantic relationships to hidden gay and cross-gendered lives from the past. The pieces travel from ancient Alexandria to twenty-first century bars and council estates, behind everything the vastness of the sea and sky. The array of voices here is striking: taxi drivers report their most outlandish fares and hermaphrodite statues flirt with observers; abandoned lovers watch frost fairs melting on the Thames and drag queens revel in the freedoms afforded by the Blitz.
Formally deft and carefully crafted, this diverse range of poems uses language that is always musical and alive. Surprise and the uncanny are cherished as ways of returning to us the strange leaps and enduring power of our deepest yearnings. In this collection, longing and losing condition all we see and hear, making the impossible suddenly plausible. Whether exploring Brighton seascapes or questions of empire, there is always in McCullough’s writing an openness to seeing the world from an alternative point of view. At once bold and haunting, The Frost Fairs opens the door to a new country in the reader’s imagination in its exploration of the possibilities of the human heart.
The Frost Fairs is a moving book with a global and historical reach, dealing with love in many forms from modern transatlantic relationships to hidden gay lives from the past. Formally deft yet deeply poignant, these poems use language filled with imagination and musicality in their exploration of the possibilities of the human heart.
- Contents
- Sleeping Hermaphrodite
- Talacre
- Night Writing
- Reading Frank O’Hara on the Brighton Express
- The Light of Venus
- Masterclass
- Small, Vertical Pleasures
- On Galileo’s Birthday
- Sneakers
- Known Light
- The Last Hangman
- The Long Mile
- Islands
- The Floating World
- The Other Side of Winter
- The Dictionary Man
- Georgie, Belladonna, Sid
- Angels Over Hatfield
- The Empress of Mud
- The Crystal Palace
- Circumference
- Miss Fothergill Observes a Snail
- Foucault’s Spoons
- Cold Fusion
- Ghost
- The Cure
- Portrait of the Young Poet as a Wagtail
- The Moon of Myths
- Severance
- Seascape
- The Disappearance of St Anthony’s Church
- Tropospheric
- Dragons
- The Amazing Tintin
- Cherry Tops
- The Loft Fire
- Crepuscular
- Motile
In this immensely enjoyable collection there is an immediacy and tenderness that is outstanding. These vivid moving poems have such a sharp eye for those telling daily details, the particulars. All of this, plus their humour, creates poems that are so solidly tangible and believable. The title The Frost Fairs tells it all. The vulnerability and changeableness that threads our lives, the shifting ice below our feet.
The Crystal Palace
In Hyde Park, leeches are waiting.
Their glass prisons are linked
to a bell by fine chains. It rings
when they become frenzied by shifts
in the air that signify unfurling tempests.
You would have relished such enterprise,
this Exhibition dreamt up by the Prince —
halls of crystal where any world is feasible.
I picture your long fingers caressing
the rims of improbable fountains,
grasping mangos from Assam, the sides
of a bed that turns into a life-raft.
But you are oceans away, a sunburnt jailer
flanked by swamps and blood-sucking convicts.
And I am an envelope-making machine.
I slide through grinning crowds for sights
to furnish next week's letter, mark the days
between replies. A knife with eighty blades,
I shall write, might be practical for pioneers.
What arms the colonist like imagination?
By a wall are models of the human eye
cross-sectioned, a doctor pointing
to cornea, pupil, nerve to demonstrate
how light can flood a structure, then leave.