Hide and Seek

By Glyn Maxwell b. 1962 Glyn Maxwell

Of all the things to win at. There I am,

Immobilised except for my young gut,

Which does its jellyfish and does its clam

Because you've come to double-check the hut:

And the relief is evangelical

That I can breathe again and show my face,

Until all other faces s how that all

Are found and mine was the last hiding-place;

Then many draw to it as a shrine,

In glum approval, jealous but sincere,

That of the silences you favoured mine,

And the last thing that mattered mattered here.

Source: The Breakage: Poems (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999)

Biography

Born in England to Welsh parents, Glyn Maxwell was educated at Oxford University and Boston University, where he studied both poetry and theater with Derek Walcott. This simultaneous training in two disciplines has enabled him to create innovative work across genres. Maxwell has written numerous verse plays as well as long narrative poems. The Sugar Mile (2005), a verse narrative set in a Manhattan bar a few days before . . .

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