17 Landscapes is a paean to time and memory; a collection haunted by the ghosts of undead moments that walk the here-and-now of our everyday lives. From the emotional panorama of the opening poem, ‘Barbury Castle’, an arc is traced through fatherhood, masculinity, love and family history rendered through the physical and emotional landscapes inhabited by the poems. Time and again, throughout this pamphlet, we 'rejoin the moment; /driving deep the flint of it into/ the chalky quick’ of modern times. Martin Malone charts frankly, the journeys with unreliable maps that constitute the emotionally layered complexities of 21st century life and relationships.



‘Martin Malone's debut pamphlet is breathtakingly assured - a rich, attractively male excavation of time and place, landscape and language, every word alert to the elements without and their emotions within.’ – CAROL ANN DUFFY



‘Malone is a Romantic at heart, feeling the landscape, living the language, catching the drift.’ – SIMON ARMITAGE



‘My road is north / My road is north', writes Martin Malone, but in fact his landscapes are not only the Brontes' and Plath's Pennines but England 's deep south, Greece , Arabia and elsewhere.  He ranges in time too from the ancient world of the white horse of Uffington to bingo halls, and from Avebury's ancient past to the corteges of Wootton Bassett.   His poems are bold in subject and in style; his voice never murmurous but full-throated and confident.’ – JEFFREY WAINWRIGHT



Martin Malone was born in Hartlepool in 1963. He works as a Special Educational Needs teacher. After University he worked in Europe and the Middle East. He also worked as a sound engineer and a guitarist/ songwriter, releasing six albums. Elsewhere he has published studies of Thomas Hardy’s short stories and the poetry of Alexander Pope and Charles Churchill. 17 Landscapes is his first pamphlet. He lives in West Overton, near Avebury in Wiltshire.